Non-word of the year

DruckenVersendenSpeichernVorherige Seite

21. Januar 2005 By Emma Burrows

The casual observer might get the impression that language competitions are a national sport in Germany.
Only a few weeks ago, Germans chose the “most beautiful word“ in their language (Habseligkeiten, which translates as belongings). Every year in December, the Society for the German Language picks a “word of the year,“ not because this particular arrangement of words sounds particularly enchanting, but because it dominated the public debate in that year (in 2004, that word was Hartz IV, the title of the government's program to cut long-term unemployment benefits, named after the Volkswagen personnel director who helped the government develop its labor-market reform).
Now a jury of linguists has announced the “non-word of the year“ for 2004, a word that it thought was the most glaring example of misuse of the German language by a public spokesperson, “the starkest discrepancy between the word and the described matter.“
The concept is remotely comparable to that of the (older) U.S. “doublespeak award,“ an “ironic tribute to public speakers who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centered.“ The Bush administration won the past two years' awards there.
In Germany, too, the jury chose a word that has featured increasingly in political debates: “human capital“ - because it supposedly degrades people into units that are only of economic interest. Prompt outrage from economists ensued who argued the linguists had no clue of economics and the positive notion of the word “capital“ - quite in contrast to the word Menschenmaterial (human material), which won the “non-word of the 20th century“ award.
This year's runner-up was Begrüßungszentren, or “greeting centers,“ a word coined by Interior Minister Otto Schily when he pushed his idea of African camps for foreigners seeking asylum in the European Union.
The concept already had Germans imagining their minister welcoming potential immigrants with a beer and a bratwurst.

DruckenVersendenSpeichernVorherige Seite

Lesezeichen