Oh, we’ve heard jokes in the line of .. "why do we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway?" .. Such things make us wonder a bit about the way we use language. Few among us would be deemed truly literate in a proper sense if someone ran around behind us and recorded our daily utterances and then analyzed the recording. That, my friends, would be far more revealing than most would find comfortable!
Language impacts us though in profound ways and it should come as no surprise that folks who have an agenda to push are quite cognizant of that fact. For many, this quip I read in William Safire’s "On Language" many years ago is their approach: "Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy"? to which an English teacher replied "I don’t know and I don’t care". Well, that sentiment is being used against us.
Recently, a couple items I heard on various radio programs caught my attention but one in particular really stuck … those of us who believe in the simple dignity of life, from womb to tomb are labeled "anti-abortion activists" .. curious then, that those tossing out the phrase DO NOT refer to themselves as "pro-abortion activists" or even simply "abortion activists". How is one "anti" to something if no one claim to be for it? We on the other hand, are quite willing to refer to ourselves as "pro-life" and the "other side" we call, "pro-death". Seems like the two sides of the issue are playing by a very different set of rules. We’d do well to pay much closer attention to language being used … it has profound effects…
