Semantic theft ≠ semantic shift
Yglesias is really making me cross, I must say.
Come on. This is not primarily (or secondarily and you could go through quite a lot more numbers) an issue of linguistic change. The word is not some relatively unimportant vocabulary item, it’s the word that names the female half of the set of human beings, the half that is the source of all human beings. That’s what matters about it. The fact that “language changes over time” is not central to this controversy and he must know that perfectly well.
Mar nails it.
Also, semantic shift is the sort of thing that happens over time as people use words in new ways, like bad = good. This is not a semantic shift, it is one small group of people trying to force a large group of people from using the word that describes them. It is a hammer – a sledge hammer . Also, it is not a needed change, because the word works quite well to describe what it is, and the population as a whole has not shifted usage.
That. I just said that in reply to Yglesias (who doubtless won’t see it, since there are a lot of replies). “Changing over time is one thing and being forcibly changed at the behest of a cohort of deluded cosplayers is another.”
Back in the Old English days, there existed a word wer which meant “adult human male, another word wyf which meant “adult human female”, and a third word man which meant “person”. The meaning of those words shifted over time. Wer disappeared from the language (except in the word “werewolf”), wyf came to mean “female spouse”, and man came to mean primarily “adult human male” (and secondarily “person”).
So yes, the meanings of the words changed, yet the concepts that they denoted did not disappear from the language because those concepts are integral to human experience; indeed, I seriously doubt there is any human language that doesn’t have words for those concepts. In English, of course, the word woman (originally wyfman, or “woman-person”) took the place of wyf, while human and person took the place of man in its original sense.
If the meaning of the word woman changes to mean something like “whatever the person using it feels like”, that doesn’t mean that the concept of “adult human female” will disappear; most likely some other word would come to replace it, and in a few hundred years people might be using, say, utaver much like English speakers have been using woman for the past millennium or so.
I don’t think people really get angry about semantic shift anyway, do they?
I mean, I’m somewhat annoyed when words like “literally” shift so much that we no longer have a way to describe literal things, but I’m not (literally) up in arms about it, or anything.
Since trans activists always use inapt analogies to the struggle for gay rights, I will too:
When I was young, old men would frequently bemoan the loss of the word “gay” (meaning happy, carefree) to the English language. But they weren’t really cross about the shifting meaning of the word, they were cross that anyone was talking about homosexuality at all.
Isn’t this just the same thing?
Let’s all go and accuse Yglesias of repackaging homophobia.
Yglesias is sometimes more clever than thoughtful, and this is one of those times.
@latsot,
I don’t know about “angry”, but it’s amazing how many people get upset, e.g., if you use “decimate” to mean something other than “killing one-tenth of a population”.
Especially if all of “women’s rights” are supposed to go with the name rather than the actual people.
The ‘semantic shift’ argument is basically an admission that ‘trans women are women’ is not true unless you change the definition of women.
WaM #6
*I* am proudly one of those who clings to the original meaning of decimate, but it is a linguistic shift I am losing. There are others, too, such as enormity (A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage.) used as a synonym for enormous, begging the question being used when the speaker means raises a question, disinterested as a synonym for uninterested.
Each of these changes the utility of words, removing their precision into a general blur of ignorance. But they do not become the opposite of what is meant. They just piss off linguistic curmudgeons like me.
The greatest semantic shifter of the English language was Bill Shakespeare with his merry creation of new words and phrases. Not only that, but the female parts in his plays were performed by males. And yet, old Bill, still knew when he wrote a part for a female character.
#8,
As they say in the U.K., spot on.
I forget where I saw it, but I once came across the observation that it’s not a “natural evolution of language” if you can get fired fro your job for not using it.
It’s like comparing the use of the FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) to natural selection…
Like the Brotherhood I’m not overly fond of the super mutants it tends to create…
What I have a problem with is not the part about changing the definitions of words. As I keep saying, words don’t mean anything in themselves but get their meanings from us. The original meaning of the word “disaster” may have been “unlucky star” and come from astrology (IIRC), but that does not make it any less ridiculous to protest against referring to the current situation in Ukraine as a “disaster” or accusing those who do so of totally misunderstanding the word and ignoring its astrological implications.
