A shopping mall and office complex in downtown Montreal is being criticized for using the popular children's song 'Baby Shark' to discourage unhoused people from loitering in its emergency exit stairwells.
Language has power. You’ll notice successful effort on the right to get pundits to refer to Oil as Energy. Oil has negative implications, energy has positive. Homeless has negative implications for the person, unhoused has negative implications for the government.
In the US they mean different things, as homeless includes people living in other people’s homes. That can include people whose house just burnt down and are living with friends or family because they lost their permanent residence (home). Unhoused is about where they are staying.
Are you suggesting that the incorrect terms should be used to cater to those of you that don’t know there is a difference? Even if you were unaware that there is actually a difference, was the intent and meaning of the headline lost in confusion, or did you understand exactly what they meant?
The “correct” term is the one the target audience understands to mean what is happening.
The “difference”, again, is academic. They are de facto used interchangeably. Did the author know the difference? No idea. Could anyone tell, which group the people in question belong to? Probably not.
Welcome to the euphemism treadmill
Language has power. You’ll notice successful effort on the right to get pundits to refer to Oil as Energy. Oil has negative implications, energy has positive. Homeless has negative implications for the person, unhoused has negative implications for the government.
In the US they mean different things, as homeless includes people living in other people’s homes. That can include people whose house just burnt down and are living with friends or family because they lost their permanent residence (home). Unhoused is about where they are staying.
People on the street are homeless and unhoused.
And you really think people use and understand these terms like that?
You may be correct in the academic sense, but completely wrong in all other senses.
Are you suggesting that the incorrect terms should be used to cater to those of you that don’t know there is a difference? Even if you were unaware that there is actually a difference, was the intent and meaning of the headline lost in confusion, or did you understand exactly what they meant?
The “correct” term is the one the target audience understands to mean what is happening.
The “difference”, again, is academic. They are de facto used interchangeably. Did the author know the difference? No idea. Could anyone tell, which group the people in question belong to? Probably not.
So what exactly are you trying to achieve here?
So what did you think unhoused meant? Did any meaning get lost?
That’s the thing: You can’t know that.
We don’t know what was meant, we don’t know what happened.
So the autistic insistence on nitpicky details adds zero clarity to anything. It’s inherently unknowable.
He isn’t correct in an academic sense. They are synonyms. Unhoused is being used because homeless has negative connotation to it.