Faculty Lounge Language Redux
Are Democrats triggering voters by pushing the Overton Window on language, thereby subverting norms and creating barriers to participation?
Friday, the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way published a memo titled “Was It Something I Said?” Its premise is familiar:
For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying. The intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace. The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many—especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.
They break down the offending word and phrases into several categories:
1. Therapy-Speak (that can signal a judgmental tone)
- Privilege
- Violence (as in “environmental violence”)
- Dialoguing
- Othering
- Triggering
- Progressive stack
- Centering
- Holding space
2. Seminar-Room Language (that can feel academic or detached)
- Subverting norms
- Systems of oppression
- Critical theory
- Cultural appropriation
- Postmodernism
- Overton Window
- Heuristic
3. Organizer Jargon (that may sound institutional)
- Radical transparency
- Small “d” democracy
- Barriers to participation
- Stakeholders
- Food insecurity
- Housing insecurity
4. Gender/Orientation Correctness (that may seem overly technical in casual communication)
- Birthing person / Inseminated person
- Pregnant people
- Chest feeding
- Heteronormative
- Patriarchy
5. The Shifting Language of Racial Constructs (that may appear performative)
- Latinx
- Intersectionality
- Minoritized communities
6. Explaining Away Crime (that can sound soft on offenders)
- Justice-involved
- Carceration
- Involuntary confinement
This is, as noted, a rather familiar criticism. Jim Carville famously scolded his co-partisans for their use of “faculty lounge language” more than four years ago. In the main, I agree that, while most of these terms are well-meaning, and some of them quite useful as professional jargon, almost none of them are useful in talking to ordinary people, and a handful of them are downright silly.
The thing is, while I hear and, especially, read these terms all the time from academics and pundits, I hear few of them from politicians talking to the public. They’re not words that I recall Kamala Harris using in her stump speeches, debates, or television interviews.
Indeed, political scientist Lindsey Cormack does the hard work of doing a content search of “the DCinbox archive of 208,000+ official congressional e-newsletters from 2010 to today to see who uses the words and terms outlined in the Third Way memo” and finds that twelve of the 45 words never appeared. Not once. Most of the others were used five or fewer times—often as much by Republicans making fun of their use than Democrats actually using them. The only ones in widespread use were variations of LGBTQ (unspecified number) and privilege (11,691 uses by Republicans vs. 4,492 by Democrats).
She concludes,
Looking at actual usage, the Third Way memo reads less like an audit of Democrats’ language and more like a list of terms Republicans tell us Democrats are saying. The data show that many of these phrases barely exist in constituent communications, and when they do, Republicans are often the ones writing them either to lampoon Democrats or to spotlight them as proof of “wokeness.” But again, these are not campaign emails, and I’m far out of campaign world for the most part.
But in doing this version of a check and in my understanding of how American politics can move forward in a more functional way, I agree we need to get away from what Third Way calls “the eggshell dance of political correctness.” People and politicians should be willing to adapt words when they don’t land and should be open to trying out new terms that capture novel experiences/problems that we need to deal with.
But as long as Republicans can keep defining Democrats by terms Democrats themselves rarely use, and everyone comes to believe this through repetition is a much bigger challenge for the impressions of the Democratic Party than any lefty words they might on occasion.
Here, I’m willing to extrapolate beyond the data: if Democratic congressional newsletters being sent to journalists aren’t using this jargon, they’re sure as hell not using it in campaign materials. It’s conceivable they’re using it in highly targeted fundraising materials aimed at the sort of people who do use those words, but it’s just not how 99% of them talk.
It is, of course, how a lot of Democratic elites talk and, especially, write. But I can’t imagine that has much impact on the turnout of Democratic-leaning voters or impacts the voting behavior of the truly undecided.
While I’m not hearing high level politicians using many of these words and phrases, I frequently hear them from the “activist class” at local meetings, particularly the “Organizer jargon.” I see it as trying to be a cool kid, speaking in code that only the cool kids understand. Predominately (locally) they are affiliated with the DSA (Democratic Socialist of America).
