Navigating modern language
Should a thing's name tell you what the thing is?
Language is screwed.
The purpose of language, communication, has been sacrificed on the altar of who-knows-what, in the interests of promoting your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine.
My favorite current example is the Navigation Center at an unnamed city in the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Public Works, perhaps. Making street signs more readable? There are of course rules – federal, state, vegetable, and mineral – about those signs. The fonts are detailed, perhaps not quite into the advanced section of the Microsoft Word fonts panel, but perhaps requiring a separate center to keep track of and navigate the rules? We’re using “perhaps” and the question mark a lot here. That’s because the Navigation Center has nothing to do with street signs, or fonts.
Maybe it has something to do with coordinating the city’s computer systems with MapQuest. Those who’d argue that MapQuest has been supplanted by Google and Apple maps may be surprised to learn that it’s still around. Not that it matters, because the Navigation Center has nothing to do with maps.
Buses, maybe? (We’ve switched from “perhaps” to “maybe” but the language mystery is no closer to being solved.) Navigation Center could be a facility to plan more efficient bus routes. Except it’s not.
So what does the Navigation Center do? According to a recent city proclamation, the Navigation Center provides wrap-around services. Diaper-changing? Gift-wrapping? We are no closer to gleaning what’s being navigated.
Give up? It’s a homeless shelter.
It is indeed true that navigating the world when you’re homeless is difficult. Where do you get your mail? Where do you store your toothbrush? Where are you going to sleep? And if bad luck, bad decisions, or a pitiless world put you in that situation, how do you navigate out of it? Fair enough. People returning from an incarceration environment – ex-cons, for the most part – might also need navigation. So might those reentering productive society from addiction situations – recovering junkies. And if the most unfortunate among us have to choose among those various facilities, perhaps there could be a service to assist them: a Navigation Center for navigation centers.
I’m not curious enough to check, but I suspect the point of the naming is that the center will not just give people a place to sleep, but will help put them on a path toward not being homeless. That is laudable, and mocking the name is not meant to mock that goal. But if you give a thing a name that doesn’t tell people what it is, what good is the name? Do the homeless have a linguistic hobo’s mark that tells them a navigation center is a shelter?
People who can’t spell or understand verb-subject agreement will tell you that it’s a living, breathing language. Thusly, the language of being homeless has changed in recent years. Some are unhoused, and some are rough sleeping.
It’s still cold.