WL Semantics Police: Postponement vs. Cancellation

31 March 2020

Hello fellow grammarians and loyal disciples of the English language! My name is Josh Gates and I’m a seventh grade English teacher at a school district in one of America’s major urban centers.

Like many Americans, I’ve been stuck working at home during the last two weeks. As my state’s governor has issued a shelter-in-place “lockdown” notice, it doesn’t appear I’m going anywhere anytime soon.

On the one hand, this shutdown is something of a blessing.

Allow me to explain: Teaching America’s youths is fucking miserable and, due to union rules, I will keep getting paid my extremely shitty salary regardless of whether or not we’re in session/I make any valid attempt at remote teaching. The aforementioned remote learning is basically fucked, but we’re all going through the motions like good citizens. Yesterday, I could’ve swore that Derrick had me muted and was actually watching pornography on a different tab when he was supposed to have been mastering past perfective participles. In all honesty, none of these kids were going to meet grade standards (upon which my end of year bonus relies) anyway, and they’re generally all hormonal shitheads who laugh at me behind my underpaid back, so fuck it.

On the other hand, there’s only so many episodes of Tiger King: Goddamn am I bored.

On the other other hand, being bored sure as hell beats working as American society’s socioeconomic whipping boy, so whatever.

One thing that has gotten to me – in addition to the interminable, endless passage of time – is our nation’s selectively rosy usage of ‘cancellation’ and ‘postponement’ during the ongoing health crisis.

In short, while relatively few things have been outright ‘cancelled’, many important things have been ‘postponed.’

For some things, often those that do not occur on a regular, annual basis, this is appropriate. For example, the Olympics were quite literally postponed: Instead of summer 2020, it looks like summer 2021 and not, critically, simply skipping to 2024. Other major events – such as the Bonnaroo Music Festival, Kentucky Derby, and Boston Marathon – have been postponed to dates/times outside of their regularly scheduled occurrence and, thus, justify usage of ‘postponement.’ For example, the Boston Marathon, which is traditionally ran in the Spring, will now occur in September. Once again, this is an appropriate usage of postponement.

But then, there are the other events that have been ‘postponed’, often ‘indefinitely.’ These include the NHL and NBA seasons, the Tony Awards, and several other music concerts (spoiler alert: one of which I spent my precious dollars on). These events occur each annually – although the NBA seemingly doesn’t really start until the first-second week of the playoffs. If an event is postponed, never made up at a differing time/place, and resumes upon the next expected date, this isn’t a postponement – it’s an outright cancellation. Perhaps you’re tickets may be redeemed at the next iteration of the event and, in some sense, serve as an administrative postponement, but the reality remains: the event itself was fucking cancelled, it’s not happening.

Now, you may be asking yourself: Why does this matter and why the fuck do you care? … aka how miserably bored are you?

Let me explain: Corporations have shown a growing ability to co-opt the English language and use it toward narrow commercial ends at the expense of truth, actual definitions, correct usage, etc. In this case, using ‘postponement’ implies: “Oops! A little glitch occurred, but no worries! We’ll have you up and running soon…” Whereas, ‘cancellation’ means: “Yeah, shit hit the fan and we’re now consequently fucked… You should probably go wash your hands.”

This is because the truth in this case would cause people to ask for refunds, sell stock, and generally admit the reality of uncertainty and chaos that governs our current state of affairs. While I’m a mere English teacher, I’m pretty sure the effects of uncertainty and chaos – ie. selling stock, bank runs, demanding refunds – are not great for sound business activity in a capitalist system. Thus, it is in the corporation’s best interest to manage “the truth” of the situation by bending semantics, word usage, terminology, etc. to their own ends – even if that means distorting terms so much that they’ve lost their original meaning.

What’s even worse, this occurs in a greater context of a post-truth, “Fake News” world in which, thanks largely to our president, 2+2=5 and the first entry in the dictionary isn’t ‘Aardvark’, but ‘America.’ In other words, businesses now control and modify our language to regulate and control our economic behavior. Essentially, we live in  Orwell’s 1984 and have transformed the wonderfully nasal, guttural English language into meaningless doublespeak. What matters to President Trump or a given company isn’t the given facts of reality, but how people will react to those facts.

‘Cancellation’ becomes ‘postponement.’ ‘Kidnapping’ becomes ‘extraordinary rendition.’ ‘Torture becomes ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’ And so it goes, on and on.

Therefore, I urge you and the five other Russian bots reading this article to stand up and demand accurate use of language by our governments and capitalist overlords. If Derrick and his colleagues would get the fuck off PornHub and maybe listen to one of these lectures, they’d learn that what we say – the way we use our language – does actually matter. Especially in times like these in which society is vulnerable.

Editor’s Note: Readers should be aware that Mr. Gates readily admits that “(he) would retract his article if the TicketMaster would refund his ticket”, the ‘capitalist overlords’ would offer him a small increase in his annual pittance, or the powers-that-be would just put some (ANY) live sports back on television.