A Relatable Poll

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a question to put before the great minds of the Dope, especially any of you who have taught high-school English. Is “relatable” really a proper, standard English word? The context in question is tenth-grade-level literary criticism – “I found the characters in this short story to be very relatable, because they’re just like me.” I’m grading student essays, and this usage keeps coming up over and over and over, and it’s starting to annoy me. So, a poll:

A) It’s an illiteracy almost on a level with “irregardless”. What are they teaching these kids these days???
B) It’s not exactly wrong, but there are lots of other ways to express the same idea, and almost any of them would be better.
C) I don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.

Personally, I’m leaning towards option B. What do you think?

2

It’s a word:

This definition of the word is new, but that’s not an issue, unless you think you have a rodent attached to your computer.

Since the meaning is clear, I’d mark it as acceptable.

3

Thanks, RealityChuck, that helps. But let me see if I can explain what’s still bothering me. (Forgive me if this doesn’t make much sense; the kiddies, they’re destroying my ability to think in coherent sentences.)

There seems to be a slight difference between the way the word is used in the dictionary examples and the way the kids are using it. They’re not saying the story is relatable to anything, or with anything, it’s just generally “relatable”, meaning “I can relate to it”. To my ear, that sounds awkward, clunky, if not outright wrong. But it’s quite possible that it’s all in my imagination, because I have been reading an awful lot of horrendous teenage prose lately. Am I seriously overthinking this?

4

Does tenth-grade mean about fifteen years old (roughly)?

If so, that’s an age group that uses language like a tool to carve out identity - some of it will stick, but a lot of it will fade into passing memory. T’was ever thus, see Oxford English Dictionaries, passim.

5

I’d say B. It makes me cringe, a little, but it’s not nearly as horrible as any number of other constructions common in student papers.

6

It’s wrong and you should explain to them why it’s wrong and how to use it correctly, if at all. People are getting too lazy - make them learn a rule or two. It won’t kill them.

7

Alas, I am not their teacher. I’m a reader for the state end-of-grade standardized testing. If I were the teacher, a lot of things would be different.