The very fact you are able to understand the words you're reading right now—that we are all able to communicate with each other using language—means we must share a vast body of beliefs. That’s the central argument of this book:
Truth is the condition that makes language possible.
I decided to make this post free. You’re welcome. :)
—Tina
Notes:
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Table of contents with chapter links at the end of each post.
6
Social Influences on Semantic Change
WHEN PEOPLE LIE or stretch the truth, they do so because they want to make things appear other than they are, but this does not necessarily involve interfering with language itself. No one rushes to update the dictionary or revise the grammar books just because I said I walked the dog when I, in fact, did not walk the dog. Indeed, if I, a lone individual, made a conscious effort to violate standard language usage to make things appear other than they are, there would be little to no chance of my new usage becoming widespread. Instead, I would probably just get laughed at, as was the case with Reagan when he, in defense of his school lunch program, declared ketchup to be a vegetable. Apparently not even a sitting president can stretch the meaning of vegetable to include a condiment consisting largely of high fructose corn syrup. But whenever the passion to distort the truth is shared by a great number of people, especially those who have great influence, changes to language are possible, and such doublespeak can be used as a vehicle of distortion. Words are then put under a truth stress and their meanings change accordingly. But the process of semantic shift takes time, perhaps enough time for the untruth to accomplish whatever it was intended to do.
To give a concrete illustration of this process, we start with a relatively recent semantic shift for which there is abundant firsthand knowledge. Unfortunately it concerns a symbol rather than a word, but in this example the procedure for semantic adjustment clearly stems from untruth, which is why I think it is a good place to begin.
In the late sixties and early seventies, college professors began grading with Bs work that would previously have received a C. As a result, grades changed meaning. A B or even a B-, which had previously been a mildly honorific grade, came to mean merely acceptable or average, and a C, which previously meant acceptable or average, came to mean below average.
It didn’t take long for this Vietnam-era grade inflation, which was well-documented at the time, to become well-known to those with an interest in these matters. A few attributed the inflation to students simply performing better in school during that time than at any other time in the past fifty years. Others saw it, more plausibly, as part of the trend toward egalitarian ideals in education. But most believed it to be a response to military draft requirements, which at the time allowed deferments for college students. The unpopular Vietnam War draft, it was thought, put pressure on professors to avoid flunking students out of college—grades, after all, had become a matter of life and death.
Whatever the motivation behind the change, the fact is a very large number of professors chose to tell lies—or untruths, exaggerations, falsehoods, call it what you will—but these were only effective for a short time. Once lying becomes normal it ceases to be effective, ceases even to be a lie. The language of untruth morphs into a new vocabulary for truth. Thus the new B soon became translated as the old C, and things went on much as they had been before. In the new language, students are stung or pleased by a B- just as they were once stung or pleased by a C. Similarly, faculty who once felt queasy about giving a B to an average student now do so without misgivings. Faculty who initially refused to go along with the inflation are now forced to do so or they unfairly penalize their own good students by speaking an archaic language. The language has shifted, despite the intentions of its speakers, and now anyone who wishes to be understood must adopt it.
Political motivations for semantic change are abundant. Politics is, after all, an arena in which large numbers of people share the same strong passion. From this inevitably stems a struggle for the power to influence others and to control the means of communication, foremost among which is language itself. Socially-motivated semantic change can be as significant as a desire to change society’s valuation of women or it can be as trivial as a preference for meat over vegetables—a preference shared, perhaps, by a certain former President of the United States.
The word meat is an interesting case. In Old English, mete, maet, or meate simply meant food. This usage can be traced back to written texts dating from 900, and can still be found in odd corners of the language as late as 1900. The current meaning of the word is only the third given meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary and the earliest example of that usage is from 1460. Presumably somewhere in the preceding 600 years the meaning of the word was narrowed from food to the particular kind of food we now call meat. We can only speculate on how and why this happened, but since it was certainly not dictated by some central linguistic authority, there must have been first users who, given the then-current meaning of the word, spoke in some form of falsehood. Perhaps their preference for meat was such that upon being served a plateful of vegetables, they said, “That’s not food (mete).” Or maybe when the roasted animal flesh was being served, they said, “Ah, here’s the real meal (mete).” This supposition is strengthened by the still-currant usage of the word in phrases such as the meat of it or essence of the matter. The meat was and still is considered by many to be the real thing, the main course, the essence of the meal, the part really worth eating, or even the only edible part, as in the meat of a walnut or coconut.
Whatever the case may be, the widespread tendency to value meat above all ended in the appropriation of the entire category of food (mete), thereby demoting vegetables, previously called greenmeates. If there had been an organized force of vegetarians at the time, it might have vigorously protested this abuse of language, but to no avail, for the meat lovers proved more influential. They controlled public language, and for a while this might have given the meat partisans great satisfaction. In the long run, however, their lie or exaggeration was destroyed by the principle of generosity which altered the meaning of the word mete so as to turn their boast into the harmless tautology that animal flesh is meat.
The more controversial man has a similar history. In the oldest preserved English usage, dating from around 825, its primary meaning is simply the genderless human being. This was close to the impersonal German Mann and had about the same meaning as the current one in everyone. A woman was generally called a wifman, (as in wife) or female man, and a man was usually a werman (as in werewolf) or male man. A secondary meaning of the word was adult male human being in both Old English and all other Teutonic languages, but only in English did this secondary usage supersede the primary meaning. Just as the narrowing of mete represented the point of view of the meat eaters, so for man it surely represents a tendency towards male-dominance among those who controlled language, presumably the men. The analogy rolls toward its ironic dénouement: just as it did in the history of mete, the principle of generosity foiled the effort to promote untruth. Over hundreds of years the outrageous claim that only men were human was whittled down to the harmless tautology that only men are males.
The examples we’ve discussed have all been of semantic change brought about by whichever group had the power to spread untruths, exaggerations, or outright lies. The same process happens when there is no intention to deceive. The word robin, for example, in pre-American English once referred to a certain type of red-breasted flycatcher (F. Muscicapidae) common in England. The orange-breasted American thrush (F. Turdidae) had a superficial resemblance to this bird, and this led early settlers to incorrectly call the American thrush a robin, which it most certainly was not, given the then-current meaning of the word, though now it is perfectly correct in American English.
Consider the word dilapidated. In current standard English it has the ‘literal’ meaning: To be in a state of disrepair. But the etymology reveals the word once referred only to stone buildings. Through a process of generalization the word came to have its current meaning. Presumably whoever first used the word dilapidate to refer to a wooden structure was something of a poet, or had no better word to describe a wooden house that was falling apart. The misuse of the word turned out to be useful, and it stuck.
Each of these examples is a case of a word being used to do a job it was not designed to do. Sometimes the misuse is done on purpose. Sometimes not. In either case there follows an adjustment of meaning that forces the word to fit the sentence under the presumption of the sentence’s truth. Much of this happens when we are faced with new circumstances and an old vocabulary, and that in turn happens whenever the human mind moves into a new region, whether that region is geographic (America) or metaphorical (the brave new world of wooden houses falling apart, green blackboards, subatomic physics or religious experience). In all such cases we are under pressure to misuse words, the meanings of which are constantly racing to catch up with our abuses by adjusting themselves to make our falsehoods true, to make the unbelievable believable
Table of Contents
What do you think?
Can you think of instances where you were “under pressure to misuse words”?
Can you come up with examples of word meanings that have adjusted themselves to make our falsehoods true?
Truth and Generosity: Chapter 6