Article/Comment: Watch Your Language

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I read a very interesting essay on the BBC News website entitled “Chaotic world of climate truth”. It’s written by Mike Hulme, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and in it he criticises the hyperbole which casts a pall on the discussion of global warming.

This is not a partisan piece, in the sense that Mr Hulme is not one of a seeming endless army of paid-for voices in the climate change debate. By virtue of his office and his profession, he makes his argument clear from the outset:

Climate change is a reality, and science confirms that human activities are heavily implicated in this change.

But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country – the phenomenon of “catastrophic” climate change.

It seems that mere “climate change” was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be “catastrophic” to be worthy of attention.

The increasing use of this pejorative term – and its bedfellow qualifiers “chaotic”, “irreversible”, “rapid” – has altered the public discourse around climate change.

This blog entry isn’t about climate change (notice there are no stock images of ensuing storm clouds and other nature metaphors for imminent disaster). I’m not apathetic to the topic but, reading his essay, Mr. Hulme’s description of how hyperbole cheapens legitimate debate rang very true and has implications outside of the context of this particular subject.

We’re living in an increasingly ideological age. I cannot remember a time (I’m 36, so I gather there are precedents beyond “my years”) when words such as intolerance, fundamentalist, and radical were used so extensively (the trope intolerant fundamentalist radical, for example, is no longer the sole jurisdiction of religious persecution but rather has extended itself to include such diverse groups as environmentalists and, my personal favourite, secular progressives). I’ve written here about the decline of discussion and true debate in N. American society; it’s as if we feel that no one will listen to us unless we raise our voices to the sky and colour our points with invective. Nothing is important anymore: it’s imperative. Nothing is troubling anymore: it’s a crisis.

In exaggerating the situation with alarmist language (which is often disingenuously intended to get attention rather than be realistic/logical) we fall into a trap. Like the boy who cried wolf, if our standard for discussion is hyperbole, then who will truly believe us when there truly is something to be alarmed about?

I see this behaviour not only in the usual suspects (blogs, user groups, forums), but also emanating from supposedly respectable institutions (governments, scientific research institutes, charities). It’s in the newspapers, it’s on television, it’s in our RSS feeds. I suppose it’s the scale of it, and the feeling (or fear) that this is the “new normal” of discourse which concerns me.

The language of catastrophe is not the language of science.

Those words start Mr. Hulme’s summary. In the context of how I feel I would say that “the language of catastrophe is not the language of an evolved society”, but rather one that is becoming more and more tribal and classist.

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6 Replies to “Article/Comment: Watch Your Language”

  1. Like you say all of society are really using these ‘attention grabbers’. I feel that the science world is proving that change is taking place, but the magnitude of that change depends largely on the population itself.

  2. I agree, “Imaginary Magnitude” can be used, and is used in almost any debate. Just listen to the politicians on any subject. Thanks for bringing our attention to the essay.

  3. I agree with your position, but at the same time we are stuck with a conundrum.

    It’s true that the masses WILL NOT pay any attention to anything that is not on fire (figuritively or literally). But as you say, it created a false sense of catastophe and urgency.

    I’m not sure how we can proceed from that point and still give things the attention we believe they deserve. Our media and lifestyles have given us a desire for an ever increasing sense of escalation in our viewpoints (which is why even so-called reality TV shows have writers – because that reality just wasn’t real enough.

    It’s also why Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh continue to get press for the outlandish crap they spit out or why the only thing pulled out of Jimmy Carter’s important book on the Israel-Palestine situation was a single quote that some felt was anti-semetic.

    But let’s use that for a second. As a result of that incident, that book sold out across Atlanta as everyone then decided to read it to see what all the fuss was about.

    So that line, along with the rest of the book’s message are now seeping into the public consciousness, where they wouldn’t have before.

    So, is this phenomenon so pervasive that it has now become an neccessary evil? If so, then to cease it would send many important things into obscurity.

    I would rather give in to some over dramatic presentation rather than face a world where our news is dominated by how Justin Timberlake shaves his balls (which I think would be exceedingly more popular and dominant in comparrison to climate change and global warming if over escalation wasn’t used).

  4. Good comment, Navillus (aside from the visual of JT’s shaved scrotum). I agree that it’s impossible to reel-in the tone of popular discussion (particularly given that much of it comes from people like you and me on the internet).

    The problem however is that it will, if you subscribe to an ebb-and-flow theory of social behaviour, inevitably need to reach a ceiling before hyperbole can contract into something less toxic than it currently is. I say this is a “problem” because it usually takes a massive catastrophe/tragedy for people to re-think they way they express themselves.

  5. I would definitely agree with you on that one. You’ve defintiely tapped into an ongoing problem in the media and society, which I think extends to many aspects of life.

    It will be interesting to see where it all goes, especially since it now appears that the news is being “invented” more and more anyway.

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