“Shark attacks” is the latest phrase the language-police have decided you cannot use, as it unfairly “demonizes” the apex predator.
According to a July 20 New York Times article, titled, “Don’t Call Them ‘Shark Attacks,’ Scientists Say” (the word “scientists” is meant to make you sit up and pay attention):
On the beaches of Western Australia, by California’s crashing waves and in sight of Hawaii’s blue depths, “shark attacks” are slowly disappearing, at least as a phrase used by researchers and officials who have been rethinking how to describe the moments when sharks and humans meet.
So how is one to describe what we’ve long known and instinctively called a “shark attack”? According to the NYT’s and its quoted array of “scientists,” more neutral—that is, euphemistic—words such as “incident” or “encounter” should replace “attack.”
Aware of the criticism they invite, the article continues by saying, “Officials in some U.S. and Australian states were careful to say that they had chosen their language for precision and not because of political correctness or pressure from activists [emphasis added].”
Such a claim is counterintuitive. The current language is accurate: “shark attacks” are precisely that—a shark attacks a person. Nor does the term contain a moral condemnation or demonization of the animal, as the language-controllers suggest.
On the other hand, the words they recommend—“incident” and “encounter”—are highly generic and therefore far less, not more, “precise”: humans don’t get traumatized, mauled, and possibly killed in mere “incidents and encounters,” though they do in “attacks.”
I find all this obfuscation interesting for two reasons.
First, I highlighted this growing phenomenon seven years before it recently became formalized, in a 2014 article titled, “Sharks and Islamists: Equally Misunderstood?” It was based on my viewing “Shark Week” and noticing several parallels. Because it helps establish context, excerpts from that article follow:
[…] The “liberal” response one is accustomed to when the topic of Islam and Islamists come up—that they are misunderstood, that we need to respect their ways and be tolerant, that it’s our fault we get attacked—has become so embedded in the Western psyche that it now colors our understanding of the animal world as well […]
The prevalent theme [in shark shows] is this: it’s not the shark’s fault that it attacked and maimed this or that surfer, swimmier, or kayaker. Rather, humans are responsible for entering the shark’s domain, the ocean. If anything, then, it’s the human’s fault for getting attacked. Even great whites, so we are assured, only attack humans by mistake, never intentionally. Finally we get the speech about how sharks are in fact the one’s being mistreated by humans, etc.
To those familiar with the way liberal talking heads constantly whitewash the violence and intolerance of Islam, does this not all sound familiar? From the notion that “it’s our fault” we got attacked, and we “had it coming,” to the idea that we need to be more “understanding and respectful,” the “progressive” memes are all there.[…]
One important caveat: I am not “hating on” sharks, suggesting they are “evil,” or siding with this or that perspective. But as a rational person, I know that sharks—especially great whites, bulls, and tigers—are dangerous.
I concluded by observing that shark victims who were not forgiving of or, worse, somehow blamed the sharks that attacked them, were presented in these shows as “ignorant, bigoted, sharkaphobes.”
The second and more important reason I find this new move to refer to shark attacks as “incidents” and “encounters” rests in the following excerpt from the NYT article:
Shark scientists have long called for less sensational language, saying that they are not trying to police anyone’s speech. Rather, they said, they want to change the public’s perception [about sharks; emphasis added].
But that’s just it: changing language has never been about changing the sounds that emanate from people’s mouths, but rather changing the very way they think—their perception—which is inextricably linked to the words they hear and use. This is underscored by the fact that the Greek word logos means both “word” and “logic, reason, rationale.”
This is the danger, for example, of condescending to use transgender terminology—calling him her, or her him, or either “they.” In doing so, one is not merely being polite, acquiescing to using the terms others prefer. Rather, one is subtly re-wiring their very sense of reality to conform to the words they use and hear—to the warped point of seeing a singular as a plural.
And that is precisely the point of policing language: altering perception, altering reality—or put differently, dulling your senses—and not just about sharks, jihadists, and gender confusion, but a myriad of more subtle though more important things the establishment has decided on.