I am a liberal Democrat. I’m even a ‘creative.’ OTOH, I’m not college educated, (10th grade where I finally learned my goes-intas) and I was a working man for a long time, so I’ve actually known and hung out with people who are also not college graduates. And I am repelled by faculty lounge language. I fucking hate it. I hate the condescension, I hate the unearned smugness, I hate the ignorance that hides behind euphemisms. I hate the cheapening of the English language and I hate the debate-killing self-satisfied certainty of it.
I’ve been railing against this kind of language in political discourse for at least 20 years. It is alienating. It is insulting. It is obnoxious and insufferable and when I hear some fresh-from-the-seminar sophomore talking about cultural appropriation when he knows fuck-all about culture and has made no contribution to same, I want to punch him.
And remember: I’m actually on the same political team. I agree with 90% of the progressive agenda. But for Christ’s sake, learn to speak plain English and climb down off the goddamn soapboxes. This language has done incalculable damage to liberal causes. It makes people hate us. It make me hate us.
@Michael Reynolds: That notion that everyone, everywhere is going to speak the way you want them to just seems impossible, does it not?
Excellent piece, Steven.
Some of those words or terms listed above I have not heard, at all.
Usually, I just roll with it, but from this piece there are some words that I refuse to say – ‘Latinx’ is one – in any context. Some words … just ‘no’ or if I do I use them it’s to snark or mock.
My current preference-deficient post-modern term is ‘unhoused’ because there is a perfectly good word to describe ‘homeless’ and not surprisingly it is … HOMELESS. related item, ‘housing insecurity’ is … SOON TO BE HOMELESS.
@Steven L. Taylor:
1) First of all, this is deliberately exclusionary, in-crowd language. So, no, I don’t expect to be spoken to in condescending, smug, cool kid language. Not if the speaker wants me to listen. And particularly not when, as is so often the case, the speaker is a fucking idiot just regurgitating half-understood concepts he can neither explain nor defend intelligently.
2) If the intent is to persuade then yes, a speaker certainly should learn how to address the people they’re trying to reach. My wife talks to young kids, I talk to teenagers, and neither of talks to them the way we talk to each other. Because that’s what you do when you’re dealing with people who don’t speak your secret language.
3) LatinX may be the single best example. White college kids insisting that the entire world adhere to English’s non-gendered nouns because somehow, somewhere, some person may be offended. Who was actually offended? The Spanish (and French and Portuguese and Italian) speakers who did not wish to be lectured by college kids whose entire non-English vocabulary ends at the Taco Bell menu.
Republicans see voters as rubes who can be easily conned and manipulated. Democrats have trouble matching the contempt Republicans feel toward voters. The MAGA think Trump is like them and is standing up for them. I wish there were some way to get them to see what Trump really thinks about them.
@al Ameda: Unhoused seems totally ridiculous. Housing insecurity does not seem ridiculous. It seems like a perfectly reasonable term to describe a major problem in society. Much better than soon-to-be homeless.
I question whether a group that calls themselves Third Way is really Democratic. They’re Democrats the way Michael Bloomberg is a Democrat. It’s the big business folks that the Republicans have left behind when they went to complete crazy town. James Joyner would likely find a lot of what they say to resonate with him (wow, that sounds like an insult… or host is a Democrat by convenience if he is a Democrat at all)
Bernie Sanders is more of a Democrat than these people, and he desperately claims to be an independent.
That said, I think the phrase “white privilege” was crafted in a focus group to find the single most off-putting wording that would shut down people’s ability to listen. There’s no way it evolved naturally.
You would have to use the n-word to shut down thought more effectively. “N-clang were deprived of the ability to create generational wealth through a system of red lining and exploitive…”
On the other hand, I am not surprised that they oppose using LGBTQ or variations — the entire problem of queer and trans folks goes away if you never mention them. Or at the very least, they aren’t as important as being a business friendly, centrist party that doesn’t mention small d democracy or any of the existential threats of the world.
They’re trying to whitewash their grudges by including them with things that everyone agrees with.
