I was a legal researcher in a former life and the first time I was asked to research “right to work” laws I was surprised by the doublethink of that term of art. I consider “employment at will” to be another: you can be fired by the employer without any justification.
Only thing I agree with third way 100% on is that jargon, period, needs to be stopped: just say straight/heterosexual, Latino/a, and such, AAPI also should be banned just say Asian or Pacific Islander.
Birthing person sounds absolutely ridiculous, I just…just say pregnant woman, ffs.
Agree anti union is better framing than right to work, that said, with the article.
Perfect example of bubble thinking—Shapiro is so used to talking to other liberals he assumed everyone knows “right to work” means “crushing unions” and doesn’t figure to the person outside the bubble that term sounds like “let workers decide if they want to be forced to join a union” which is how Republicans frame it.
The wingnuts have been at this "Ministry of Truth" game for a long time now, and it's past time for all of us to wise up and stop allowing them to frame the terms of every political debate. Whenever they slap a label on whatever, it conceals the fraud of callinptegnant wenpg things by names that are the exact opposite of what they refer to. This technique is used all over Orwell's 1984,and it's continued use on the right is always part of an attempt to bait and switch the voters, to con them, because to accurately described their policies and methods would be grossly unpopular. "Right to Life" conceals untold suffering and death for pregnant women, "Right to Work" means right to get fired for no reason and right to work for less than you earn so the bosses can indulge themselves in all the good things you'll never have, in their constant competition to pile up more loot than the next guy. "Clean Air Act" let more pollution be released into our air, "Clean Water Act" took the threat of fines from government inspectors for gross pollution of our rivers and streams and lakes, and on and on and on. The Right never ever wants what is good, forget about best, for ordinary citizens. They work for their major donors, the oligarchs , in their unending campaign to loot everything good in the world and spoil whatever they don't want for the rest of us, to reduce We The People to silent, cowed, ignorant serfs.
“When I suggested online that Gov. Shapiro should use ‘anti-union’ instead of ‘right to work,’ several very smart liberals insisted that we not ‘dumb down’ our language for the benefit of people they clearly hold in contempt.”
When I started out, ages ago, writing freelance feature articles for MSM, the rule of thumb was to write toward an audience with an 8th-grade education. (It may be lower now.) Since then, I’ve written everything from desktop-published animal-shelter promotional materials to academic research papers to grant proposals. It’s always the same underlying rule: Write for your audience.
Tennessee is a “right to work” state, which I always thought of as not only anti-union, but also “We have the right to fire your ass anytime we want for no reason whatsoever.” The phrase means more than perhaps many people realize, and “anti-union” in its brevity IS effective communication.
Also rather than abortion rights I think it should have been reproductive rights. The IVF right ring would have been forced somewhat to accept that especially after that brouhaha in the south.
I always thought “pro-choice” worked well, and the characterization of the Bible-banging misogynists as “anti-choice.” Of course, that was back when “choice” existed.
If you want to effectively communicate to a wide range of people. you use the words most people use.
I think too that using a word that's more commonly understood and immediately conjures up meaning (anti-union vs right to work) is more empathetic communication - people don't often have time to look that stuff up.
Even educated people aren’t fond of over-complicated terminology (like “terminology”—I should have just said “words”!). Seriously though, simpler terms have a way of cutting through the fog, and seem more “honest.”
And if someone used “torpor” in regular conversation they’d get laughed out of the room.
It’s always the racism with these knuckle draggers and it always plays to that white bias. So, when people say they don’t see color, they are clueless to the old systems still driving their decisions to support. People in general and Americans specifically have a huge blind spot here. I believe they call it indoctrination.
"All lives matter" conceals from view the horrific murder-by-cops that happens every day, everywhere. "Right to life" only applies to blastocysts, and full grown living and speaking women are on their own, they don't have any rights. "School choice" means that some people can choose to rob the already inadequate funding for public schools, all in order to send their children to seg academies, xtianist madrassas and other reactionary Nazi indoctrination centers.
It also highlights a lot of comfort people have in saying this. I remember when NY Governor candidate Carl Paladino referred to Michelle Obama as an ape. He felt very comfortable saying such a thing.
