“Language, Please”: What It Is And How Journalists Can Use It
As society continues to develop and have larger conversations around current events as well as about emerging or shifting identities and labels (i.e. trans and nonbinary identities, BIPOC identities, etc.) journalists may find it difficult to both keep up with changing terminology but also to just find language to concisely and succinctly communicate what they need to for their pieces. Short of carrying a constantly-updated thesaurus, is there a way to make finding appropriate words easier for journalists?
A new resource thinks it may be able to do just that. Language, Please, “a free, living resource for journalists and storytellers seeking to thoughtfully cover evolving social, cultural, and identity-related topics,” is rising up to help journalists quite literally find the words. Language, Please works like a reverse thesaurus—with funding from the Google News Initiative, the website uses leading news sources to compile a list of terms (even ones invented by other journalists that have somehow made it into the zeitgeist) with notations on how to use them, detailed definitions, links to original usage, and other resources. The service is powered by Vox Media.
“Our goal was really inspired by two interconnected ideas,” said Christopher Clermont, Vox Media’s head of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “One was that we wanted to build a tool that could help newsrooms better cover social, cultural, and identity-related topics. The other was to fulfill a major human resource need of not relying on marginalized individuals in our newsrooms for this work.”
The website is geared towards writing on six parent topics: class and social standing; disabilities, neurodiversity, and chronic illness; gender and sexuality; borders and populations; mental health, trauma, and substance use; and race and ethnicity. Under each topic is a dictionary-like entry of updated terminology, alongside uses of this terminology in current media. Journalists will also be able to contribute to or suggest edits to the website by contacting the administrators directly.
The website also features editorial help, with an entire tools section aimed at aiding the journalistic process by suggesting resources to help journalists frame, report on, source, or interview their subjects. The site also has an Inclusivity Reader Directory, and seeks to connect journalists in need of a closer and more inclusive eye on their work with freelance inclusivity readers. Vox said they hope this would create a more “living resource,” as it will give journalists the opportunity to be part of larger conversations around these pieces of terminology.
“We really focused on trying to write this in a way that leaves space for those debates [on how these terms will grow and change],” Tanya Pai, the styles and standards editor at Vox Media, said. “The debate over Latinx, for instance — a lot of newsrooms will use that right now, but it does not necessarily resonate with everyone that it’s supposed to describe. We wanted to make that clear. Maybe it’s your style is to use Latinx, but there’s not going to be 100% agreement on it.”
Embedded within each entry are personalized, editorialized pieces of advice from experts on the topic as well as journalists who have used the terms before. For example, under “pronouns,” the entry reads: “Saying someone ‘uses she/they pronouns’ (vs. ‘prefers she/they pronouns’) affirms that a person’s pronouns and gender identity are not a choice but a deeply felt part of their identity.” This allows the journalist to take the guesswork out of what they are writing, and also allows the journalist to experience the learning curve of these new terms in a private, non-judgmental way.
“Some folks said, ‘I just want to know the ‘right’ word to use’ and then some people really wanted to understand the nuance of these debates. They wanted the bigger context. Why is this terminology changing?” Pai said. “When we started pulling together this guidance, we really wanted to lean into the why of it. We don’t just want to say, here’s the rule. There’s so much nuance in it, and we really wanted to create a resource that would get into that context and give people the tools they need to make the decisions for themselves and their newsrooms and their audiences.”
As journalists themselves are a living resource for society, so must their own resources be living, growing and changing. Without a growing and changing approach to journalism and the language we as journalists yield, time is bound to leave us behind and make our journalism irrelevant. Tools like Language, Please are here to make those more difficult transitions a little bit easier to pick up, to implement, and to ask questions about.
