The current Swine/H1N1 Flu Epi/Pandemic has raised a number of interesting issues around language – such as what it should be called and how bad it should be labeled as being.
The first issue is around the name. A lot of people have raised a lot of concerns about the official branding of the current outbreak. The Mexican government didn’t want it to be called the Mexican flu or Mexican swine flu. After seeing how the Egyptian government responded to the “swine” part of the name – calling for the slaughter of all of the nation’s pigs – one can’t blame the Mexicans. American pork producers are similarly upset with calling it the swine flu; their concern is that consumers would shy away from pork and bacon for fear of catching the flu.
In response, health officials have attempted to brand it “H1N1 flu.” The effort is, of course, failing.
“Mexican swine flu” and “swine flu” caught on because they anchored something we know and understand (flu) with a different word with which we are also familiar so that we know it’s a variant on that which we know. The new word is one we use and it modifies something else we use, so they are easy to use together. The phrase makes the new, familiar. The problem with H1N1 flu is that it takes something with which are familiar (flu) and attaches it to something for which we have no reference point (what’s an H1N1?). That leaves us either having to explain what H1N1 flu is (“the official name for swine flu”) or simply ignoring it. Neither solution accomplishes what the re-namers intended. To succeed the new name has to be descriptive (the flu did start with pigs in Mexico) and intellectually accessible (words and concepts that make sense).
One solution would be to name the flu after the doctor who first identified it, or following the example of U.S. Weather Service have a list of names that get assigned to flu outbreaks in the order in which they appear (no one negatively associates Rita’s Water Ice with 2005’s Hurricane Rita).
But it’s too late for such solutions now, at this point the name “swine flu” will be harder to contain than the flu itself. It’s called swine flu, and will be associated with Mexico, there’s not a lot anyone can do about it.