I seriously think that one of the reasons the RW lost its collective racist mind, especially when President Obama was first elected, was accumulated fury over not being able to use the “n-word” out loud anymore. MAGA.
That is one of their most sore grievances, that they get criticism for grossly insulting people of color, whose feelings are of no consequences. If'n yew didn't want to be despised yew shoulda
Well this is another reason why the rightwing media human centipede is important; it allows Republicans to kill language. And with a lot of people just finding it easy to be purposefully, even performatively incurious, it makes it easier for unreconstructed retrogrades to make every single thing worse.
The rightwing media human centipede also makes sure to find any sort of small academic discussion and blow it up into something super scary, while downplaying the powerful malignancy of Project 2025 and anything else that comes from the umpteen thousands of Republican think-tanks. And of course, crucially this is all funded by millionaire and billionaire pocket change, which because of the policies advocated for by Democrats, the Democrats will not have access to.
In good news, apparently as I had been clamoring for, Brian Tyler Cohen DID get Chorus Media started up. That's one way to potentially claw back some of this difficulty in language with left-leaning influencers. Unfortunately, it was then set upon in an exercise in clout-farming by Taylor Lorenz. So let's look out for THAT issue too.
And of course, as we've sadly learned, many union people are very happy actually to vote for anti-union unreconstructed Republicans as long as those Republicans advocate for smashing the minorities they don't like.
The New York draft riots of 1863 were really about the fury of the already struggling working class whites at the prospect of free African American competition for the crumbs, that and the idea that they were getting drafted into the army to benefit persons of color.
It's a very good program in fact. And we need more of this kind of thing.
I hadn't noticed him promoting it either, so I am mystified that it escaped my notice. He just had a few videos and then stopped. (And apparently he receives no compensation from it as he's already a big channel and wouldn't need to do that).
Hahahah OMG and I see Kenny (2Raw2Real) on the front page, that guy is hilarious.
excellent I can't wait to check it out...And seriously, When does BTC sleep or eat. The mountain of content that he delivers just on his own is quasi-supernatural. I like that he'll be getting more folks on board. As much as I like Meidas Touch, there's something about BTC's game that I like better...great to have both, but my pref is for BTC
BTC said at some point he does have a *small* team (probably editors and such). But dude keeps on it and I have a lot of respect for him. Also I like the people he has on, and more Dems need to go on his show. Jamie Raskin is a good one he has on frequently. Also I like his legal show with Glenn Kirschner (even if it has a lot of hopium) as well as god-tier democracy defender lawyer Marc Elias.
I rather hope he starts some sort of show with Jasmine Crockett like he has with Raskin.
I liked those constitution classes he had with Raskin. Those seem to have been on hold recently. understandably. I'd love to have Crockett as a regular!
Brilliant analysis, SER! Thank you for showing so lucidly how to think through these verbal choices. Saying ‘anti-union’ instead of ‘right-to-work’, for instance, makes all the sense in the world, morally and rhetorically as well as in the service of accuracy and plain speaking. I hope the top-name Dems will follow your advice.
The "wrong" is great at naming: the "Right", "Moms for Liberty", "Citizens United", "Right to Work", "Pro Life", while we use "defund the police" for example. Many don't bother to look deeper. Some would say these people get what they deserve by not delving into things, but many don't have the time. And the RW media is great at making progressive words a pejorative. Just keep at it and eventually it sticks. We have had no counter.
We really should start emphasizing the full name of the Citizens United organization: "Citizens United Not Timid" because they wanted that acronym.
(aside: there HAS to be a term for a name like this devised strictly for the desired acronym, but DuckDuckGo has failed me yet again. "What is the term for a name made up to fit a particular acronym" resulted in two pages of "What is an acronym" . Search has degenerated into meaninglessness.)
The colloquial term is a “backronym.” Since I think this is a fairly modern linguistic phenomenon I don’t know that we have a formal grammatical term for it.
All it takes is one single loose cannon on our side to use hyperbolic language like that for the wingnuts to brand us all as crazy Maoist revolutionaries and of course the corporate media soaks it up and natters witlessly about it, a farmyard full of fowl clucking witlessly about nonsense.