What I do have a problem with is the part about continuing to talk and act as if we were all still talking about the same things, pretending that everyone else were using words in the same way and attempting to have it both ways. In short, the problem with TAs is not that they are using words in an alternative sense, but that they are being dishonest about it.
Well I do get angry about some semantic shiftyness, futile and silly though it may be. I remain allergic to the use of “impact” as a verb that means affect, change, upset, destroy, enrage, surprise, alarm & a few hundred more things, and the word “impactful” makes me feel nauseated.
So there.
Also, more seriously, I do have a problem with the part about changing the definitions of words when the word in question is as vital and as political as the word “women.” We need to keep the word “women”; the sex-swappers can find their own word.
I agree, but that’s because the dishonesty is the whole point of the redefinition in this case.
Ophelia, I think you have found that word!
Ophelia, I turn red when I see the word “mindfulness”. When my therapist used it, I nearly walked out. And buzz words turn me blue with rage. That isn’t helping communication, it’s ending it.
And to me, the argument “words evolve” used in a case where the word hasn’t evolved but has been stomped on and set fire to is similar to the conversation stopper “things scientists find out are found to be wrong”. Sure. Some things are. That shouldn’t get you out of making a case why this thing is wrong. You can’t just sit there with smug face and say “science changes” or “words evolve”. Explain to me how this word, woman, “evolved” into uterus-havers, front holes, ovary possessors, bleeders, breeders, menstruators, or any of the other nasty, degrading things you choose to use to refer to women to avoid “defining them by their body parts”.
I’d hazard he’s doing penance for his recent post suggesting transwomen in women’s sports is a stupid hill to die on.
Bjarte @13/16:
Yes, that is what I’m saying, in a roundabout, clumsy way. My anger at the semantic theft of the word ‘woman’ isn’t about the abstract notion that words change, it’s that some words are necessary and that the theft of this one is a deliberate, deceitful aggression against women.
I’m cross in a similar sort of way to that of the old men of my youth. They didn’t really care about the loss of a synonym for ‘happy’, they were just uncomfortable with people talking about homosexuals. My ‘joke’ was that something approaching the opposite is being done here: trans activists are cross that anyone is talking about women at all, as a class that doesn’t include men.
About actual, ordinary, gradual semantic shift: Personally, it annoys me as much as it does anyone else, but doesn’t itself anger me.
What angers me is the loss of accuracy or precision in language rather than the changing meaning of the words themselves. That’s why my inner pedant cringes at misuse of ‘decimate’, but rational me can’t get too upset about it. I’ve never had much cause to use the word in its proper sense, so I don’t feel much of a loss.
‘Literally’, of course, is an entirely different matter. We need it. Its misuse leaves a dirty great hole in the English language.
Ophelia @14
In scientific journal articles it’s not uncommon to see “impact” used in place of “affect” and “effect”. For example, the impact of blahblah chemical on suchandsuch cells. It was a pet peeve of one of my former bosses.
I like Yglesias, and I think his overall views on trans issues are pretty close to mine from what I can tell, but he does occasionally regress into his “undergraduate philosophy major” mode of pedantic musings that seem to miss the point.
latsot #20
Exactly.
My personal linguistic pet peeve is “humanitarian catastrophe” (“philanthropic/human-friendly catastrophe”?! Really?!). I think what annoys me about it is that what they really mean to say, i.e. “human catastrophe”, is both shorter, simpler, and more accurate, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason for preferring the longer, clumsier, less accurate expression apart from making oneself look clever (and failing at that)
I realize it’s a losing battle, though. Everything we consider “correct” English (or Norwegian, Turkish, Swahili etc.) today began as wrong. As I like to say, Shakespeare would be horrified to learn that not a single person alive today speaks English correctly.