Linguification and the myth of progress
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I know that many of you will be wondering whether Language Log has been keeping up with the spread of linguification. We have, of course. Teams of interns are combing the periodicals and amassing huge quantities of data that we do not really know what to do with (the data may all be eventually turned over to Melvyn Quince in the Surveys department). But just to assure you that we are keeping up with developments, let me show you the beginning of an article that recently appeared in an important UK magazine (and I should note that the article was actually written by a senior lecturer in creative writing — whom I will not embarrass by naming):
Among the dirty words in arts and humanities departments these days, "progress" is one of the dirtiest. No one would dream of using it without irony or the qualifying phrase "myth of" as a prefix.
To check this, our in-house textual scientists did a Google search on progress and myth of progress limited to UK academic sites (.ac.uk), and these were the results:
| progress | 2,790,000 |
| myth of progress | 103 |
Any questions about that?
I won't confuse you with heavy statistical tests and p values here. No calculus will be presupposed. But in brief, the data show the hypothesis advanced in the quoted claim to be not just false but so overwhelmingly false that hypotheses as false as this hardly ever turn up in empirical science. Academic web pages containing myth of progress make up 0.0037% of those containing the word progress. That leaves an awful lot of occurrences to be explained away as ironic.
It is possible that the linguified claim might do better if more specific searches were done on sites focusing on arts and humanities subjects, getting rid of the scientists and administrators; we have several interns working on that right now. I rather think it is just busywork, and they would be better employed washing coffee mugs in the Senior Writers' Lounge here at Language Log Plaza.
As always, I am not objecting to this strange figure of speech — this replacing of a possibly true claim about progress (something like "humanities academics tend to take a dim view of the notion of progress") by a wildly false one about words (that the word progress is never employed in its literal sense without the phrase myth of immediately preceding it). And I am not saying I cannot understand what the author meant. I simply cannot see what desirable effect this rhetorical device could possibly be thought to achieve, or why the author should have chosen to make his point in such a strangely inept way, by transmuting it into what is (almost certainly) a staggeringly false claim about word token distributions.
Mark F. said,
October 21, 2008 @ 8:54 am
Honestly, I have to say that I'm skeptical when you say that you are not objecting to this figure of speech. I see a "Don't Linguify" rule hidden in there somewhere.
Chris said,
October 21, 2008 @ 9:00 am
I think non-linguists can use a kind of metonymy which confuses a discussion about the word's referent (the concept of progress, which the speaker claims is held in contempt by arts and humanities departments) and the word itself. Clearly, he's not thinking about all the other ways to talk about progress that express that attitude with different verbal formulations, e.g. "While progress in technology is clearly genuine, in the arts it is a mere illusion."
Peter Howard said,
October 21, 2008 @ 9:17 am
Perhaps the author of the magazine article used linguification for a reason similar to that which prompted you to replace a possibly true claim (something like "it is highly unlikely that more specific searches would show the hypothesis to be other than overwhelmingly false") by a wild fantasy involving interns, coffee mugs and the Senior Writers' Lounge at Language Log Plaza.
Both substitutions do their job, as far as I'm concerned.
Simon said,
October 21, 2008 @ 10:19 am
Ok… but what about those instances in academia wherein the term "progress" appears as a verb? They probably would not be as common as the noun form; however, the verb form is probably more common in academic literature than in daily discourse. Might that make some difference? Obviously not enough to make up for the staggering disproportion. But as everyone stated before me, it may be necessary to give the author the benefit of the doubt, as the sentence was phrased to include other ironic uses of the term.
Cephi said,
October 21, 2008 @ 10:26 am
I wonder whether the author intended her claim to be taken as literally true. In cases like this, I really have no idea. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the author had no determinate intentions one way or the other,
That would be another mystery, as far as I'm concerned. What is going on when someone makes a claim and there is no fact of the matter as to whether she intends her claim to be taken as literally true?
Andrew Goldstone said,
October 21, 2008 @ 10:29 am
Prof. Pullum says he "cannot see what desirable effect" the "linguification" is supposed to achieve. Here is a theory by which I hope to explain both the attempted effect and Prof. Pullum's justifiable annoyance with the trope. The trope is based on the intuitive appeal of Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis-type ideas: the notion that ways of talking determine ways of thinking. It's not irrelevant that the culprit today is "a senior lecturer in creative writing"; literary types, like myself, are especially attracted to this intuition and are apt to regard linguistic patterns as some of the most compelling evidence for deep-seated thought patterns. That is why linguistic claims come to stand in, hyperbolically, for cultural claims and seem more compelling to the linguifyer, no matter how empirically unjustifiable the Whorf hypothesis is. I suggest that Prof. Pullum, who writes so lucidly about the differences between linguistic categories and meanings, is reacting to the underlying Whorfianism of the linguification trope.
Adrian Morgan said,
October 21, 2008 @ 10:46 am
I once read a cheap science fiction novel in which a character declares that "All sentences containing the word 'God' are false". Speaking of God, I noticed many years before the term "linguification" was invented that 1 Corinthians 12:3 seems to contain a couple of examples of it (taken literally, it ought to be impossible for anyone to read that verse aloud). This raises a question. Given that Language Log has previously found divine endorsement of singular 'they', what would it imply if it turns out that God uses linguification?
outeast said,
October 21, 2008 @ 10:54 am
I wonder whether the author intended her claim to be taken as literally true.
