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"

No.

You would have had experience of sexual assault.

She witnessed a sexual assault.

It's nothing to do with being angry, it is to do with words meaning something.

She could also factually claim she had experience of it, because it is an experience that happened in her life. She had an experience of sexual assault.

The dictionary definition of experience is: practical contact with and observation of facts or events.

That’s why words often need further definition. To define if it was practical contact or observation, when the first word is. It enough all on its own. Hence experience and lived experience. Words mean something, yes. In fact words also have more than one meaning 😉

Loads of people have experience of sexual assault who have not been assaulted - including the assailant himself. If you want to hear from people who have been assaulted then you would need to ask people who have been assaulted.

I agree with the definitions that others have added to the thread, but "lived experience" always did make me a bit twitchy in some cases because there was an excessive weight put on it with service users in an old job.

On the one hand, lived experience was hugely relevant to shaping the service. On the other, it was hugely narrowing to target everything at a lived experience that wasn't actually improving things.

We provided mentoring for individuals from a particular background. Part of the programme was to help them see beyond their lived experience, rather than validating the common notion that they couldn't change/improve their circumstances.

If someone said that they had experience of sexual assault, any reasonable person would think they meant they had been assaulted, fgs!

In your example, SHE would have had experience of sexual assault, whereas YOU would have had experience of witnessing an assault.

No. Saying you have “experienced” and that you have “Experience of” are very different, with very different connotations. I was also merely using SA as a different analogy to racism/ableism.

What the average person thinks and what is linguistically correct are very different things, too!

Very interesting - thank you! I had no idea there was such a distinction between nursing and midwifery. You learn something new every day!

How do you cope with your job with all the screaming and blood it entails?? Always wondered that about midwifery! 🤭 Year ago, a neighbour's daughter was a midwife, and she said it was the best contraception ever! 😂

It is absolutely frightening how many people do not understand that tautologies are bad grammar and incorrect English, and even more scary that they think incorrect English is just fine and dandy.

As a book editor, looks like I'll never be out of a job, at least! 😂

I'm quite sure that our authors want to punch us regularly. Poor little things, having their books made readable! 😂

I've got experience of the middle ages because I read some books about it; I don't have a lived experience of it, because I wasn't around back then to see how it "Actually" was.

....Someone on here called me pedantic. I'm actually very mild in my pedantry compared to my colleagues. In fact, I'm the least pedantic in the department.

Being a bit pedantic about where exactly on the scale you fall there, aren’t ye?

I'm shutting up on this topic now. 🤭Promise.

Me shutting up.

😂😂😂 I'm serious! I read a jacket and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it, and they come back with twenty corrections! THEY drive ME nuts!!

I have experienced homelessness - as a child. I find the phrase 'experience of' in that context akin to saying 'I have got a book' - 'got' is grammatically wrong there, and 'of' is redundant after experience. Lived in front of experience is redundant and horrible English.

I have experience of middle age. Not sure if I should say sadly because my youth has long gone, or gladly because, as they say, it is better than the alternative….

They are not bad grammar. They may be bad style (and you will note my use of a verbal form suggesting it is not always definitively so,) but poor style may be expressed in perfectly correct grammar.

One could infer something about the quality of modern editing skills...

😱

I think one of the most beautiful things about language, and the English language being no exception, is that it is a living and constantly evolving thing. Words that did not exist, that many people fervently deny being “correct” or “real” are being entered into the Oxford dictionary every single year. This is because it isn’t fixed and never can be.

Updated terms like “lived experience” often come about for legal reasons, where there is further clarification needed and no room for interpretation can be left. As has been expressed many times, there needs to be a simple clarification between the experience of Ableism by the carer and the experience of Ableism by the disabled person. Lived experience is a simple and accurate way to do this and realistically, it is not confusing in the least. Not unless you are being deliberately obtuse.

struggles with paws to undo zipped mouth 😂

It is absolutely frightening how many people do not understand that tautologies are bad grammar and incorrect English, and even more scary that they think incorrect English is just fine and dandy

You never studied pragmatics or sociolinguistics, right? Shoulda done History of the English Language instead of the foreign language option in your famous BA/MA.

Frightening?

Why frightening?

Language is rich and evolving. And perfect and precise grammar is really only required in certain contexts

Little bit melodramatic, op. Frightening indeed 😆

Many people have explained that there is a valid reason for the differentiation of different types of experience. Good thing none of us are so easily scared!

I actually agree that it's good to know what signals your language sends and to be aware of relevant conventions. You should always be using the tool to create an effect consciously and with intention.

But that's not the same as saying GrAMMaR hAZ 2 BE cORReKT!!!!! with the insane commitment of a 1762 Latin scholar who's just laboriously applied the principles of the study of those languages to English and thinks he's onto something.