The Nominalistic Rhetoric in the Word ‘Nuanced’

It’s everywhere!

My last short essay was on the topic of texture, and one of the reasons that I think my muse may have bubbled it up is because of a word I keep tripping over in so many things that I read and hear these days; NUANCED.

Seriously, just keep an eye out for it and see how often you trip over it. It’s like that proverbial spoonful of sugar that helps the nominalism go down. If you are a regular reader of my essays, you may have some understanding of what we are up against regarding the momentum that exists to break even more than has already been broken. By dismissing the cohesiveness of what binds us in our differences (our otherness) as nothing but ‘nuances’, …. I react to this with a sense that can only be described as somewhere between wanting to throw up or wanting to pull my hair out.

I have previously written on words that are very commonly regurgitated by ChatGPT, and this is a big one. I’m not able to tell yet which came first, ChatGPT using it and humans latching onto the rhetorical potential in it, or if ChatGPT is just seeing the pattern of humans using the word and then mimicking it. However it began it is now prolific. It will be interesting to see how often it is used in upcoming political commentary.

Watch for it. Then come back here and tell me what you’ve witnessed.

One more thing, …. please don’t use that word.