Recently, I have noticed a trend in the media and within the general population toward referring to people as “that” instead of “who,” as in “So-and-so is a politician that is known for fighting corruption.” According to the rules governing the use of relative pronouns (including “that,” “which,” and “who”), you can use “that” interchangeably with “who” or “whom.” (This is more common in spoken than in written English.) However, I find the use of “that” to refer to people somewhat disturbing, because it objectifies human beings; that is, it treats human beings as things.

I wonder whether this usage is becoming more popular or I’ve just become more sensitive to it. Recently, for example, I encountered the term “brownfield” in the course of working on Financing Real Estate Investments For Dummies. A brownfield site is a piece of real estate that’s known to be or suspected of being polluted. Perhaps it formerly housed a gas station, dry cleaning operation, car wash, or production plant – a business generally known for potentially leeching toxins into the ground. After seeing the word in print, I began to notice it in dozens of stories, simply because I’ve become more aware of it now. Perhaps the same thing is going on with my perception of “that” being used more often to refer to people.

If the media is, in fact, using “that” more and more often to refer to people, I have a couple theories of why this might be so:

• Because the world is becoming more populated – the perceived value of each individual on the planet decreases as the number of individuals increases.
• As we observe more cruelty in the world via the media, our minds subconsciously try to cope with it by thinking of individual human beings as things rather than people.

Of course, maybe something more mundane is at work here – perhaps people are simply less sensitive to the difference. I hope this is the case.