I find it so fascinating the way language choice communicates social and political values, though in many cases the speaker claims to be unbiased, or just neglects to acknowledge the view point their words espouse.  For example, this article in the OC Register is making seemingly benign statements about people who live in the United States based off of the latest statistical information recently published in the “Statistical Abstract of the United States.”  The author takes an interest in the average commute time for workers, modes of transportation and the cost of food. He views the statistical report as an interesting way to get a glimpse into the life of the average person who lives in the United States (of course we are operating under the assumption that the statistics were gathered in an unbiased, neutral way).

While most of the article just reports the statistics as “interesting” there is some political/social commentary crouched within the language that carries very distinct biases.  For example, the author classifies the increase in the number of children born to unmarried women as “bad news.”  The statistic does not  break into categories the types of unmarried women who give birth, just clumps them into one category with which the author determines to be “bad news”.  So women in long-term relationships who choose to have children, or women who cannot marry their partner because of legal restrictions, (ie women in same sex relationships), women who identify with the male gender (don’t think for a second the distinctions of sex and gender are recognized in the statistic) or women who just want to be mothers and choose to conceive and give birth, are all classified together in one giant clump. And its “bad news”.

Just something to think about…