To HATE the phrase "lived experience"?

[ThisFluentBiscuit]

Pet peeve incoming:

By definition, experience is lived! You can hardly have an experience without living it, fgs! And what's the opposite of lived experience? An experience that you've had, yet haven't lived? It's complete nonsense. It's used to sound falsely clever when an argument is weak, like "In my personal experience." Well, of course your experience is personal! You would hardly say, "In my neighbour's experience, I find Florida too cold in December."

And it's officially wrong, because it's a tautology. Like "top-floor penthouse."

I don't know whether it's the innate stupidity of the phrase or the fact that it's a linguistic fad that annoys me the most.

"stamps off"

I feel like I’m in a parallel universe this morning OP! I can’t understand how people don’t get what you’re saying 🤣

@Cattreesea @andyouwillknowusbythetrailofdead
We've coped without the phrase for centuries and now in the last couple of years it's apparently become essential.

🙄🙄🙄

Language changes. Terms are dropped out of common usage. New terms are added. The state of language is flux. Because if not, we'd still be speaking early modern English which was based on German.

Keep up with the times or fall into archaicism.

I'd rather hear the phrase 'lived experience' every day for the rest of my life than have to read "it's a tautology" one more time. Have you learned a new word OP?

No, you would not have experience of being depressed. You would have experience of living with someone who is depressed, or experience of caring for someone who is depressed. You would be experienced as a caregiver of someone with depression. But you would not have experience of being depressed if you had never had depression. Same as your husband would not have experience of being a caregiver for a depressed spouse if you had never had depression.

I have experience of schizophrenia as a mental health nurse. I have seen the effects it can have on I do not have however lived experience as I do not have the condition myself.

@ThisFluentBiscuit

Not one person has been able to explain to me how "lived experience" is not a tautology.

Primary and secondary source.
Primary - experienced by the individual.
Secondary - reported by those who didn't experience it personally.

The fact that you're annoyed does not mean the phrase is good English.

Difference being that you can leave the thread but “lived experience” seems to be leaving its very specific domain of health and social care, and entering the vernacular… which would be a shame because it does sound stupid in an everyday context!

In the second example, you would say "second-hand experience," although we all recognise that second-hand experience is not actual experience.

Exactly! Thank you!

I suspect it sounds stupid in an academic context as well. It's faux-academic.

I loathe the phrase too OP, for the reasons you’ve mentioned, but more because it’s a phrase that’s almost always used with an air of incredibly smug moral superiority.

I'm not annoyed. I just have a preference for variety of expression. When a person uses one phrase excessively I find it distracting and tedious to read. It suggests to me the person has a limited vocabulary and/or limited argument because they need to repeat themselves. I would never normally voice that opinion, but this is a thread to discuss such things.

I don't agree OP! I recently started a thread about buses and I had so many posters saying that only poor people with no car and no other options would use buses. I had started the thread whilst sitting on a bus and I am not poor and I own a car. No matter how many times I suggested that some people choose to use the bus, lots of people just wouldn't accept it. I had to wheel out the whole 'lived experience' phrase because I was literally living through an experience at that exact time that posters were denying it could ever happen.

You and I would say we experienced Trump being an idiot with Zelensky because we watched it on TV, read about it and discussed it. It happened in our lifetime. But we didn't have lived/primary source experience of it,

You don't have experience of schizophrenia as a mental-health nurse. You have experience of treating people with schizophrenia.

I know what you mean, of course. I understand the short-hand because you informed me that you're a mental-health nurse. But if you just said "I have experience of schizophrenia," I would assume that you had the condition. I wouldn't think that you had some kind of non-experience whereas only the people with "lived experience" of the condition really had it.

Why did you have to say “lived experience” though?

You could just say “I own a car but I sometimes choose to use buses. In fact I am on a bus right now” Do you not think saying “I have lived experience of using buses” sounds a bit silly? 😜

We experienced being witnesses to that horror. That's primary experience (that of witnessing it).

Why didn’t you just say ‘I own a car and choose to use the bus’?

I mean, you could have said "I'm experiencing an enjoyable bus ride right now." Or "My current bus ride is very enjoyable." Or "I am loving my bus ride."

Oh my god - you and I did not “experience” Trump being an idiot. We were not there. We observed it. Someone who was there, would still sound very silly if they said “I have lived experience of Trump being an idiot”. Even if they were there, I’d still argue that unless they were Zelensky, they observed it.

Because it doesn't communicate as clearly the fact that they are denying something that is happening to me in that moment. I am literally choosing to use a bus in the moment that you are insisting that nobody would ever do this! It's more powerful than just saying 'I own a car and choose to use the bus'.

Bit over emotional there. We'll have to agree to disagree.

Seems @Peaceandquietandacuppa completely disagrees with you.

I think that what you're not understanding (because you have no experience, lived or otherwise!) is that the standard use of experience in healthcare settings means professional experience, not as a patient. Therefore lived is useful in that context to differentiate.

Yes medical professionals could say "I have experience of treating schizophrenia" but they typically say "I have experience of schizophrenia". This is standard usage in the field. Maybe it's wrong but you won't change it. That's why there's a benefit to lived experience as a phrase to clearly signal a patient as opposed to a professional.

There are lots of shorthand phrases, slang, abbreviations etc in medicine and in the NHS. This is just another one.