If I'm reading a blog, I don't have a problem with looking up a word that I don't know, because it's so easy pause my reading to look up what the word or the acronym means, and then get back to reading with a better understanding of what the author means. However, it's a different matter when I'm watching a video. Sure, I can look it up, but it's not quite so easy, even if I can pause the video. And if it's a live event, forget looking it up, because then I will lose the thread of the speech or whatever it is that the speaker is trying to convey.
It's up to the speaker to use words that most people will understand, or to explain a word that may not be commonly known. It's also up to the speaker to not be smug or condescending when speaking. Simply using common or simple words isn't being smug or condescending, it's being considerate. However, tone and body language can convey something different, so the speaker should be careful in their tone and body language.
BTW, nice burn to the "self-described long term union member" who smugly suggested it was wrong to "pander to illiterates," yet he used "denomination" when clearly it should have been "denominator."
Personally I like reading books where new words make me want to look it up. I feel like I add another word to my arsenal of vocabulary. I even had a coworker tell me that she liked my input in meetings because she, too, learned a new word. I don’t mean to be hoity toity, I just like language.
A lot of ignorant people are frightened and annoyed by anything they don't understand, such as unfamiliar words. Rather than learn they get aggressively defensive in an attempt to shut out their intellectual lacks.
I was a legal researcher in a former life and the first time I was asked to research “right to work” laws I was surprised by the doublethink of that term of art. I consider “employment at will” to be another: you can be fired by the employer without any justification.
Only thing I agree with third way 100% on is that jargon, period, needs to be stopped: just say straight/heterosexual, Latino/a, and such, AAPI also should be banned just say Asian or Pacific Islander.
Birthing person sounds absolutely ridiculous, I just…just say pregnant woman, ffs.
Agree anti union is better framing than right to work, that said, with the article.
Perfect example of bubble thinking—Shapiro is so used to talking to other liberals he assumed everyone knows “right to work” means “crushing unions” and doesn’t figure to the person outside the bubble that term sounds like “let workers decide if they want to be forced to join a union” which is how Republicans frame it.
Always helps to talk to regular people.
The wingnuts have been at this "Ministry of Truth" game for a long time now, and it's past time for all of us to wise up and stop allowing them to frame the terms of every political debate. Whenever they slap a label on whatever, it conceals the fraud of callinptegnant wenpg things by names that are the exact opposite of what they refer to. This technique is used all over Orwell's 1984,and it's continued use on the right is always part of an attempt to bait and switch the voters, to con them, because to accurately described their policies and methods would be grossly unpopular. "Right to Life" conceals untold suffering and death for pregnant women, "Right to Work" means right to get fired for no reason and right to work for less than you earn so the bosses can indulge themselves in all the good things you'll never have, in their constant competition to pile up more loot than the next guy. "Clean Air Act" let more pollution be released into our air, "Clean Water Act" took the threat of fines from government inspectors for gross pollution of our rivers and streams and lakes, and on and on and on. The Right never ever wants what is good, forget about best, for ordinary citizens. They work for their major donors, the oligarchs , in their unending campaign to loot everything good in the world and spoil whatever they don't want for the rest of us, to reduce We The People to silent, cowed, ignorant serfs.
Look at the resistance we get from other liberals when we have the temerity to suggest we communicate better. You’d think we stabbed their families.
Republicans have long treated political communication like Pepsi fighting for market share, and our side thinks our stances just sell themselves.
“When I suggested online that Gov. Shapiro should use ‘anti-union’ instead of ‘right to work,’ several very smart liberals insisted that we not ‘dumb down’ our language for the benefit of people they clearly hold in contempt.”
When I started out, ages ago, writing freelance feature articles for MSM, the rule of thumb was to write toward an audience with an 8th-grade education. (It may be lower now.) Since then, I’ve written everything from desktop-published animal-shelter promotional materials to academic research papers to grant proposals. It’s always the same underlying rule: Write for your audience.
Tennessee is a “right to work” state, which I always thought of as not only anti-union, but also “We have the right to fire your ass anytime we want for no reason whatsoever.” The phrase means more than perhaps many people realize, and “anti-union” in its brevity IS effective communication.
