Pop 89: Word-jackings

By Madonna Hamel

Dear Reader, not to worry, I am not about to preach once more on the crushing machinations of AI. Although I could go on about how it’s blinding wizardry offers much in the way of no-fuss, no-mess creation - because, let’s face it, there is no creative process involved when we leave creativity up to AI. AI’s a replay of the discovery of the assembly line process with its focus on speed, efficiency and high rate of productivity, resulting in the ultimate good for all mankind: profit.

If you are probably concerned, I might just spend another thousand words bemoaning the hole in our lives produced by reducing everything to material gain and how we seem so willing to sacrifice the hard word, the muss, fuss, and all the messiness of digging into life, getting “down and dirty,” getting grass-stained and calloused, don’t worry, I don’t intend to. 

I will say that I have always loved rolling up my sleeves, getting my hands in the muck, participating in the rawness of life. I had a boyfriend from Scotland who used to refer to me as “a mucky wee pup.” I took it as a compliment. It meant I was participating in the blood and guts of life without worrying about getting dirt in my nails or mud in my hair. I still find it odd that “dirty” is a word used for people who are willing to engage in all manner of sexual adventure because, everyone I’d ever met who claimed to be “dirty” abhorred dirt. Or mud. Or mussed-up hair. They kept a latex interface between their bodies and those of the people they engaged with physically. They weren’t, sadly, earthy, sensual creatures, enjoying the pleasures of a roll in the hay.

And that’s what I want to talk about. No, not sex, but the ways we use and twist words to fit our worldviews and various beliefs. I’ve mentioned the word “dirty.” And I understand that when it gets tossed off with a wink and a nudge, it’s implying a flagrant disregard for “beige sex” or party-pooping Puritan ideas of the sexual life. It’s worth noting that it is also linked with older traditions’ rules concerning bodily “uncleanliness,” especially pertaining to certain times of the month. 

While on the subject of dirt and dust, there’s also “grit,” a word that’s getting a lot of traction these days. “Grit” is one of the 21st Century’s new takes on an old word retrofitted for capitalism, according to John Patrick Leary in his new book “Keywords:The New Language of Capitalism.” The book is a masterful dissection of the smooth sales-language of our age. What thrills me about ”Keywords” is how many words in Leary’s compendium match my own dictionary of suspect language, words that have, over time, been high-jacked by special interests to promote an agenda with which the word was never meant to be aligned. I call this misaligning of language: word-jacking.  

As well as “Grit,” Leary examines such words as “Free,” “Engagement,” “Passion,” and “Share”.

And, while I am troubled hearing the language of the sacred word-jacked for smaller and often more selfish and superficial pursuits, Leary is concerned about how the same words are co-opted for commercial purposes. So, we share the same concerns. And it tickles me how a Catholic gal like myself is in complete agreement with a Marxist like Leary. 

But it shouldn’t surprise me. Such is the soil of the Social Gospel, which, while we’re at it, has been co-opted by a woke world that has decided to drop the word “Gospel” from the term. In so doing, they have eschewed the “down and dirty” work done by the leaders of the noble movement- leaders like: Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day (of The Catholic Worker Movement) and, of course, Tommy Douglas (who, as a politician sometimes compromised in ways that King and Day would not). As frightened and revolted as both conservatives and liberals are of the words “Marxist” and “Christian,” it is undeniable that, to an important extent, Marx and Christ were after the same thing: care for the impoverished, repressed, and ignored.

But back to that word “Grit”. My first exposure to the word was when, at a young age, I saw the movie “True Grit.” Based on the novel by Charles Portis, “True Grit” is about young girl named Mattie determined to hunt down her father’s murderer. Mattie had grit, that is: “character,” “indomitable spirit, pluck.” Today, that word has taken on a just-pull-yourself-up-by-your-boot-straps tone. Proponents of “urban renewal” employ it now. Inequality is not your problem, explain the disciples of grit from atop their ladders of success. What you wage slaves need is more zest. I admire Leary’s examination of 21st-century “grit” and his exposure of its flagrant disregard for the less fortunate among us. It’s one thing to promote character in kids; it’s another to employ a theory of lack of character as an explanation for their poverty.

I’m relieved to see words in Leary’s book that address our tendency to use “body-talk” when talking about inanimate reality, playing on the old trick of pretending a corporation is an actual living person. Words like: “brand”, (ask a rancher about that one! ), “flexible”, “nimble” “lean” and “robust”, writes Leary “frame our labor as an athletic contest governed by fair and transparent rules.”

Then there’s the “moral vocabulary” of capitalism, which steals from artistic practice, giving an “artisanal” hue to everything that turns a profit. As an artist, I am particularly infuriated by corporate culture using words like “creativity,” “curator” and “collaboration” in the hopes of coming off sounding engaged and adding a certain cache instead of cash to an otherwise deadening and low-paying job. “To care” is the root definition of both “curator” and crate. But it’s coldness and disconnectedness that assumes workers prefer prestige over food.