[Linganth] CDC Language ban

[Eric Henry]

Some more reporting has emerged in the last few days which seems to confirm the suspicion of many that the CDC ban was actually some more-or-less informal direction from supervisors that their subordinates avoid certain language in the preparation of budget documents lest an antagonistic congress and White House find reason to slash their funding.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/12/there_is_no_ban_on_words_at_the_cdc.html

There is even some indication that this is not a new phenomenon – that bureaucrats in the Obama administration avoided the term “global war on terror” in favour of “overseas contingency operations” and so forth.

I am curious however what colleagues make of the author’s final argument in the linked article above, namely that the media and the public have chosen to focus on words as a proxy for policies rather than the policies themselves. That is to say, if the government were to pepper its websites and policy papers with “climate change” and “global warming,” but still withdraw from the Paris climate accords and fund new coal plants, would we have gained anything by the inclusion of those words? In some sense it is the same argument Republicans (and Donald Trump himself) put forward about Obama and Clinton not using the words “radical Islamic terror.” They implied that the solution to the problem was predicated on using the right term. This seems indicative of a widespread language ideology in American politics today presuming that if we could only use the right words, if we could only call things what they “really” are (like “FAKE NEWS!”), all problems will be solved. I’m fascinated with this idea that American politics has become a struggle over the meaning of words, but I’d be interested to hear what others – who actually live and work in the US – think about this.

Eric Henry

Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

Saint Mary’s University

Halifax, NS


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