I actually don’t think that. I think that most people who bristle at style guides that suggest inclusive language are genuinely buying into a slippery slope fallacy: they think that making strong language suggestions in a professional setting will eventually lead to a complete loss of free speech. I’m disagreeing.

There’s always been expectations for language in organized settings, and those expectations have always changed as society has new values. We didn’t notice the ones we grew up with because, well, they were “normal” to us. But they started somewhere. So yeah, I don’t think style guides suggesting inclusive language is a sign of societal decline. I think it’s just another new way of thinking about how we speak.

I mean do I find it obnoxious and immature sometimes? Sure. But that’s more youth being youth, and also I’m guessing it’s a way to try to make their very scary reality a bit less intimidating. My generation said “knocked up” to refer to somebody getting pregnant when we were young. Also immature and disrespectful which is like… what young people do best. They’ll grow up, and more confident, and most will experience enough life that they’ll want to use more serious language. You know when I stopped using “knocked up”? The first time I had friends that had fertility problems or unwanted pregnancies. Those experiences made me grow up and start being more respectful.

The irony is Orwell himself wrote a suggested style guide for writers that included telling writers to “never use” foreign phrases or technical jargon. Hasn’t he read 1984?!!!!

You also can’t say “fuck” while working in a church without being fired. No accusations of Orwell there though. People seem to understand that different places have different standards of acceptable speech when it comes to protecting their own traditions, yet when it comes to the new standards inevitably rising up as society values inclusion more, they balk. Recent generations are more offended by racial slurs than words like “fuck,” and I think that’s a positive thing. They find dehumanization of marginalized people more offensive than slang for sex. I agree with them.

I’m not saying every rewording is helpful or has to be adhered to or you go to social jail, but I understand the (sometimes clumsy) attempts to make people think about the impact of their speech and how to speak about difficult subjects with respect and professionalism. Will there be missteps, especially in media and corporations, as they consider these issues? Sure. But I appreciate the thoughtfulness of working towards rethinking language that reinforces harmful biases for marginalized groups.

I think this is a totally different situation. “Unalive” isn’t specifically prescribed as a word to sugar-coat death. It was used on tiktok in a tongue-in-cheek manner to talk about killings or suicides without those words triggering your account to be banned for discussing violence. Everyone knew how silly it sounded, so now they use it ironically in real life. It’s just jokey slang, like “kicked the bucket.”

French classes finally paid off for me for this reason haha