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Okay

    What would you think if, when you asked someone how they were, they replied "OK"? Would you take that at face value, or regard it as being indicative of deeper problems? 

    I ask because this has been on my mind a little of late. Mrs Coastaltown asked me how I was one day. I was okay, I said so. Whats's up? She said. Nothing's up, I said, I'm okay, I'm fine. Reader, I was, I was fine. 

    What would you think if, when you asked someone how they were, they replied "fine"? Would you take that at face value, or regard it as being indicative of deeper problems?

    I'm being slightly facetious here, but I have been wondering a little recently about how we perceive language, and how we place too much weight on hyperbole. You can't simply be fine, you have to be amazing, so good, living your best life. Things aren't bad, they're a disaster. Eminently believable events become unbelievable. The comedian Gary Delaney has a good line about the word "legend", once meaning "goes on quests, fights dragons" now meaning "has come back from the offy with crisps." (I'm paraphrasing slightly, but you get the gist). 

    Back in another life, when Mrs Coastaltown was a teacher, I was often irritated by the way that Ofsted grade schools. It is not enough to be "Satisfactory", schools must strive for "Good" or "Outstanding". This is, to my mind, imprecise. Surely, if a school is satisfactory, then everyone should be satisfied. Likewise, if all schools are outstanding, then surely none of them are.

    It would be fairly reasonable to characterise this as the grumblings of a middle aged man, and a big fat mea culpa to that. But there are some more serious problems caused by this quantitative easing of language. Back to the world of education. You, well read, engaged human that you are, are probably well aware that the teaching profession, like many of the public services, is groaning under the strain of trying to do too much with too little. What you may not be aware of is that there is an institutional term for this. Academy trusts refer to it as "above and beyond." Now, to my mind, the term "above and beyond implies a baseline level of effort being exceeded, it means an extraordinary (in the strictest sense of the word) effort. However, when teachers are being instructed that their efforts must be "above and beyond" all the time, then this simply a weasel-wording for we expect you to do twice the work for the same money, constantly. "Above and beyond" is a real terms pay cut.

    I'm as prone to hyperbole as the next man, provided the next man isn't a cast member of Made in Chelsea (is that still a thing? I'm old, subs please check), so I'm not trying to pretend that I haven't called a day where I've been mildly inconvenienced the worst of my life, but I do sometimes wonder if this dizzying rush towards constant amazement isn't robbing the world of nuance. There will undoubtedly be far cleverer people than I wondering about this who are able to draw links between our accelerating culture and the changing nature of our language. For myself, I worry that words are slowly leaching their meaning. Sometimes okay means precisely that.


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