Diversity - defeated by the default

By Fred Shivvin

Diversity (likewise inclusion) is a word I hear frequently. Diversity appears in technology, education, the arts, music, and science, sometimes accompanied by 'diversity' targets. We hear about the diversity of culture and opinion in Australia. Many companies have Diversity and Inclusion Divisions equipped with KPIs for their annual reports.

 

The driver for diversity is fairness. It entails welcoming all people, ensuring decision-making groups are representative of the broader society, and more people can participate in a greater range of life's opportunities.

But I think diversity and its adjective diverse are most often just buzz words: they make a 'buzz', but they communicate little (likewise inclusion and inclusive).

 

The word diversity should convey an important idea: diversity is a positive characteristic of societies and groups. But the word has been emptied of this idea in many uses. This has happened through a subtle linguistic 'shift' to use diverse to describe individual people, usually meaning a person from a minority group.

 

Is this just a normal change in meaning? Is it just the all too common loss of a useful word? (I've written previously about accepting that words can change meaning over time, even really useful words, see Alternate grief.)

 

Or is there something else going on here? Has this subtle linguistic 'shift' been engineered? Is this way of using the word diverse working to keep people out?

Alternate grief

By Fred Shivvin

Have you ever corrected someone's dreadful grammar, fixed their awful punctuation, or pointed out that they used the wrong word?

I get it - those errors can be very irritating. They distract your focus from the meaning. And certain errors are particularly 'triggering' for some of us. A whole online army seem fully occupied waging war against you're errors.

But have you ever considered that in your battle against 'errors', you might be fighting against the natural process of language change? 

I'm starting to think I might be doing just that when I react to one of my 'trigger' words errors - alternate, the adjective form. I consider it an error to use alternate when it should be alternative. I frequently hear alternate used wrongly in both formal and informal contexts, and I always correct it (at least to myself!) However, deep in my word nerd heart, I am starting to feel I might have to accept the word alternate is just changing its meaning, like so many have before.

What next?

By Mike Lundy
- avoiding what he really should do next with a flight of fancy on next as a part of speech 

From Toothpaste For Dinner

The books sitting on Reader’s bedside table, on the floor, those in the bookshelves, and the ones on the tablet are all locked in a fierce debate. They bicker and snark at each other as the self-entitled things that books tend to be.

'I should be the next (adjective) book: I am by far the most important and relevant to Reader's current project,' asserts Seven Cheap Things, sitting in the promising prime position on the bedside table. 'There is a deadline to consider.'

'No, I should be the next (pronoun) in line, 'says White Teeth. 'One should always read a novel between non-fiction books. That way, Reader can consolidate all that heavy, ridiculously self-important, so called ‘factual’ information before moving on. Plus, I'm due back at the library in four days; Reader better get started soon.'