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A lapse beyond language/ Journalists "kill" police officers

2026-06-08 10:08:00, Opinione Luan Rama

A serious criminal incident, in which a State Police employee was killed and another was injured, inadvertently revealed to us another phenomenon that deserves attention.

Because, it appears and reappears as evidence of unexplained linguistic ignorance from those who more than others must prove that they possess the culture of the language: Journalists.

Beyond the gravity of the event itself, almost all the journalists who reported it said the same sentence: "Police officer Enea Mekolli was killed and another officer, Edison Adri, was injured!".

If we refer to the lexical meaning of the words used, we find ourselves faced with a paradox: While the criminal killed one police officer and injured another, fellow journalists, with their language, "killed" the officer.

At first glance, it may seem like an insignificant detail. But the culture of language is built precisely on such details. Words are not simply tools to fill out sentences; they carry certain meanings and, when used carelessly, can distort the very message they are intended to convey.

In Albanian, the word "effective" means the total number of soldiers or military personnel of a department, a sub-department, a military unit or the army of a state. Consequently, by effective we also understand the number of police officers in a unit, in a police department, in a police station, in a directorate or in the entire State Police.

In all these cases, the word "effective" refers to a group of people and not a specific individual.

Let's say, for example, that "the police station staff consists of 120 employees", or that "the police force staff was increased by 10 more police officers".

But, we cannot say "120 officers make up the police station" or "the number of law enforcement officers was increased by 10 more officers."

So, with the word "effective", in neither case do we mean a single person.

Therefore, one cannot say "the police officer was killed", but "the police officer was killed".

Of course, languages ??are not frozen systems. They are constantly changing. Words acquire new meanings, lose old meanings, and adapt to the needs of communication.

This is a well-known process in language evolution.

Journalism is not just reporting facts. It is also a culture of expression. The journalist does not only inform about what has happened; he offers models of public communication every day. For this reason, his responsibility does not end with the truthfulness of the news, but also extends to the accuracy of the language with which he conveys it.

But the issue is not about possible misunderstanding; it is about the relationship we have with language.

Standard Albanian clearly distinguishes between collective nouns (effective, collective, personnel, staff, class, population, crew) and individual nouns (employee, policeman, soldier, student, member).

Therefore, the phrase "one effective" creates a semantic conflict, because the singular is being assigned to a noun that in Albanian names a group or a quantity of people.

It is true that languages ??are constantly evolving and that intensive use can lead to the emergence of new meanings. However, until a semantic extension is accepted and codified by the norm, public communication must rely on consolidated forms of the standard.

In this specific case, formulations such as "police officer", "police officer", or "police officer" remain more accurate from a normative-semantic point of view.

Respecting the linguistic norm is not a matter of formality; it is part of the professional responsibility of public communication.