Major news publications like The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times have recently made changes to their style rules regarding obscenities and vulgar statements. But this should come as no surprise. “Common” language is tied into culture, and evolves with the times accordingly. News agencies have to adjust to these language trends as they happen, changing their own rules for what words journalists can and cannot use. Although they do react and adjust to the changes in language outside of their publications, it can also be considered that journalism might accelerate the evolution of common language. It’s kind of a chicken-and-the-egg situation.
It must be understood that many of the words we use today have not always been common expression. The word “idiot” was first used by medical professionals in the late 19th century to describe a person with a very severe mental disability, it was not a word a common person would use, like we would today. As the word became more and more widely used amongst the general public, doctors switched to the word “imbecile” and then eventually “moron” and then “retard.” Today even the word retard has lost it’s original connotation, and is now used widely as a pejorative term. Many doctors today won’t even use this word to describe a patient, opting for something along the lines of “mentally disabled.” My point here is that words and their meanings shift as they are spread throughout society.
The recent changes made by the NY Times are rather mild, allowing for the usage of certain vulgarities in their entirety if they are “essential to the reader’s understanding of a newsworthy event,“ but probably couldn’t be more needed at the current time. The internet has enabled people to be more connected than ever, fads, trends, and content of all types gets around much faster than in the past, and this includes evolutionary changes to language.
The claim that society has seen a drop in manners and language usage in the past century is very short sighted. The truth is that today, more people have better manners and are more literate than ever before. These changes in language we use is a natural occurrence, and we must see these changes reflected in our literature and news publications as well.
Sources
Robert L. Schalock, Ruth A. Luckasson, and Karrie A. Shogren (2007) The Renaming of Mental Retardation: Understanding the Change to the Term Intellectual Disability. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: April 2007, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 116-124.
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