The legacy of Scott Morrison’s government is that the public debate about pandemic restrictions has been dichotomized, he said.

Redressing this balance in ways that avoid harmful and false dichotomizing, could serve several critical functions in the context of COVID-19, particularly in terms of avoiding growing inequity.

“If we’re too positive, it can become an empty platitude. The ‘and’ addresses our natural instinct to dichotomize an experience and call it either good or bad.”

Much of the rhetoric surrounding immigration and potential reform is dichotomized: There is the “us,” the legal citizens of the United States, and the “them,” the foreign others whom President Trumpov’s proposed wall would obstruct.

Yet when language scholars try to debunk the spurious rules, the dichotomizing mindset imagines that they are trying to abolish all standards of good writing.