Observations on language

A while ago, before we realised that the countryside wasn't about protecting hedgerows and making daisy chains in meadows but about killing furry things and turning cows into cannibals, to be rural was to be cool. People flocked to festivals in fields and tweed was the pattern of the season. Now, however, cities are so in again that even festivals are heading there. Manchester's Move "urban festival" in July will provide three days of music - but with easy transport access and no muddy fields or fumbling with tents.

This is urban in the traditional sense of the word: an "urban festival" in an urban location. But urban is moving on. It has started to be used not to mean the opposite to rural but to describe people who are from an ethnic minority, or a deprived area. A woman described a group of people I was meeting recently as "urban". What she meant was that they were largely black and lived on a council estate. Similarly, when a new acquaintance heard that I live in a part of inner-city London, he referred to it as urban. He did not mean that it is non-rural - after all, the whole of London is urban - but that it is a multicultural area with high levels of deprivation and crime.

Dr Miriam Meyerhoff, a sociolinguist at the University of Edinburgh, suggests that urban is being used as a metonym (one aspect of a thing used to stand for the whole thing). Many black people do come from urban areas, so it is used as a catch-all phrase to describe them. Meyerhoff suggests it is a safe word for the politically correct to use as it could be taken as either good or bad: "Calling someone urban could suggest either urban poor or urban chic."

Jack Chambers, of the University of Toronto, argues that "urban" is merely the latest attempt to move on from labels that have negative connotations, such as "ghetto" and "inner city". "When the label starts to sting, we have to find a new one that doesn't," Chambers suggests.

Neutral words are usually substituted for contentious words in order to cover up something of which people might disapprove. Thus, foundation hospitals, like NHS trusts, are so called to make them sound vaguely charitable and well-meaning and to avoid the dread word "private". Similarly, the military uses "collateral damage" for dead babies and "friendly fire" for killing people on our own side.

In that light, the growing use of the word "urban" suggests something rather sinister: that we think it is a bad thing to be poor or black. Urban also reminds successful black people that some may think they don't belong with other successful people. The music of Mel B (Scary Spice), the only black Spice Girl, is often described as having an urban rhythm. In other words, black music stars can achieve success, earn lots of money and buy houses in the country. But let's call them urban and then we won't forget that they don't really fit in - in fact, people such as Mel B come from a world best described as scary.

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