Job-title inflation (was: linguisticians)

[Peter A. McGraw]

If we're on job-title inflation more generally now, how about that curious
example of recent years, "sex worker" for "prostitute"?  I don't understand
the impulse behind linguistically elevating the status of this particular
profession.  I assume it must be related to some aspect of the feminist
agenda, but the connection is unclear to me.

Since "worker" isn't a very glamorous title, though, it's probably only a
matter of time before we read of police sting operations aimed at nabbing
"love technicians."

Peter Mc.

--On Tuesday, March 6, 2001 6:29 PM -0600 Mark Odegard
<markodegard at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

> We're talking about job-title inflation.
>
> Garbagemen are now waste disposal engineers or sanitary technicians.
> Morticians became funeral directors; now, they are grief counselors. A
> certain kind of librarian used to be called a custodian, but when janitors
> took over that title, they became archivists. Kitchen workers are now
> called food service technicians.
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu