An Assault on Impact
Let’s wind up this level with a slam-bang assault on the crushing effect of the word impact.
If a language genie ever were to appear and offer me one wish, I think I’d ask that we all immediately cease using the word impact in place of the nouns influence and effect and the verb to affect.
Stunting the growth of impact may not be on your list of priorities for a better world, but I am going a little daft enduring the earsplitting din of this word. Every day, a thousand times a day, something “impacts” something else, and every event has nothing less than a “tremendous impact” on our lives. It’s enough to shatter your nerves and rattle your bones. Multiple impacts have made our daily discourse loud and dull, like the sound of ten thousand car horns blowing behind a fender-bender on the freeway.
Where is all this noise coming from? Just tune your brainwaves to the airwaves around you for a moment and you’ll hear them, the evil “impactors” who have penetrated every rank of society, intent on “impacting” our malleable minds. Pompous professors and public officials lecture us about the “social impact,” the longwinded lawyer dwells upon the “legal impact,” the do-gooder is desperate to have “a positive impact,” the economist drones on about the “fiscal impact”—everyone is “impacting” everyone else into a quivering stupor.
Are we wholly deaf to the subtlety of language? Why do we insist on using a pile driver when a putty knife would do?
Once upon a time we expressed the influence of something calmly and clearly by saying that it had an effect, or that it affected something else. Now it is hammered into our heads day in and day out with the word impact. The sad thing is that this powerful word, which connotes considerable force, has lost all of its forcefulness through incessant repetition. The only power impact has retained is the ability to cause a headache.
Impact is what the celebrated grammarian H. W. Fowler would call a “vogue-word.” A vogue word is one that for no apparent reason becomes popular almost overnight. Often it is an unusual or literary word, or one with a precise meaning, that is adopted as a sophisticated substitute for a common, everyday, hardworking sort of word. In Fowler’s day—the early 1900s—the verb to intrigue, which had meant to plot, scheme, or carry on a clandestine love affair, became a vogue word used to mean to interest or fascinate. That may not raise many eyebrows today, but the point is that as language progresses we must keep a wary eye on these vogue words, charting their influence—or their impact, as the vogue would have it—and passing judgment on their usefulness and force. Words like unique, parameters, interface, and proactive are mighty popular these days, but are they clear and strong and useful?
Of course, no one can wave a wand and change the course of language, but a little prudence can go a long way. Unless we give the overworked impact a well-deserved rest it won’t be long before we hear about cars “impacting” on the freeway, an “impactive” piece of legislation, an “impactual” treatment for cancer, or the “impactability” of a new idea.
And now that I’ve given the odious, banal, and ubiquitous impact a thorough pounding, it’s time to say good-bye to Level 6. I encourage you to review this entire level at least once before moving on. Careful and consistent review of the material in the Verbal Advantage program is the best way to avoid a “positive impact” and ensure a beneficial effect.
