Political Narratives

 

  If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. --Confucius

One of my current pet peeves is the emergence of the term “narrative” in political and journalistic usage. While in literature the term simply means an account of events in sequence, a story, when used in politics it comes from postmodern theory. Here’s the relevant definition from the OED:

 In structuralist and post-structuralist theory: a representation of a history, biography, process, etc., in which a sequence of events has been constructed into a story in accordance with a particular ideology; esp. in   grand narrative n.  … a story or representation used to give an explanatory or justificatory account of a society, period, etc.

Use of the term in political contexts implies a right to lie for political purposes.

It ought to be a major task of newspaper and journalism style guides to expunge such politically charged partisan language; any terms that require a particular stand on some issue by their very use.

If this were ever done, as it needs to be, the list of banned terms now in common journalistic use would be long:

Homophobia, Islamophobia—imply that anyone who disagrees with a given opinion on either homosexuality or Islam is irrational. This is an illegitimate use of the term “phobia.” 

Gay—implies that anyone who is homosexual is happy to be so, refusing to allow an argument against homosexuality.

Non-standard pronouns—imply endorsement of the position that people can choose to change sex, which is an obviously debatable point. Their use therefore constitutes another attempt to stifle debate. If one wanted to refer to oneself as “zhe,” no issue would arise. However, it is always the third person pronoun that is contested, and one rarely or never refers to oneself in the third person. Accordingly, the entire point of this pronoun issue seems to be to impose one’s own views on some other person.

First Nations—implies primacy or superiority for members of a particular ethnic group. Members of other ethnic groups might want to differ. Moreover, different Indian groups are widely different culturally, making the term meaningless except to make a dubious political point. Identify by culture. “Indigenous” or “aboriginal” also involve debatable claims. “Indian,” by contrast, is politically neutral and has a defined legal meaning; it is therefore proper and necessary in some contexts.

White—as a racial term. The notion that there is such a thing as a “white race” is scientifically dubious. It is equally dubious to speak in terms of a “white” ethnicity. The Irish are very different from the English, and spent something like a millennium maintaining the distinction. Poles are not Germans or Russians; Bulgarians are not Turks. It is insulting and dismissive not to acknowledge the distinction. To use racial terminology, moreover, is to implicitly endorse racism. Identify people, if it is relevant, by nationality or ethnicity.

Asian—is equally nonsensical in scientific or ethnic terms. There is little genetic or cultural kinship between a Bengali and a Filipino. There is also a vast cultural difference between a Korean and a Japanese, for example, and lumping them together is both deeply misleading and insulting. Again, identify people by ethnicity or nationality; not by imagined “race.”

African-American—is same problem. Tunisians, Somalis, Namibians, Congolese and Boers have little in common—not even something as superficial as skin tone. “Black” is hardly better. “American black” designates a distinct cultural group with some shared history, and is therefore a useful term. But an American black is then very different from a Jamaican or a Canadian or a Cuban black.

I could go on. It would almost be worth it to launch a publication—perhaps an online publication—purely to model such proper usage. Doing so might, in itself, vastly improve our public discourse.