Word Use Grumble

[forestofglory]

So I know this makes me a bad linguist descriptivist but it bothers me when people use the work "diverse" to refer to individuals rather than groups. Diversity is a property of groups not of individuals! My preferred phrase for what I think people mean when they call an individual "diverse" is "under represented." That is lot chunkier than "diverse" so I expect people will just keep using "diverse" and I'll have to put up with it.

Comments

[jack]

*hugs* I think it's still ok to have preferences even if you're a linguist or descriptivist. Physicists don't pretend to decide physics, merely to observe it, but I think they still say "I don't like this law, I wish it was otherwise."

With "diverse", I think the evolution of the language is natural (even if I also liked sticking to the traditional definition), but I think there's a bigger problem, that it exposes the natural-but-problematic assumption that "groups of people we're already familiar with are 'normal', others are 'diverse'" :(