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Words in Edgeways – 18 & 19
Cliché
Not only has the liberal-homosexual party taken over gay (useable in its ordinary sense less than thirty years ago), they have got as far as complaining about a further development as a misuse of the word. A letter (of course to The Guardian) which The Week thought worth reprinting (17 June 2006, p. 23) rebukes the BBC governors because they “wish to condone this transparently homophobic usage of the word ‘gay’.” “It is true that gay is commonly used in this general, pejorative sense, but this meaning runs in parallel with its meaning of homosexual” which, naturally, has no pejorative implications. In this English the word shop is also improper. “During my own time at school,” the letter continued, “I heard kids [not children] use Paki shop for convenience store but I find it difficult to imagine the governors of the BBC endorsing any of these as acceptable terms.” I am glad that this grammar is openly prescriptive. “It is not part of [the BBC governors’] remit to reflect the practices of playgrounds.” The purist-linguists’ belief that grammar follows usage is rightly subordinated to moral considerations. “Tragically [another word of contemporary English] serious homophobic prejudice and violence still occur in our society” and so this “offensive” use of the word gay is (the word to sum up all words in our politically correct world) unacceptable. Well, in English it is unacceptable to misuse the word gay to mean homosexual. The word gay is perverted for propaganda purposes. Gay meaning homosexual is much like ethnic cleansing or rendition [in the very odd sense of kidnapping suspects and transporting them usually to the U.S.A.] The propaganda element is proved by the unmistakable fact that it is not characteristic for homosexuals to be gay. The ones I have known tend towards melancholy, and for very good reasons.
As often happens I was not sure whether the journals were the victims of a hoax but quite sure that it doesn’t make much difference whether they were or not.