Anyway, when we are sticking people into re-education camps, we will be rounding up these people along with MAGA.
James Joyner gets a pass, though. (James, please print this comment out, and carry it with you once the revolution comes)
@Michael Reynolds: Yes, all speakers (and writers) should know their audience. And yes, some people are obnoxious, smug, and/or arrogant.
But you don’t complain about specific people; you have a tendency to make it sound widespread and endemic to Democratic discourse.
And yes, latinx is an awesome example. Show me the prominent Democratic leader who is pushing “latinx” (heck, who is even using it?). Is latinx central to our discourse in any way that matters?
So, sure, level specific criticisms all you like, but please stop generalizing–and especially stop acting like these are messaging problems for the Democratic Party. (It annoys me not because I feel the need to defend the Dems; it annoys me because it is manifestly incorrect.)
@Gustopher: Yes, these people are longtime Democrats frustrated at constantly losing to awful Republicans. But, while I’m sympathetic to the complaint, I think it’s a misdiagnosis. Trump and others have done a great job of hanging some of this around their necks, but they’re not actually saying these things.
I don’t think I’ve ever claimed to be a Democrat. But, functionally, I’ve been one since 2016.
There are definitely times in university meetings when I have to bite my tongue so hard I nearly end up maiming myself.
I can recall some professors I’ve known, who were so far left they’d have to build whole a new wing for their Overton windows, who’d have walked out in disgust, saying “To hell with this shit; I’ve got tenure.”
And according to some I know who’ve spent time at US colleges lately, it’s much more intense there than here.
But the UK has a sorry tendency to pick up on American inellectual fashions.
(See also the tendency of the “overly online” UK Conservatives to follow the Trumpia fatuus ignis, despite all the polls indicateing even most right-of-centre Brits consider Trump to be an almost unmitigated arse.)
The curse of a shared language, perhaps.
Amplified by modern social media.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Young, queer, lefty Latinos were probably the only group using it with anything approaching any kind of consistency — and then it was a consistent minority of them. I think it’s even fallen out of favor with them.
I think it is now primarily used to trigger MR. 😉
@James Joyner:
Exactly.
Which brings us back to the elephant in the room that doesn’t get enough attention — the fact that voters (not just MAGA voters, not just the fascists and homophobes and racists and misogynists and Christian Nationalists) are getting essentially all of their information from sources that conceal the fact that actual Democratic politicians do not speak this way. Those sources include allegedly “liberal-biased” traditional media, who sell way more ads by writing about reactions to wokeness than they do by talking about facts, or actual policies, or what will happen to the economy if we deport all of the fruit-pickers and toilet-cleaners.
Because many Americans have devolved into a people so dumb and childish that there actually is a wide swath of the nation — left, right, and center — more preoccupied with annoying words “white college kids” use (who gives a flying fok?) than with millions of Americans losing healthcare and watching small businesses close and electric bills skyrocket over bad Republican policy.
Hence why, thanks to the incompetent and unqualified pedo they elected, Americans are also losing their global reputation, along with their jobs, their quality of life, their global competitiveness, and their healthcare — deservedly so. Unseriousness has consequences.
I doubt Democratic language games will get Americans to grow up and get serious; we are determined to learn the hard way.
What makes Third Way “Centrist Democratic”? Certainly not their backers. Even their name implicitly (or explicitly?) says they’re not Democrats.
@Gustopher:
I think Code Switch was the only place I was hearing it.
@DK:
Indeed. If we are going to pick a sub-group of the country most responsible for the current mess, it is neither white college kids nor academic (in fantastical faculty lounges or no). Rather, it is mostly middle-aged white dudes without a college education worried that they are losing control of “their” country. They won’t turn on Trump if everyone would just please stop using a list of words that some people find annoying.
@DK:
Indeed. If we are going to pick a sub-group of the country most responsible for the current mess, it is neither white college kids nor academic (in fantastical faculty lounges or no). Rather, it is mostly middle-aged white dudes without a college education worried that they are losing control of “their” country. They won’t turn on Trump if everyone would just please stop using a list of words that some people find annoying.