For some time, the universities of the world have been at the forefront of cancel culture—trying to put woke  blinkers on their students and staff (and largely succeeding!) This shows up particularly in what their IT departments do to impose censorship guidelines on their web users. Some time ago I reported here when Brandeis University’s IT department put out its Oppressive Language List (since re-titled Suggested Language List) – and now the great Stanford university has done the same. Their IT department has issued a list of words that should not be used on any of their websites. For a start don’t call web users ‘users’ because that makes them sound like people addicted to illegal drugs. And never allow anyone to say they are ‘addicted’ to something (relatively) harmless such as chocolate or TV soapies—because that trivialisers real addictions that people struggle with. Really? Why not treat your readers as being intelligent and able to distinguish between the different uses? Why not assume readers can understand how context changes the weight of words? Now Stanford’s IT department wants to ban language about animals. They claim that although ‘there are different ways to skin a cat’ or ‘flog a dead horse’ or ‘kill two birds with one stone’, all trivialise violence against animals. Really? Again, why not respect the intelligence of your readers? Why not assume that competent users of the English language understand what idioms are and how they work? The real problem here is that the Stanford IT department (just like the Brandeis University’s IT department before it) actually doesn’t understand how the English language really works, and then tries to impose its ignorance on everyone else. Ignorance is not a good basis for censorship!

There is a language problem with the current debate over ‘the Indigenous Voice to parliament’. The issue is with the use of the definite article, the word ‘the’. By calling it ‘the Indigenous Voice’, the phrase is telling us it will be the only voice to parliament Indigenous Australians will have. But that can’t be the case. Because Indigenous Australians already have a voice to parliament, the same voice every adult Australian citizen has to parliament: namely representative democracy. You and I and all of us (including all Indigenous Australians) exercise our ‘voice to parliament’ every time we vote in an election, or have contact with our local member of parliament. So both logically and linguistically, what is being proposed is ‘a second Voice to parliament for Indigenous Australians’ (on top of the one they already share with the rest of us). So, to be correct the language of the debate should change to ‘the second Indigenous Voice to parliament.’ This whole debate should shift its ground from whether Indigenous Australians should have a ‘Voice’ to parliament to whether they should have a ‘second Voice’ to parliament (over and above every other citizen). That is the honest way of saying what is being proposed. And I propose that the language should change in just that way. In fact, let’s start a small, informal movement that insists (every time this topic comes up) on saying ‘second Voice.’ Any time anyone talks about ‘the Voice’ to you, say ‘the second Voice.’ Say it in conversations, on talkback, in letters to the editor, on social media. Let’s get this national conversation back on the linguistic rails by insisting on using the correct expression ‘second Voice.’ Give it go. Get used to saying it. Second Voice… Second Voice… Second Voice… You can do this!