Are we over-using terms like ‘far-right’, ‘racist’ and ‘fascist’?

Surveys have found older people use the word 'racist' differently, or more selectively, than people aged under 30. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP

Some people are concerned about “conceptual inflation” whereby “use of a term by some group has expanded too much relative to its meaning in ordinary language”. “That goes some way toward addressing the worry that the force of this term has been diluted, or that it has lost some of its moral heft,” Hansen says.

Hansen is alive to this hazard, although he is sceptical about the idea that narrowing the use of “racist” will improve the quality of communication. Instead, he suggests people should be more specific about what exactly“Racist is a term like any gradable adjective, like, dirty, or sick, where you can qualify how bad this thing is. So you can say, ‘slightly racist’, ‘extremely racist’, or one example we use ‘racist, not in a hateful way but, in an old person type way’,” Hansen says.

Having one textbook definition of a term like racist might make things easier. But it’s a forlorn hope – for two reasons. First, the meaning of words have always evolved. Hansen cites a recent study into the use of word “gay”. “Older people using it the 1950s sense would write down ‘it was a gay birthday’ in the happy, festive sense. For middle-aged people, the homosexual sense is the prevalent use.

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