Spare us more government pandemic language
What is your least favourite pandemic phrase? Is it “pingdemic” or “new normal”? “Super spreader” or “unprecedented”? In the last eighteen months a dictionary’s worth of pandemic jargon has been added to our daily vocabularies.
In the absence of physical interaction as our lives moved online for much of the last year and a half, language became more important than ever and new vocabulary helped us to make sense of the world. Phrases such as “I’ve been pinged”, “plandemic”, “let’s meet on Zoom” and “are you social distancing?” would once have sounded completely alien, but are now frequent in conversation. Some of these expressions might be looked back on whimsically in years to come, but the language used throughout the pandemic hasn’t always been helpful.
Government comms are undeniably responsible for some of the poorer language choices during the pandemic. The transition from “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” to “stay alert, control the virus, save lives” was heavily criticised for being vague and meaningless. The “hands, face, space” messaging has never been updated to reflect evidence that, as an airborne disease, Covid is best prevented by opening windows and ensuring good ventilation rather than handwashing and surface scrubbing.
Before his time as Secretary of State for Health was cut short by getting a lot closer than two meters with his aide, you could rely on Matt Hancock for mistaking the pandemic for an action film. Addressing the House of Commons back in March 2020, he declared: “We are in a war against an invisible killer and we have to do everything we can to stop it.” This created a view of Covid as an “enemy” that we could “beat”, which continued into 2021 as the vaccination rollout began. In May, Hancock addressed the public in a coronavirus briefing, saying Britain will “carefully replace a shield of restrictions with the sword of vaccinations”.
The worst use of language, however, arguably came from Hancock back in September 2020. Speaking on BBC Newsbeat, the former Health Secretary encouraged young people to follow social distancing rules so as not to “kill gran”. This emotional blackmail felt unfair at a time of such intense stress and anxiety for so many people and highly hypocritical as the care home Covid crisis played out in the background. The forced informality of “gran” also sounded unnatural coming from Hancock, who, if I had to hedge my bets likely uses the words “mummy” and “grandmother”.
The Prime Minister’s scriptwriters didn’t seem to learn any lessons from the backlash against Hancock’s patronising language. In a press conference on 19 July, Johnson said “I would remind everybody that some of life’s most important pleasures and opportunities are likely to be increasingly dependent on vaccination,” sounding like a headteacher threatening to remove pizza from the school canteen. “I don’t want to have to close nightclubs again,” he continued in a similarly condescending tone, before changing tack to a more militant approach: “We reserve the right to mandate certification at any point.” Then, once the discipline was done, Johnson returned to his more natural tone, influenced by the Prime Minister’s love of classics: “We want this country to be able to enjoy the fruits of our massive vaccination campaign.”
In 1948, former American president Harry Truman accused his opposition of using an old political trick: “if you can’t convince ’em, confuse ’em”. Sometimes it feels like this must be the Conservative party’s communication strategy. Advancing the vaccine programme and returning to life without Covid restrictions requires a government that excels at communicating, not confusing.
In the meantime, with cases dropping and vaccination numbers rising, let’s hope in the latter half of 2021 phrases such as “pinging” and “self-isolation”, fade from relevance as quickly as Matt Hancock.
As we emerge from this dreadful episode, let’s also hope that the government can be persuaded post-pandemic to stop patronising us and speak in plain, clear English.