If you say so-and-so was a slave, that means one thing. Saying that this person was enslaved means another. I was writing a paragraph about right-wing moves to mask parts of American history. In the first version of one sentence I took the already packaged meaning of a familiar word which I found immediately at hand:
News comes from Philadelphia that the federal government wants to take down historic signs about George Washington’s slaves.
It was pointed out to me that many people try to avoid using the word slave. A person is not a slave in the same way a doctor is a doctor. It’s a demeaning usage, best to be avoided. Avoiding it might be a positive example of what many people think of as political correctness.
But as I revised the sentence, something rose up into view in the language there. News comes from Philadelphia that the federal government wants to take down historic signs . . .
. . . about people George Washington enslaved. (Too vague. He was president and therefore participated in the country’s enslavement of many thousands of people.)
. . . about individual people George Washington enslaved. (Better, I think, but the above political interpretation may still be present, not sure.)
. . . about individual people George Washington himself enslaved. (Best of the four wordings. The man Washington enslaved particular individuals known to him.)
When we speak or write, certain words and phrases come quickly to mind. These maybe be ready-made with general meanings, kind of like making a sauce with a can of cream of mushroom soup. There may be newer and better alternatives, words that have been scrutinized and screened, but still essentially ready-made, pre-packaged with meanings others have chosen. And there may be wordings we’ve worked up ourselves as we reflect on what we’re saying or on what we’ve drafted. In this process, we have a chance to discover and express something more vivid and precise. If we are thinking on our feet as we write or speak, not scooping ready-mades from a can of inherited language, we can surprise ourselves. I know I was surprised to see how much more meaningful and powerful the fourth version of that sentence was than the first.
Books about writing well might give a technical analysis. It could go something like this:
They were slaves. Here is a noun used for a category of human beings. In our own sentence, let’s put those people in that category.
They were enslaved. Here is a process verb that applies in this case. It’s in the passive voice, which means that the verb is agnostic about who carried out the action. Only the recipient of the action, the victim of the action, is considered in this form of verb. A car was parked right by the fire hydrant.
This man enslaved those people. Our society sanctioned his actions. Here the verb changes to the active voice. The recipient of the action, the victim, remains clear, but now the actor is featured prominently in both the grammar and the meaning. The sentence names both the responsible party and the victim. Even though I called 9-1-1, because my idiot neighbor parked his car in front of the fire hydrant, his house burned to the ground.
In personal life and in political life, we have to make the effort to name things accurately. To do the work to speak clearly about actions and responsibilities.
Yes, Mom, I see that the cookie jar has been emptied.
Yes, fellow citizen, we do see that the democracy has been hollowed out.
________
PS. Other parts of language can be refined and clarified like this, too. We do not have to accept the sloppy generality of familiar phrases. For example, just above, I tried two versions of a sentence:
We have to make an effort to name things accurately.
We have to make the effort to name things accurately.
They don’t mean quite the same thing, do they? Do they express different levels of urgency, perhaps, or hope?
When I was a student in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, for maybe half the semester one professor would come to class each day and write pairs and trios of very, very similarly worded sentences on the chalkboard, and we would work together to extract the different shades of meaning. In a painting, sometimes this gray is a little moodier than that gray, and sometimes that matters . . .