Languages in the Big Apple

The high court of Bombay recently declared that “clean and temperate”
language must be used in divorce petitions.

The case in question also deleted explicit passages from a husband’s
account of his wife’s alleged unnatural sexual demands.

According to the India Times,

The man, who cited these demands as an infliction of “mental
cruelty,” wanted out on these grounds. His wife maintained that the
descriptions in his petition were “scandalous, torturous, indecent and
traumatic” and should be struck off the record. The family court in
Mumbai rejected her plea, but the Bombay high court was more
understanding.

The high court held that a court of law should not permit a divorce
proceeding “to be converted into a source of continued embarassment
and harassment to a party” and struck off the offensive portions from
the written plea. “The judgment will help bring sobriety into nasty
courtroom divorce dramas where dirty linen gets washed,” said a
lawyer.

In courts, “actions and abusive words are reproduced verbatim even in
vernacular languages. This adds to the humiliation of the spouse who
is at the receiving end, irrespective of gender.”

In other news, Britney Spears has said that she hates L.A. and will be
moving to Atlanta, Georgia. Perhaps she should consider India.

The Defense Department is looking for a new way to refer to the men and women in the U.S. armed forces. With possibilities ranging from troops, fighters, soldiers, servicemembers, and combatants, it looks like warrior may be the forerunner.

The term probably evokes images of bows and arrows or medieval knights more than a bunch of buzz-cutted Americans in camouflage, but that seems to be precisely the point.

In what is depicted as a means of employing an all-inclusive word — i.e., one that doesn’t exclude women — the situation strikes me as a little shady, and I’m guessing this is more of an image-makeover than feminism.

What’s wrong with “soldier?” According to the International Herald Tribune, we’re in need of an all-around term to reference troops, marines, and those in the airforce that isn’t as complicated as “servicemember.”

And why doesn’t “troop” fit that description?

“Troops presents plural difficulties. One troop is a group. When you say ‘two troops’, do you mean two military units or two individuals? When we say ’send in the troops,’ we usually mean large numbers, but when speaking of two or three members of our armed forces, we say soldiers or special forces or whatever branch of the armed services they serve in. One person is not a troop”.

Right. Still, warrior strikes me as a pretty misleading euphemism, romanticizing a war that the majority of Americans don’t support.

Perhaps a more honest nomenclature would be “killer.”