Overdosing on linguistic pap and . . . whatever
I told the waiter I wanted the ahi tuna medium rare.
He looked meaningfully into my eyes and said, “Awesome.” A few minutes later, the host asked if everything was delicious. We nodded.
He said, “Awesome.”
Once in a while — it’s happening now — I develop a hypersensitivity to language that is overused to the point of meaninglessness. Case in point: awesome. According to the dictionary, the word means something so impressive and overwhelming as to inspire intense feelings of admiration and/or fear. For example, America’s attack on Baghdad in 2003 was awesome, politics aside. It was even called Shock and Awe, which, even if a bit hyperbolic, was mostly accurate.
The detonation of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert was awesome; no other word would do to describe the hell-on-earth visuals and the life-altering power of the explosion. I’m not sure if we can undo the harm that’s been done, but I would reserve “awesome” for tsunamis and sunsets and eclipses, not a winning score in Angry Birds.
Inside my head, I’m screaming, “Enough!” when you say my new glasses are awesome. They are not. They are modestly attractive, at best. Don’t you have any other words in your repertoire?
Probably not. The proliferation of overused phrases signifies increasing linguistic laziness. When someone tells you something you deem interesting, and you respond with the question, “Seriously?” what exactly do you mean? You aren’t genuinely questioning your friend’s veracity; you’re just filling up space and time with a word. Some prefer “Really?” in such situations, but both are verbal packing material, puffy and empty.
When you reveal a surprising fact and your friend responds, “Shut up!” or “Get out of here!” is that really the best she can do with all the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs at hand? With all the words in the world at our disposal, many people rely on just a handful to articulate their thoughts. As a result, there’s a paucity of nuanced communication. We are degenerating into a “Me Tarzan, you Jane” kind of society.
