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Is community the most overused word in English?

I am part of the community. Several communities, in fact. The ginger community. The bespectacled community. The messy-desked community. And the sick-of-the-word-community community.

Communities are everywhere these days. If you have got something to say, and there is more than one of you, you are a community. Some of these groups actually are communities in one of the dictionary senses — distinct religious or cultural group s. So one can accept “the Muslim community,” even if it does not seem terribly helpful to lump together so many distinct strands of thought and tradition. But “the physics community,” as physicists were described on the Today programme last week? Or — my favourite — “the settled community,” as coined by “the traveller community”? Come on. The “settled community” isn’t some sectional group. It is everyone apart from “the traveller community.”

It turns out, though, that there have long been communities. In the 18th century there were references to “the commercial community,” meaning merchants. And in 1797, Godwin’s Inquirer declared that “the literary world is an immense community.” But why has the past decade or so seen such a surge in linguistic communitarianism? Graeme Diamond, an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, suggests it could be down to the importance, in a fractured world, of five letters at the end of community. “Unity” suggests loyalty and integration and shared interests. “It implies agreement,” he offers.

But how healthy is that? The people most frequently heard speaking of “communities” are government ministers, and it is easy to see why. Once a “community leader” (usually self-appointed) has consented to something, you can do what you like. The problem is that those pesky actual people — with their inconvenient habits of thinking for themselves — get ignored. So hear this plea: for the sake of a healthy society, do not be part of the community. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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