I have just had an email from a prospective bridegroom talking about his "partner." I have had enough of this arrant nonsense and have decided that I must correct it whenever it occurs.
Partner? Forgive me but I am somewhat unreconstructed - or in Stanley Hauerwas' terms perhaps I am a resident alien. I thought a partner was someone you had a business relationship with – I detest all this meddling with the English language so as to be PC and non-offensive to same-sex couples. I think “fiancée” is a much richer and meaningful word that a gentler, less savage, age used quite naturally.
I find that many young couples use PC language like this because they have been brought up on such a poor understanding of our language and culture. Have we been asked whether we wish to have this nonsense foisted upon us? I find that it is even infecting the Church where priests talk about their "patches" rather than their parishes - and yet every time I have looked I have not seen one such person who, when uttering the word "patch", has been wearing the leather patches on the elbows of their jackets that I would associate the term with.
So today I am committing myself to no longer putting up with a banal, replacement language that robs people of our culture, history and the richness of our language. Of course we must be gentle in correcting these abuses of our language for often those who use them do so because they have been brought up to know no different, but that doesn't mean that they should be left in ignorance.
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