Monday, July 26, 2010

Politicolinguistics

1. Why are people saying "affirmative action" all the sudden?

The phrase "affirmative action" has been in headlines recently with reference to a federal government program. I find this completely bizarre, because federal doesn't call it affirmative action. Federal calls it Employment Equity. My understanding is that the term "affirmative action" is USian.

There are 11,600 google hits for the phrase "affirmative action" on federal government websites. The first of these is about the Employment Equity program, and nearly all of the rest of the first page refer to programs from other jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, there are nearly ten times as many google hits for "employment equity" on federal government sites.

However, as of this posting, there are 88 Canadian news articles for "affirmative action" and only 37 for "employment equity".

How on earth did that happen?

2. What's up with spinny legislation names?

The names of a couple of new pieces of legislation have caught my attention recently. These pieces of legislation are called the Truth in Sentencing Act and the Strengthening the Value of Canadian Citizenship Act. The reason they caught my attention is because the names are so spinny, in that they sound like they've been named by the PR department.

I don't think federal legislation names are usually that spinny. Skimming the alphabetical list of all the federal laws, it doesn't look like most of them are. The vast majority of the names seem completely neutral to me, and even those that aren't 100% neutral aren't nearly as spinny as these two new pieces of legislation.

Is this new, or have I just not noticed it before? Am I missing equally spinny legislation names? (If so, post them in the comments!) The Clarity Act and the Accountability Act come to mind, but that depends on the exact content (I'm not particularly fluent in any legislation.)

If it is new, do they not think it's detrimental to the credibility of the legislation and the government? Because I don't know about you, but it immediately puts my antennae up.

5 comments:

Christopher said...

That's been going on here in the U.S. since the "Patriot Act". It's really such a cheap trick, your politicians probably picked up from ours.

Anonymous said...

"all the sudden"??? It's "all of a sudden". Sorry for being the grammar nazi.

impudent strumpet said...

Oh wow, you're right, "all of a sudden" is used way more frequently! It's always verbalized pretty much like "All [uuuhhhhh] sudden", and it's not like it ever came up in my work or in academic writing, so I never even noticed.

I wonder why that is. It doesn't make logical sense either way. Sudden isn't a noun in modern usage, and its obsolete definition as an unexpected occurrence isn't especially meaningful in either structure.

And now the word "sudden" looks ridiculous. Sudden.

laura k said...

. What's up with spinny legislation names?

It's USian. With respect to Christopher, it predates the Patriot Act by decades.

impudent strumpet said...

L-girl: your comment is just begging for specific examples