The current obsession with "Gone Missing"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/7/2009 07:47 AM, Robert Hartwell Fiske wrote:
>"Gone" or "went" missing is dreadfully popular today. Everyone from
>reporters on "CNN" to detectives (or their writers) on "Without a
>Trace" now prefer
>it.

Did it become prevalent in English at the time of the "disappeared"
of South American dictatorships?


>People are so dull-witted and impressionable that, today, in this country,
>the popularity of "gone" or "went missing" has soared. Words like
>"disappeared," "vanished," "misplaced," "stolen," "lost,"
>"deserted," "absconded" are
>seldom heard today because "went missing" has less meaning, or less exact
>meaning, than any of them, and people, especially the media, perhaps, are
>afraid of expressing meaning.

Reporters are presumably cautious about expressing a meaning that is
speculative or presumptive.  "Misplaced," "stolen," "lost,"
"deserted," "absconded", all may be incorrect when additional
information comes present.

While "disappeared" and "vanished" are appropriate for the missing
airplane -- and I heard them more than "went missing", I think -- for
persons they hint of magical performances.  I too don't like
"gone/went missing", but I don't know what might sound better.

Joel

>What's more, "went missing" sounds willful or
>deliberate, and, indeed, sometimes that connotation is accurate, but the child
>who has been kidnapped is hardly agreeable to having been so.
>
>
> From "Silence, Language, & Society" by Robert Hartwell Fiske
>
>
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