How many times in an average day do you use the word “go”? Maybe you’re saying you’re going to class in the morning, or maybe your parent has called to remind you to bring something with you when you go home this weekend.
It’s a word we use often, and we can use it in seemingly 100 different situations and still be understood quite clearly. “I’m going to class” and “I’m going home” are two completely different actions; the former presumably involves walking only a very short distance and the latter can just as easily mean the use of a car or other vehicle.
As I embark this semester on learning another Slavic language, I am reminded of the struggles of first-year students when encountering a much more complex verbal system for motion than English’s catch-all “go.” When expressing “go” in Slavic languages, there are distinctions for using your own two feet versus using a vehicle, as well as any number of additional considerations such as arriving, departing, approaching or circumventing. We have these words in English as well, but very often we simply use “go.”
Even in a language like English where we have the option of using a general word for describing any kind of motion, precision in language is important. As your grade-school English teacher probably told you at various times, adjectives like “good” or “bad” are imprecise and, more often than not, less descriptive than words like “delighted” or “horrible.”
My point in addressing these distinctions is not to harp on semantics but rather to illustrate words often hold more power than we think. With the next presidential election cycle well under way, many candidates have already begun to make statements that catch media attention.
From Donald Trump’s racists comments concerning Mexican immigrants to the latest back and forth over details of Ben Carson’s biography, imprecise language is assisting in the perpetuation of unhelpful generalizations as well as landing the candidates themselves in hot water.
If we can’t stop candidates from speaking imprecisely, we can at least acknowledge our responsibility to challenge what we hear.
This is not to say that I agree with the trend toward finding “gotcha” moments in candidates’ previous statements or speeches. We as a society should not advocate going through every public statement an individual has ever made with a fine-toothed comb looking for gaffes.
What we should do is challenge patterns of generalizations or systematic statements that reflect imprecision of language. Skepticism is not necessarily an unhelpful trait, so long as it does not develop directly into cynicism.
