When you call people citizens you’re calling them to rise– calling on them to rise above the lowest common denominator. You really need to think about what’s being said when people are called folks. It’s encouraging you not to do too much.

…

We don’t lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Troop. We lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Now I think that kind of euphemistic language– it’s very important when you talk about troops it in a way takes the individuality away

Too many of her complaints seem to pertain to these little lexical choices. If she is just using these as illustrations of a broader phenomenon, she should make it much clearer. Instead she comes off as nitpicky and linguistically prescriptive.

She makes absolutely no sense from a linguistic point of view. I agree with her characterization of the differences in connotation between “citizens” and “folks”, “soldiers” and “troops”. But in the first snippet above, she’s upset that the abstract “citizens” has been replaced by the more personal, colloquial “folks”. In the second snippet, she’s upset that the personal “soldier” has been replaced by the abstract “troops”. So which is contributing to our country’s growing ignorance: personal, colloquial language or impersonal, abstract, academic language?

BTW, pretty neat that PBS has the complete transcripts right there!