The Word Problem Has A Serious Problem
The Word Problem Has A Serious Problem
The Word Problem Has A Serious Problem. The problem that has beset the word problem is that a significant portion of the American population is, and has been trying for quite a while, to erase the word - Problem - from American verbal and written communication! The attempted erasure of the word “Problem”, replacing it with the linguistically and grammatically incorrect word “Issue”, is a serious problem.
What has happened to American society that a word as important, direct, and communicative, as the word - Problem - is being systematically replaced with the word - Issue - an incorrect and misplaced usage of the word Issue that should not be, and was never meant to be, a substitute for the word problem? What has happened to the psyches of a vast portion of the American population, and even the larger Western Cultural population that the word - Problem - is a reality too direct and meaningful to cross their lips during verbal discourse or for them to allow their fingers to type into their word processor software documents through their computer keyboards? What has happened to society that so many people seem so frightened of a fundamentally important word like the word “Problem”?
Ironically, is the midst of the writing these first two paragraphs, it’s apparent that the phrase “word problem” is also a pun for its usage in elementary mathematics. The ever dreaded “word problem” has been the plague of math skill deficient students worldwide. Image if the same people who are trying to eliminate the word - Problem - from the English language started calling math “word problems” “word issues”! Thankfully, the seemingly endemic sociological plot to insert the word “Issue” into every linguistic context where the word “Problem” was once used hasn’t yet reached the tortured extreme in which elementary math students are sent home with “Word Issue” math homework. Imagine what that would be like?
In 1977, over forty years ago the cable television channel HBO broadcast a George Carlin comedy special entitled “Words That Hide the Truth”. The ongoing erasure of “Problem” from the English language is understandable after listening to George Carlin’s nearly treatise quality exploration of the historical progression in American of meaningful terms having been mercilessly tortured and endlessly twisted into linguistic knots into they become euphemisms clearly intended to hide the truth.
As George Carlin pointed out in his 1977 HBO special, the World War I term “Shell Shock” (1918) became “Combat Fatigue” or “Battle Fatigue” during World War II (1945), all the way to “Post Traumatic Stress” (PTSD), after these same people eliminated the far too pejorative for them term “Disorder” from the end of the (PTSD) phrase.
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