Yes, right to work also means right to fire your ass anytime. I hate the term.
Also rather than abortion rights I think it should have been reproductive rights. The IVF right ring would have been forced somewhat to accept that especially after that brouhaha in the south.
I always thought “pro-choice” worked well, and the characterization of the Bible-banging misogynists as “anti-choice.” Of course, that was back when “choice” existed.
If you want to effectively communicate to a wide range of people. you use the words most people use.
I think too that using a word that's more commonly understood and immediately conjures up meaning (anti-union vs right to work) is more empathetic communication - people don't often have time to look that stuff up.
Even educated people aren’t fond of over-complicated terminology (like “terminology”—I should have just said “words”!). Seriously though, simpler terms have a way of cutting through the fog, and seem more “honest.”
And if someone used “torpor” in regular conversation they’d get laughed out of the room.
I honestly would have to look it up. Guess I’m not as smart as I thought!
Same! But I’ll bet we’re both smart enough not to think a politician should use words like that and assume the voters won’t be turned off!
“black African apes”?
It’s always the racism with these knuckle draggers and it always plays to that white bias. So, when people say they don’t see color, they are clueless to the old systems still driving their decisions to support. People in general and Americans specifically have a huge blind spot here. I believe they call it indoctrination.
"All lives matter" conceals from view the horrific murder-by-cops that happens every day, everywhere. "Right to life" only applies to blastocysts, and full grown living and speaking women are on their own, they don't have any rights. "School choice" means that some people can choose to rob the already inadequate funding for public schools, all in order to send their children to seg academies, xtianist madrassas and other reactionary Nazi indoctrination centers.
It also highlights a lot of comfort people have in saying this. I remember when NY Governor candidate Carl Paladino referred to Michelle Obama as an ape. He felt very comfortable saying such a thing.
They don’t say the N word out loud anymore but in coded language we all understand. It’s abhorrent.
I seriously think that one of the reasons the RW lost its collective racist mind, especially when President Obama was first elected, was accumulated fury over not being able to use the “n-word” out loud anymore. MAGA.
That is one of their most sore grievances, that they get criticism for grossly insulting people of color, whose feelings are of no consequences. If'n yew didn't want to be despised yew shoulda
picked yore parents better.
Well this is another reason why the rightwing media human centipede is important; it allows Republicans to kill language. And with a lot of people just finding it easy to be purposefully, even performatively incurious, it makes it easier for unreconstructed retrogrades to make every single thing worse.
The rightwing media human centipede also makes sure to find any sort of small academic discussion and blow it up into something super scary, while downplaying the powerful malignancy of Project 2025 and anything else that comes from the umpteen thousands of Republican think-tanks. And of course, crucially this is all funded by millionaire and billionaire pocket change, which because of the policies advocated for by Democrats, the Democrats will not have access to.
In good news, apparently as I had been clamoring for, Brian Tyler Cohen DID get Chorus Media started up. That's one way to potentially claw back some of this difficulty in language with left-leaning influencers. Unfortunately, it was then set upon in an exercise in clout-farming by Taylor Lorenz. So let's look out for THAT issue too.
And of course, as we've sadly learned, many union people are very happy actually to vote for anti-union unreconstructed Republicans as long as those Republicans advocate for smashing the minorities they don't like.
The New York draft riots of 1863 were really about the fury of the already struggling working class whites at the prospect of free African American competition for the crumbs, that and the idea that they were getting drafted into the army to benefit persons of color.
"Brian Tyler Cohen DID get Chorus Media started up."
He DID? That's excellent news. I watch him every day, I haven't seen him promoting it...weird...I was really hoping he's get it going!
Huzzah
Yeah he did the do.
https://www.wearechorus.com/
It's a very good program in fact. And we need more of this kind of thing.
I hadn't noticed him promoting it either, so I am mystified that it escaped my notice. He just had a few videos and then stopped. (And apparently he receives no compensation from it as he's already a big channel and wouldn't need to do that).
Hahahah OMG and I see Kenny (2Raw2Real) on the front page, that guy is hilarious.
