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"

Social workers assess for secured care for children and young people, mental health treatment orders for people with mental health concerns, they’re part of the process for a compulsory treatment orders, or indeed when someone needs to be sectioned. All of which limit liberty in some way.

Yes it used to be a vocational training but it hasn’t been that way for over 20 years, because the landscape changed, what is needed in social work changed, the complexity of cases changed.

It’s a completely different profession to the vocational work of 30 odd years ago - I’ve been around long enough to know.

Before, it was an option, but now, nursing degrees require a degree, and the fees have rocketed since 2009.

Vocational training is far more accessible than making everyone do a degree for a vocation, and you used to get paid to train, instead of being stiffed for 30k to do a job that society really needs.

If key workers must have degrees, the council should pay for them. As far as I'm aware, you don't have to have a degree in teaching to be a teacher at secondary level, you just need a PGCE, assuming you have a degree in the subject you want to teach. At primary level, the same thing has happened to education as it has to nursing. You used to go to teacher training college, but now you have to have a degree in education for primary and get stiffed for 30k instead of earning as you train and learn. And I bet these degrees are padded out with made-up parts of the course, probably using faux-complex language like "lived experience," because they have to try to justify the shakedown. The shakedown being that the government no longer has to pay for education and the universities have to recoup that money somehow. Making up disciplines and forcing people to do degrees in them instead of offering a vocational route to the thing they want to do is a great way to do that. Universities are on the shake and make. That's my lived experience.

Unfortunately, in these sorts of discussions, that seems to happen on both sides - lots of people talking and not much listening going on.

This is such an ill informed post. You are ill informed on every subject and yet still somehow you are here posturing as an expert, someone with zero experience lived or otherwise of any of this!

Interesting. Do you think that social work degrees are harder than the previous vocational training? Or is it the same level but in degree format? Could the vocational course not have taught the new material? I can't imagine being 18 and taking on all that debt for a role which isn't even very well-paid at the end of it. Why make things so hard for young people.

About your first para, when it comes to sectioning someone, isn't that a decision that a psychiatrist would make, or is there a panel of experts and the social worker is a part of it?

How on earth would you know what lived experience I have and don't have? And you can't argue with my lived experience. That's the point - I've lived it, and only I. Therefore what I say about my lived experience goes. That is my truth.

Hey, maybe there is a use for those daft phrases after all!

@ThisFluentBiscuit
You've been told over and over dozens of times but you still rigidly stick to your false belief.

It's not a new fangled term. It's been around since the 19th century and has relevance in social as well as research settings.

In qualitativee phenomenologicall research, lived experience refers to the first-hand involvement or direct experiencess* and choices of a given person, and the knowledgee* that they gain from it, as opposed to the knowledge a given person gains from second-hand or mediated source.[1][2] It is a category of qualitative research together with those that focus on society and culture and those that focus on language and communication.[3]

Hth

The irony... 🙄

Then you'd better go tell the research scientists and historic philosophers

It is a category of qualitative research and has been used since the early 19th century

Cambridge dictionary
The organizationn^ has a stronggfocuss on the livedd^ experiencee^ of mentall^ illnesss^.

We are ignoringg^ the actuall^ liveddexperiencess of the poorr^.

All the candidatess^ for the jobb^ have livedd^ experiencee^ of the asylummprocesss.

From LSE:

blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/12/09/what-social-scientists-talk-about-when-they-talk-about-lived-experience/

Really OP you are arguing against academics, scientists, medical people and dictionaries. I really do think you need to step down. You really do not have the authoritative voice on this.

I wouldn't need all these degrees and faux-complexity to figure out who needs what services. I'd know within ten minutes of talking to someone at home if they needed services or a kick up the arse. 🤭 I'd be the most efficient social worker any council had ever seen.

I have experience of stuff relevant to my work..

Some of it is second hand but very closely involved, observing, consulting, being in a clients home.

Some of it is lived experience of that same thing in my home.

Both are useful, but not the same.

Excellent, please come and teach us how it’s done.

And there are many other official voices that consider it incorrect English.

It's not a skill you can teach, unfortunately. It's just common sense, which has been educated out of many people.

OP…I’ve got no words. Are you just on a mission to wind people up?

I would like to point out thought, since you are so obsessed with language, that midwives don’t nurse anyone. Midwifery is a separate profession to nursing and your casual use of this word proves to me that you don’t know much about many of the professions you’re criticising.

Really, and what qualifies you to make that assertion?

@ThisFluentBiscuit

And there are many other official voices that consider it incorrect English.
Who?

As has been explained countless times, it’s jargon that is useful to people working in certain fields. It’s a shorthand that saves time. If you don’t work in those fields you don’t have to worry about it.

It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t technically make sense. Plenty of specialist language doesn’t.

I am getting the sense that OP doesn’t actually care about the linguistic element at all, and actually has some issue with the politics of the entire idea of lived experience being of particular value in certain areas.

The Oxford English dictionary does not recognise the phrase. Neither does Merriam Webster, which is the American equivalent of the OED. So out of the English-speaking world's three major dictionaries, only one includes it, the Cambridge Dictionary. The OED is generally considered the authority.

Plus, 71% of members of the Medical Journalists' Association don't like the phrase because it's a tautology.

The OED is by far the largest assembly of the English language ever created, and that idiotic phrase, lived experience, isn't even in there. See screenshot.

See above.

I don't, I object to such a stupid phrase being in lay use.

That's the entire point, I do have to worry about it, because it's infiltrated lay speech and it's as infuriating as hell with the way it falsely elevates someone's experience over another person's, when used in lay contexts. I. Keep. Reading. It.

?? I have not mentioned midwifery.

No, I'm on a mission to stamp out bad grammar and incorrect usage - at least in lay contexts.

Don't get me started on the modern lack of hyphens and readability access.

I have experience working in prisons and with prisoners... I have no lived experience of being a prisoner