Vulgarity is a necessary reality, even if it hurts the purists of refinement. I, a linguistic aesthete (I find the Boston butcher more attractive than a reader), I accept serenely and sometimes I appreciate what social networks have democratized (or is it devalued?) our language.
In this relentless quest for elegance, there is nothing more counterproductive than pursuing it; there is a hilarious and ruthless concept: elegant (one who strives to appear distinguished or claims to be distinguished without succeeding at all).
New day, new word, I know it thanks to the four teenagers who live in my house and who involuntarily inform me to the rhythm of this infinite jargon. It doesn’t matter if there are already one or five ways to express it. We must be modern, appear profound and, above all, be part of this exclusive club of initiated in the newspeak of political correctness.
Where does this cascade of neologisms come from, sometimes cute, sometimes artistic, poetic (my favorites are those from Latin America) and most of the time irritating for their lack of authenticity, corny (a thousand times more corny than corny) or ridiculous? The worst are those that arise from political gain. Technocrats with free time, coffee and arrogance, giving birth “Racialized”, For example.
Why if we already have victim of discrimination? To feel like you’re solving centuries of structural oppression. What a relief for your mind, friend, boyfriend, lover, neighbor or employee. racialized! An insulting word above all and that those who use it the most do not understand. In a disgusting and counterproductive way, in the mouths of the least sharp automatons of goodness, with the least inclusive result possible. A true example of reactive training for any sane interpreter of the Spanish language, philosophy and logic.
But let us walk. Let us enter the darkest space of euphemisms. “To fiddle”as if by adding classical music or by adding an olive or ketchup, we could make the sound softer. What else? “Murderer,” “Robinizer,” “Kidnapper,” “Beatster,” “Torturinizer”? Maybe we can stop feeling uncomfortable about the brutality of the world by adding a coven of syllables, throwing them into the sky, and respecting their fall, wherever it may be. Because that’s what matters: that no one feels uncomfortable, for fear of having to face reality.
And here we enter the big pretentious party, the VIP club of parents who call their children Flavius, Gaius either Augustreduced emperors, lying on imaginary sofas while “Valerios” and “Maximos” run around the garden. For me, parents who project themselves onto their children, stigmatizing them with their name complexes, are like consumers of imitation Louis Vuitton bags. It’s exactly the same head, they have the same brains, the same souls. It’s good, right?
Names, brands, logos and neologisms allow people to feel part of a modern and relevant discourse, reflecting a broader social trend: the desperate search for identity, the obsession with appearance without worrying about substance.
“Post-truth”, lie shamelessly, but with style, the truth no longer matters, only our emotions (Pedro Sánchez, sultan of post-truth) and what we feel about it. That’s all. Meanwhile, technocrats and the administration manipulate and reach higher levels of power by caressing the sensibilities of imbeciles, subjugating and winning the loyalty of imbeciles through their lexical creations.
Let’s also talk about the expression manufactured, cloned, removed, crushed, trampled, swallowed and vomited: the cliché. The suffix “door” “Begoña door”, Let us give everything that happens in the world a more historical and transcendental touch, as synthetic truffle flavor, dithiapentane or bis(methylthio)methane, to recreate the characteristic smell and flavor of truffle without truffle in Pizza King.
We need to encapsulate phenomena as ephemeral as the words that contain them. Where does creativity end and pathos begin? When a person or society desperately seeks to appear more than it is.
Perhaps it is time to put some limits on this complacency and start asking ourselves whether these neologisms – violinize, violinize, what’s next? – are making us smarter and happier, or are simply throwing us into the void, where words are as ugly (pompous, false, disposable…) as imitation clothes.
