Written By Sherwood Kohn
It has been said so often as to become a clich, but for my money, it is a truism: Words matter. Not only do they influence our thinking, but they certainly reflect our thoughts; that’s what language is intended to do: Communicate.
Sometimes, however, popular words and phrases seem to capture the tone and character of society. For instance, my father’s generation — the Jazz Age — was neatly summed up by “Twenty-three Skidoo!” It was a time of wild irresponsibility, of thoughtless pleasure-seeking, of living for the moment and moving on to the next “do.”
“Snap!” which is coming into fashion in the comedic media, carries with it a note of impermanence, dismissiveness, perhaps even an awareness of mortality; highly appropriate in our age of disposability, of threatened global destruction.
Such expressions are transitory. Like “bad,” or “jiggy withit,” they are current for a brief period, during which everyone who uses them knows exactly what they mean, and then they disappear.
Nevertheless, they express something about the context from which they came; something fleeting, like an image flickering in your peripheral vision, but nonetheless tangible.
The latest phrase (one hears it everywhere) is “mmm, not so much.” It substitutes for such absolutes as “no,” “not,” or “negative,” and it has an air of avoidance about it. Which it is. At bottom, it is a euphemism, like “passed away” is a circumlocution for “died” or “dead.”
For example, I heard a commentator recently refer to a U.S. victory in Iraq as “mmm, not so much.” Or a pundit wisecracking about our booming economy: “mmm, not so much.” Or a scientist commenting on the robustness of our ecosystem: “mmm, not so much.”
Certainly there is an air of irony about the phrase, a touch of sarcasm in an age that is — what — jaded? Or is the society in denial? Is our situation so depressing that people can only say it is “horrible” by saying “things are wonderful — mmm, not so much”?
At the same time, the phrase carries a note of wry amusement about it, a kind of gallows humor. But what does that say: That things seem so hopeless that all one can do is laugh at them?
There is much to be said in favor of facing reality by employing words that express authenticity. Avoidance only postpones the day of reckoning; it does nothing to solve problems. And the use of appropriate language is a big first step in the right direction. Words matter.
