Problematize--the word that invents problems

Did you ever wonder how we get meaningless jargon, particularly in government documents, feel-good academic fields such as women's studies and black studies, anthropology, and American literature? First you find a word or term that everyone understandands, like illegal immigration, and you declare that you have a problem with it. You problematize the term by writing scholarly papers with words no one would ever use, "denaturalize the reification of this distinction," (don't ask me, I just wrote it down). Then you start substituting words to cover up the phrase or term you have said is a problem (for you). If need be, you can even present a paper at a conference about the problem word or phrase.

Illegal immigration has two terms that had to be problematized by academics who write about it to get promotion, tenure and a paycheck: 1) illegal and 2) immigration. Both words imply someone is where he doesn't belong because someone has said so. In this case, you get rid of both. Illegal becomes undocumented, irregular, unauthorized or clandestine, or if really desperate you can use extra-legal. And immigration becomes migration, or labor, or worker, or visitor--choosing a less obnoxious term because there is no sense in academe that a nation might have rights to a border. Unless you're speaking of a non-western, socialist or communist nation. Alien absolutely is not a good choice, because that too has been problematized. It needs to sound sort of like the migration of birds, or seals. No boundaries. Freedom. No problema.

Notice I have not put quotation marks around the words that scholars problematize. But they do. And they do that to show the reader that they recognize the word or phrase is a problem, and will cause upset to the reader's sensitivities. So a scholar writing about illegal immigration would write it like this: "illegal immigration."

This has been a public service from a retired librarian.