The Critical Commentator

  Mrs Raynes's Tea Party Henry Tonks (1862-1937) Photo Credit: Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums [Public Domain] Society feels instinctively that manners are more important than morals, Oscar Wilde wrote, and tortuous politeness that masks true meaning can even be read in Beowulf. Centuries later, British conversations are regularly strewn with polite phrases that try to conceal seething resentment or avoid awkwardness, research shows. These include " Sounds fun, I'll let you know " (translation: "I've no intention of coming."), and "I'm sure it's just me" (translation: "This is entirely your fault but I'm trying to soften the blow"). Almost half of people told researchers that they uttered such phrases, which were used about 14 times a day. Trinity College London questioned 2,000 adults to create a list of the British phrases most regularly to avoid disagreements or social discomfort. "Could I just squeeze past you?...

The Sick Child Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]  ...  We have lost sight of the wisdom that a bit of suffering, stress and criticism is part of the human condition and doesn't require intervention by the police, the state or anything else beyond our own inner resilience... A decade ago a psychologist called Nick Haslam noticed a curious shift in the meaning of words. Trauma, for example, was once applied to physical injury (like blunt force trauma), but usage gradually extended to encompass being belittled verbally, or merely hearing about the trauma suffered by others. Over time, an ever wider and milder range of experiences were coded as traumatic. The same was for bullying. Once used to denote a big kid hitting a little kid in the playground, its meaning was extended to verbal aggression in the workplace, and then minor interactions in which harm was not even perceived by the putative victim. In a way, you might think, so what? Many words change the...