The words we use: ConDem

I'm wrestling with the pedantry demon at the moment - and losing! It's not a pretty sight. However, I might as well let that primal scream of nit picking out while it's gnawing at my innards.

I've been particularly excised recently by the constant use of the phrase 'ConDem' to describe the coalition government. It's on leaflets, placards, blog posts and even painted on faces. My problem is that it reeks of dogma.

The moment I hear someone use the phrase I know with absolute certainty that this is not a 'normal' person but a political activist. I've never heard any member of my family use the phrase, any of my non-activist friends nor come across it in everyday conversation, even when discussing the government.

The *only* time I hear it in use is from committed political activists. Just as the only people I've ever seen raising Greece as a *good* example to us all (as in the picture) are people from some very specific political traditions. Now, while there is a political purpose to talking about Greece and things we can learn from this, the phrase ConDem simply serves to create an internal language for the left that excludes those we're seeking to bring in.

It's effectively the equivalent of the right's Zanu-Nu-Labour that tried to draw similarities between Mugabe's regime and Brown's. It's sole useful function is that it allows you to identify people who are going to be against the government no matter what happens, effectively ruling them out of any rational debate.

For me, ConDem is very much like the phrase FibDem. Whoever came up with it can feel rightly smug about a nice turn of phrase, but the moment it goes into your everyday language it's just lazy and childish. These pieces of jargon seek to deepen the tribalism of the situation at the expense of reasoned analysis.

Don't get me wrong, some people love it. Just as some people like screaming the word 'SCUM' at the top of their lungs on demonstrations. God bless them all I say, but I hope it's worth bearing in mind that while the name calling is an easy way of making one part of the movement feel warm and cuddly it simultaneously makes another part of the movement wince in embarrassment.

Where it's a political point (like Greece) let the debate go unabated and difference flourish - where it's a question of semantics why adopt jargon that adds nothing to your point but creates a barrier to potential allies enthusiastically embracing your ideas? Even if it's only 5% of people who end up labelling you as dogmatic, that's 5% of people that we want, that we've lost.

Obviously there's no neutral way of speaking and we all have dialects and idiosyncrasies that some will like better than others, which is one reason why political and cultural diversity is a good thing when you're trying to build a movement, but I'm not quite sure that's the same thing as using language only a clique relate to. Even if it's a large clique.

It's just a thought. Hopefully I'll win my war with that scoundrel Pendantry soon. I'd hate to become one of those dreary language-police people you find patrolling round the left. In the mean time I hope you'll forgive me.