The bad word

Germany has two new dirty words. They are "zurückwandern" and "zurückkehren". These are the German translations of the Latin term "remigrare", which equals remigration, the actual unword of the year 2023. How did the six-member jury justify its decision in the press release (1)?

The term "remigration" is "a right-wing term of war", a "euphemism for the demand for forced expulsion and even mass deportations of people with a history of migration". The word is "deliberately appropriated ideologically and reinterpreted in such a way that a - politically demanded - inhumane deportation practice is concealed." 

I am shocked. I never associated all these inhumane things when I read the term remigration. And I'm learning something. From now on, I will be accused of thinking like this if I use the term myself. Contact guilt does not only apply to people. Contact guilt also exists with words. It's worth returning to the beginnings of the choice of the bad word of the year, even if returning is now a bad word (2).

Elections for the worst word of the year have been held since 1991. The first three years were organized by the "Society for the German Language", but since 1994 a jury of four linguists, a journalist and a guest juror has decided on an honorary basis what the worst word of the year was. The idea behind it sounds enlightening and critical, and therefore commendable. The jury wants to expose a word that violates the principles of human dignity and democracy, discriminates against social groups and is also euphemistic, i.e. disguises and whitewashes. Who wouldn't want that? At first glance, these are noble motives. Even at second glance? No.

Unwords are like expenses. Just as expenses are always costs, unwords are always words. If I declare a word to be an unword, I declare the person who uses it to be a monster. But the monster is a human being. To put it provocatively: What would it be like if a jury awarded a negative prize for a work of art once a year and declared this art to be non-art, degenerate? Degenerate? The outcry would rightly be huge. 

The second problem is the political slant. Unfortunately, there are indeed dozens of hurtful fighting terms and euphemisms on the controversial issues of the day, such as the climate. From an objective point of view, two opposing parties are using derogatory terms. In the climate dispute, deniers call hysterics names and hysterics call deniers names. Only one side of the argument is reliably condemned. Climate hysterics (2019) and climate terrorists (2022), not climate deniers, have already been among the unwords of the year. The jury chose the word corona dictatorship as the bad word of the year 2020 and not the hate term covidiot by Saskia Esken. Which word suggestions fell through the jury's cracks in 2023? Doppelwumms, Kriegstüchtigkeit, Sondervermögen - these terms critical of the government and present in the media were rejected. 

Official narratives are protected, while critics of the narratives are attacked by the choice of the unword. This raises the question of the independence of the six-member jury. The four linguists are honorable people, professors and doctors. They are experts in ecolinguistics, gender linguistics, pragmalinguistics, corpus linguistics and other linguistic galaxies that no one has ever seen before. If you look at the CV of journalist Alexandra-Katharina Kütemeyer, you can confidently assign her to the left-wing political spectrum. The guest juror Ruprecht Polenz, who is not pictured but is listed in the small print, is really interesting. Polenz was briefly CDU Secretary General in 2000. Today, he is a Twitter X-fighter against the AfD and anything that seems right-wing to him. Above all, Polenz is an advisor to the LibMod think tank [4]. The opinionated Ruprecht Polenz may be many things, but one thing he is certainly not is independent and objective.

Speaking of objectivity - is it possible to objectively determine what a person associates with a certain word, what thoughts and feelings a term triggers? No. That varies from person to person. The word remigration is the best example. Positive, negative, value-neutral. The word is or "was" understood differently. For me, it triggers neither pain nor feelings of happiness, I see it completely soberly. In my experience, most people didn't know the word until recently.

The bad word of 2023 Remigration was not even in the public consciousness in 2023!

My perception is measurable (5). If you look at "Google Trends", starting in January 2023 until mid-January 2024, you can see the following. The trend curve for the entire year 2023 consists of a zero line. The term remigration does not appear. The word was barely discussed. The bad word of the year 2023 was therefore largely unknown in 2023. Not in people's minds. Only since a certain day has everyone known the word remigration. On January 10, 2024, the curve jumps almost vertically upwards.

On January 10, 2024, Correctiv claims in an investigation that expulsions and mass deportations of millions of people were planned at an event in November 2023. However, there is no mention of deportation, only of remigration. Five days later, linguists "accidentally" find out that people who say remigration actually mean mass deportation. And this jury chooses a word that received little attention throughout 2023 as the bad word of the year 2023. 

What does that mean? Correctiv, the leading media and politicians will still not be able to prove that unspeakable things were said and planned in Potsdam. But they can say that something else was said. They can say "Even if you didn't say it - they meant it!" 

Without words. This is an absurdity. Actually, it's a thing.