Nothing is more infuriating to me than a phrase like this.

I was listening to NPR a couple of days ago and a caller started waxing intellectual about the effects of “sexy halloween costumes” for children. While that debate was mildly interesting (I’m agnostic here), I found that myself immediately siding with whoever this caller was ranting against–solely based on their usage of this phrase. It was the first thing that came out of their mouth and they had already lost me.

What exactly does this even mean, “social fabric of our society”? A quick google search shows that there are 11,600 hits for this phrase. Yet, after multiple searches I can’t find anything close to a succinct definition of what it means. While we all “kind of” know what it means, phrases where everyone is “kind of” in agreement have no place in debate. If one can’t agree on what is affecting or being affected then they are not necessarily talking about the same things.

Lets try and break it down and see if that helps :

  • “society” – While people might quibble about this, soiologists for the most part have definitions for this term, and the public generally can agree on its meaning.
  • “our society” – Well may or may not be meaningful. It depends on the us in the statement. I can tell you that for people calling into NPR the our is pretty ambiguous. People in America? This state? Socio-economic class? Maybe the caller drives a VW bug, that society? This is where things start to get blurry. The notion of us is different for every listener, and thus the point above about agreement over subject/object comes into play.
  • “social fabric” – no analysis necessary. fail.

As an aside there are 325 results for the phrase “very social fabric of our society” which is even funnier, because of its implication that this unknown thing is somehow fundamental.

Now the question I have is, why would one use this phrase? Do they think that it makes them sound intellectual? It does have a certain pseudo-scientific philosophical heft, that when said emphatically enough might might intimidate people into thinking that you know what you’re talking about. Maybe it is just because no one really knows what it means and don’t even know how to start their retort without first asking (and thus feeling silly)? Well, screw that, the speaker themselves doesn’t really know what they are talking about. They are just repeating something that they heard someone else say and thought sounded cool.

I’m all for analogy, metaphor, and abstraction when trying to describe complex notions. But please, for the love of all that take the time to actually make a point, make sure that your phrases actually add something to the conversation.