‘All these new words are very elitist, and I don’t think there’s a place for it. [By...] using language that a fair proportion of the community won’t understand you’ve already set yourselves apart before you’ve even started.’
The above quote is from 2001, and is an interview transcript from a community representative in east Oxford, interviewed as part of a Royal Town Planning Institute research project into the language of regeneration.
Then, like now, we were faced with a set of new terms and language, which are in danger of excluding the very people who want to be engaged. In 2001, instead of the age-old term ‘poverty’ we saw the rise of the term ‘social exclusion’, indeed we had a new institution – the Social Exclusion Unit. Now we have ‘broken society’. Then we had the ‘third sector’, now we have ‘civil society’ which has been institutionalised via the Office for Civil Society.
This is no surprise. It’s what government does. Government and policymakers use discourse and language as the first step. They do this to partly repudiate the previous set of discourse and partly as a means of stamping their own identity and ideological mindset on policy. It is clear that the new government has, like New Labour in 1997, come into office clutching a new language, with which they seek to use as a power to redefine a set of enduring and seemingly intransigent set of problems.
However, the blogosphere and the traditional media are awash with politicians and commentators, attempting to define and give substance to these terms. Many are rushing to use the language and claim they know what the ‘big society’ is. This is fair enough, but it is important to recognise that these words and terms are neither just rebranding nor neutral, they have power over how we think about issues.
Take for instance the ‘civil society’. In my view, civil society, opposed to the fairly clear, albeit contested, community and voluntary sector, does in definitional terms include an array of institutions, such as a local heroin self support group, Unite union and an independent school such as Harrow. In policy terms, does not the term civil society merely create a broader and nebulous grouping?
Furthermore, in everyday usage ‘civil’ refers to citizen, therefore can this be interpreted as a shift to being more focused on what the individual can do as opposed to the community?
Also take ‘region’. Some are already attempting and getting tongue twisted into avoiding the term in a belief it is out of favour with ministers, smacks of the past, big government, quangos and bureaucracy. Indeed a colleague recently jokily said we need to call it ‘agglomeration of places’!
Language is power and control of discourse matters. This is not just semantics. Within the regeneration community we have a difficult discourse edge to steer.
On the one hand we must be mindful of creating, or colluding, in developing a discourse which perhaps masks the ongoing issues of a centralised Britain – poverty or social exclusion – by using language which merely marginalises already marginalised. On the other, we clearly need to engage in policy debates about these new concepts. We need to take part in shaping this new discourse. Indeed, these terms need our definitional help!
Added on Monday, 12th July 2010 | This entry has 3 comments
It is clear that the new government has, like New Labour in 1997, come into office clutching a new language, with which they seek to use as a power to redefine a set of enduring and seemingly intransigent set of problems.