Table walks. Do you see anything wrong with that sentence? It's short; it's simple. It sets off no spell or grammar alarms for my computer. Nonetheless the sentence has a fundamental flaw that can lead to dangerous thinking.
Hopefully the problem with that sentence is easy to see. Even though tables have legs, they can't walk. Generally, we prefer that active verbs go with animate subjects of sentences. I walk, she walks, they walked. I love conjugating verbs. Even though the sentence "table walks" can function as an odd sort of grammatical utterance, tables don't walk (except in cartoons).
Let me try another example. Research finds. That sentence is another example of this fundamental flaw. This sentence also happens to be my personal pet peeve. I find this phrase frequently in the pages of my favorite academic journals and the pages of my students' papers. Undoubtedly, I have allowed the linguistic device to slide into some of my own published writing. I rail against this wording in all my classes and repetitively correct it in student writing. Some of my students think I am being unreasonable about a common way of summarizing a pattern of findings. I point out that tables don't walk and that research cannot find, claim, or conclude. Research is not an animate being so research can't do anything.
Researchers, however, can do all these things. Researchers find, claim, and conclude (they can even go for a walk). Attributing these actions to the people that do them is important for several reasons. First, attributing actions to animate being makes for better writing. Saying "research finds" often reflects lazy writing. Attributing the actions to the researchers makes the writing more readable and comprehensible to the audience. Second, it is more polite to the researchers. Use their names and attribute their work to them. Give people credit for the work they've done and the ideas they've generated.
But the most important reason is to recognize in our thinking that some person did the work. Using the phrase "research finds" implies a level of objectivity such that everyone would see the same thing if they looked at the data. The phrase implies that the conclusion is somehow obvious from the data and should not be questioned. When we accurately acknowledge that some person did the research, made the findings, interpreted the data, and drew the conclusions, we allow ourselves to recognize that other reasonable people may draw a different conclusion. We recognize that science is inherently a social process and subject to the various biases in the scientist's head. We acknowledge that science moves gradually toward convergence on an answer and that the outcome of one research project is not taken as definitive.
This brings me to corporations speaking. Tables have legs but can't walk. Apparently, corporations can speak even though they don't have mouths. At least, that is what the Supreme Court ruled last week: Corporations speak and should have all the rights to speech that we have generally attributed to people. Of course saying that the Supreme Court ruled is another example of this linguistic device. Instead consider that in a divided vote, the members of the Supreme Court ruled that corporations speak. This second version makes you wonder which members of the court voted which way.
Stating that corporations speak leads to the same problems as saying research finds. There are always people who make the decisions. Goldman-Sachs, the corporate entity, did not decide to award million dollar bonuses and make large donations designed to influence the political process. The individuals who direct that corporation made those decisions. Deciding when to attribute activities to corporations is tricky because we do hold corporations liable in civil court cases - that way you can sue the corporation which is where the money is. We don't, typically, prosecute corporations in criminal cases. Individuals who made the decisions are held responsible in criminal cases. Traditionally, we have given corporations some, but not all, aspects of personhood. In their recent decision, however, some members of the Supreme Court have decided to give corporations all the speech rights attributed to persons.
Language strongly influences the way we think - a scientific viewpoint referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (named after people who promoted the idea). Attributing actions to research, corporations, and courts leads people to fail to see the individuals who actually acted, decided, spoke, concluded, and ruled. This linguistic device may lead people to assume research conclusions are more objective and reliable than justified. This linguistic device may lead members of the Supreme Court to confer personhood on inanimate entities. This linguistic device leads to dangerous thinking.