Very percentive—and years ahead of your, and my, time. Hopefully, our grandchildren will be able to look upon this dark period as little more than an unfortunate blip in history. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly so sanguine about that possibility as I am about the very real prospect of the total disintegration of the fabric of our Judeo-Christian ethos.
Life is no longer what it used to be, and not for the better either.
What used to be right is now wrong and vice versa.
Our faith, history, culture, logic, intelligence, just to name a few, are now under constant attacks. Physical assaults by various means, even with hypodermic needles, are common place and justified by people who are gripped by fear or regard themselves as victims.
Those, including politician, who think they know better than others delude themselves as being scientists and the uninformed fall prey to their lies and insidious schemes.
The people responsible for all the upheaval and chaos in our lives are mostly of a Godless persuasion. One can read all about their futile minds in Romans 1, especially verses 18-32.
Hi T, a dangerous time for sure but there is a movement going on that gives me great hope. It does not though eliminate my concerns of the danger we are in as a civilization, the West, now being surrounded by the wolves.
Stay well.
I’ve met this kind of thinking as a mature student years ago in London. Marxists and others think that we are programmed by our language to think the way we do. This is ‘linguistic determinism’, which holds that language determines human knowledge and thought. Hence change the language and you will change the thoughts (about knowledge, reality and culture). This denies our powers of reasoning which is what makes us human and differentiates us from animals and from machines. My thoughts determine my language not the other way round. Moreover, to think that language determines thought denies us creative thinking, the capacity to think ‘outside the box’ – the capacity of the human mind for lateral thinking, for creativity which involves the ability to see patterns not obvious.
I was privileged to see the power of the mind at work in the society in which I grew up where many had little education apart from some reading and writing. (I even met one who couldn’t read or write at all). But their powers of thinking enabled them to differentiate right from wrong even when living in a society in which mores were imposed on them which they knew to be wrong. If they did in the end do what their society and their language imposed on them it was either out of fear for themselves or for their loved ones. But they could reason and think for themselves even with a modicum of education and question the norms of their society and culture. Their language did not determine their thoughts.
Good to see your name there Mary. Thanks for another beautifully written bit of education and insight from your life observations.
I called our former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner, now Caitlin Jenner, he, when referring to him in a recent conversation with a young guy (40’s). My young friend said he’s a woman now. Sorry I said, I’ll refer to him as he, he’s still a guy.
And, I should add, a likeable guy this Bruce/Caitlin, a conservative patriot who wants to run for California Governor, and I think he’d certainly do better than the current Progressive Newsom.
I’m half way through Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”. Easy to see why the Progressive Left is so corrupt and deceitful. Alinsky sees the normal back and forth struggle in a civil society between differing parties, who have the common good of the nation in mind and are united in the major tenants of its constitution or basic western, classical liberal values, “not” as a struggle of differing ideas with a similar goal:
But, rather as a life and death struggle struggle of enemies.
Therefore, the conservatives are always blindsided by the illegal and morally reprehensible actions of the left and shameless false narratives, not realizing they need to attack them with both civility and ferocity in rhetoric and revelation of the Progressive’s lies and behaviors – to the point of prosecutions when needed.
I’ve been commenting on this as I go.
I’ve also opened Adel Guindy’s “A Sword Over the Nile”. This book, like the Gulag, will be a much longer slower read. A fantastically interesting history right for the first pages. I think you have read this one already Mary. Part of your story I believe.
Last: Here’s a Gatestone article from Col Richard Kemp UK Ret and former cabinet minister on Terrorism. I think its a brilliant idea and could include even Vietnam in its context as they are no friend of China. Let me know what you think if you’re inclined.
Stay well. The link follows:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16904/global-alliance-democracies
Great article, thanks!
What do they call “shark bites”?
Perhaps “Fatal Encounters” 🙂
I like that Tershia!