"Kenny (2Raw2Real)"
I'll check him out!
excellent I can't wait to check it out...And seriously, When does BTC sleep or eat. The mountain of content that he delivers just on his own is quasi-supernatural. I like that he'll be getting more folks on board. As much as I like Meidas Touch, there's something about BTC's game that I like better...great to have both, but my pref is for BTC
BTC said at some point he does have a *small* team (probably editors and such). But dude keeps on it and I have a lot of respect for him. Also I like the people he has on, and more Dems need to go on his show. Jamie Raskin is a good one he has on frequently. Also I like his legal show with Glenn Kirschner (even if it has a lot of hopium) as well as god-tier democracy defender lawyer Marc Elias.
I rather hope he starts some sort of show with Jasmine Crockett like he has with Raskin.
I liked those constitution classes he had with Raskin. Those seem to have been on hold recently. understandably. I'd love to have Crockett as a regular!
Brilliant analysis, SER! Thank you for showing so lucidly how to think through these verbal choices. Saying ‘anti-union’ instead of ‘right-to-work’, for instance, makes all the sense in the world, morally and rhetorically as well as in the service of accuracy and plain speaking. I hope the top-name Dems will follow your advice.
The "wrong" is great at naming: the "Right", "Moms for Liberty", "Citizens United", "Right to Work", "Pro Life", while we use "defund the police" for example. Many don't bother to look deeper. Some would say these people get what they deserve by not delving into things, but many don't have the time. And the RW media is great at making progressive words a pejorative. Just keep at it and eventually it sticks. We have had no counter.
We really should start emphasizing the full name of the Citizens United organization: "Citizens United Not Timid" because they wanted that acronym.
(aside: there HAS to be a term for a name like this devised strictly for the desired acronym, but DuckDuckGo has failed me yet again. "What is the term for a name made up to fit a particular acronym" resulted in two pages of "What is an acronym" . Search has degenerated into meaninglessness.)
The colloquial term is a “backronym.” Since I think this is a fairly modern linguistic phenomenon I don’t know that we have a formal grammatical term for it.
Thanks!
Perhaps instead of using "right to work" the Dems should take a page from the playbook and start calling it "right to get fired"?
I like Eric Zorn's phraseology: "right to freeload."
“Defund the police” was a loser from the get-go. Good thing it was never really adopted as a campaign crie de coeur.
All it takes is one single loose cannon on our side to use hyperbolic language like that for the wingnuts to brand us all as crazy Maoist revolutionaries and of course the corporate media soaks it up and natters witlessly about it, a farmyard full of fowl clucking witlessly about nonsense.
Isn't that incredible, the asymmetry? RW can be as crazy as it wants. Obama wears a tan suit and it's news for a month.
If I'm reading a blog, I don't have a problem with looking up a word that I don't know, because it's so easy pause my reading to look up what the word or the acronym means, and then get back to reading with a better understanding of what the author means. However, it's a different matter when I'm watching a video. Sure, I can look it up, but it's not quite so easy, even if I can pause the video. And if it's a live event, forget looking it up, because then I will lose the thread of the speech or whatever it is that the speaker is trying to convey.
It's up to the speaker to use words that most people will understand, or to explain a word that may not be commonly known. It's also up to the speaker to not be smug or condescending when speaking. Simply using common or simple words isn't being smug or condescending, it's being considerate. However, tone and body language can convey something different, so the speaker should be careful in their tone and body language.
BTW, nice burn to the "self-described long term union member" who smugly suggested it was wrong to "pander to illiterates," yet he used "denomination" when clearly it should have been "denominator."
Yes Linda, exactly. The ability to instantly look up definitions and synonyms as you read is one of the Internet Gods’ greatest blessings.
Personally I like reading books where new words make me want to look it up. I feel like I add another word to my arsenal of vocabulary. I even had a coworker tell me that she liked my input in meetings because she, too, learned a new word. I don’t mean to be hoity toity, I just like language.
A lot of ignorant people are frightened and annoyed by anything they don't understand, such as unfamiliar words. Rather than learn they get aggressively defensive in an attempt to shut out their intellectual lacks.