"Alternative Facts" is "Unword of the Year" 2017

Jury spokesperson and linguistics professor Nina Janich said on Tuesday in Darmstadt, Germany: "The term is an obfuscating and misleading expression for the attempt to make false claims acceptable as a legitimate means of public debate." Conway had used the term "alternative facts" to describe the false factual claim that there were more people on the streets celebrating the inauguration of the US president at the beginning of 2017 than ever before on such an occasion.

Since then, however, the term has also become "synonymous and emblematic of one of the most worrying tendencies in public language use" in Germany, especially in social media, said Janich. It stands "for the spreading practice of replacing the exchange of arguments based on facts with unverifiable assertions". The term was proposed 65 times.

Reprimand for "shuttle service" and "gender madness"

The jurors also criticized the term "shuttle service" in connection with sea rescue missions by non-governmental organizations in the Mediterranean for people fleeing in rubber dinghies. CSU parliamentarian Stephan Mayer had used the term. According to the jury, it is "representative of tendencies in public language to push the boundaries of what can be said in an inhumane, polemical and cynical direction".

The linguists also denounced the phrase "gender mania". This term is increasingly used in conservative to right-wing populist circles to defame efforts for gender equality in an undifferentiated manner.

The jury of six experts selected the "Unword of the Year" and the two other unwords from 684 different suggestions. Only around 80 to 90 of these suggestions met the criteria of the language-critical campaign, as Janich said. From these, the expert jury shortlisted just under 20 words. A total of 1316 submissions by letter or e-mail were counted. In addition, this year's jury member Barbara, an anonymous street artist who has been awarded the Grimme Prize, received around 3,500 entries on possible unwordable words via social networks.

For more language sensitivity

Every year since 1991, a term that violates the "principle of human dignity" or "principles of democracy" because it discriminates against individual social groups or is "euphemistic, obfuscating or even misleading" has been chosen as the "bad word of the year". In 2016, the choice fell on "traitor to the people", in 2015 on "do-gooder". The aim of the 27th language-critical campaign is to draw attention to public forms of language use and thereby promote awareness and sensitivity to language. The jury selects formulations from public communication that violate factual appropriateness or humanity. The words should also have a "certain topicality" and the context in which they were used must be documented. (SDA)