Bloggy TuesdayA McCain-New York Times Feud?; Fishy Friday; JFK on speed; what the hell is "affordable housing"?
Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008, at 6:46 PM ET
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StumbleUponThe earliest newspaper mention of affordable housing I found this afternoon was an Aug. 23, 1970, New York Times letter to the editor (PDF; purchase required), although I'm sure it's not the first. The euphemism is so common that Nexis dredges up more than 1,800 examples of it from the nation's top six dailies in the past year. Over the same period, the phrase subsidized housing scores only about 160 hits.
In his book Unspeak, Steven Poole explains that phrases like affordable housing are usually created and popularized by advocates as a linguistic dodge. Such phrases allow a speaker or writer to say something without saying it, to express a view without getting into an argument, and to make a point without having to justify that point. (Other prime examples of unspeak: pro-choice, pro-life, tax relief, tax burden, community, reform, intelligent design, regime change, and sharpshooters.)
Affordable housing, like other virulent forms of unspeak, disarms its critics before they have a chance to argue. Anybody against affordable housing must be for unaffordable housing, i.e., homelessness, and hence a real shit.
Editors of the world, delete this phrase from the lexicon!
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Run into any unspeakable unspeak lately? Here are examples culled by my readers last year. Send your new discoveries to . (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the word affordable in the subject head of an e-mail message and send it to .
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