Only in the non-literal sense of 'literally'.
I must confess I see these linguifications as very similar to the non-literal use of literal – which has been defended literally thousands of time on this blog. It takes a very literally literal-minded person to see linguified claims as being actual (false) claims about language… Shurely linguification is a familiar enough rhetorical device now to simply be accepted as mainstream and unremarkable?
Geoffrey K. Pullum said,
October 21, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
It is certainly true that the ironic uses and verb uses have to be factored out. Our interns have already examined three uses in context, and conclusively determined that they are not ironic, so there are only about 2,789,894 to do, and we can drop the ones that turn out to be on science department sites. In ten to twelve years we should have more accurate figures, which will be reported, if anyone remembers Language Log by then.
As for the question of linguifications in the New Testament, specifically in 1 Corinthians 12:3 (see Adrian Morgan above), I am not convinced. One translation I have looked at says "no one who is led by God's Spirit can say, 'A curse on Jesus!', and no one can confess 'Jesus is Lord,' unless he is guided by the Holy Spirit"; another translation says: "no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit". In both cases, the two conjoined claims may be false, but they are not linguifications. They seem to be literal assertions about possible correlations between verbal behavior and guidance by the Holy Spirit.
The science fiction novel character who said "All sentences containing the word 'God' are false" might have been doing something like linguification. It depends whether what the character meant was that all propositions positively attributing properties to God fail to be true because of the failure of an existence entailment… I'm not quite sure. But I know that if we try to explore the matter we're going to get into deep semantic waters, where I choose not to sail.
mae said,
October 21, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
More of same?
"Nabokov famously said that 'reality' is the only word in the English language that only makes sense with quotes around it," — this statement appears in today's blog "Jacket Copy" in the LA Times. Post title: "Daniel Handler: not a fan of 'realism'"
Chris said,
October 21, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
Isn't this backwards? Ripples on the surface of a stream are evidence regarding the arrangement of rocks on the streambed precisely because the rocks cause the ripples, not vice versa. (Or if you don't like that metaphor: if linguistic patterns are evidence for thought patterns, doesn't that imply, indeed require, that thought is the fire and language the smoke?)
Sorry for the digression, but I've never really understood this hypothesis, so clarification by someone who does understand it would be nice.
al said,
October 21, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
Geoff says he can't imagine why anyone would make this into a claim about language. As a member of a large and well-known anthropology department, I can attest that I and other colleagues often do avoid certain words (as opposed to changing the content of a statement) to avoid conflict. "Progress" is a word that is like a matador's cape for some post-modern and anti-colonialist scholars, especially sociocultural anthropologists. To some extent, it is about language, because the word itself would trigger a knee-jerk reaction, even if the rest of the sentence were unobjectionable.
I'm not sure the word-count would show this. I just avoid the word; I wouldn't substitute the phrase "myth of progress." I only avoid it as applied to other cultures, past or present, so I would still use "progress" in reference to a project of mine or to civil rights advances in our own society.
6 said,
October 21, 2008 @ 5:58 pm
That example from the Bible may not qualify, but it made me curious about the actual distribution of linguification over time. I found this in the archives. And I see there has been some less-than-entirely-serious speculation on linguification's extinction in early 2008, but nothing too rigorous.
Nathan Myers said,
October 21, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
"mythical progress": 216
"supposed progress": 5080
"putative progress": 305 (!)
"wistful progress": 3
"imagined progress": 645
"imaginary progress": 741
I think some of these represent complaints, not irony.
Ran Ari-Gur said,
October 21, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
> I simply cannot see what desirable effect this rhetorical device could possibly be thought to achieve, […]
Humor? You might not find it funny, but can you not see that someone might possibly think it to achieve the desirable effect of entertaining the reader and making the point more memorable?
> And I am not saying I cannot understand what the author meant. I simply cannot see […] why the author should have chosen to make his point in such a strangely inept way, by transmuting it into what is (almost certainly) a staggeringly false claim about word token distributions.
You understood his point, so at least he did successfully make it; and though you have elsewhere pointed out that linguification differs from hyperbole, your objection to linguification is really no different from an objection to hyperbole or any other figure of speech: "Why replace a true statement with a false one?" (An answer to that objection is outside the scope of this blog comment.)
Adrian Morgan said,
October 21, 2008 @ 10:26 pm
I'm not sure about the precise definition of linguification, but my vague impression is that it's a type of metonymy in which a word stands for its meaning (or the act of using a phrase stands for the act of conveying its meaning, or more subtle variations upon the general theme). It strikes me as another manifestation of the part of human psychology that's responsible for the vermouth joke.
I don't find linguification the least bit objectionable or undesirable, any more than other rhetorical devices such as hyperbole, other types of metonymy, or anything else. But when a rhetorical device leads to a particularly long-winded and clumsy sentence, there is at least a case that the device wasn't well executed in that instance.
rhetor said,
October 22, 2008 @ 1:40 am
hello there
so are you assuming that all language naturally turns up on the web? Having say through numerous UK arts council and government funding meetings, there is a language of funding/project management that never finds itself onto their corporate front-faces, such as web and brochure.
rhetor said,
October 22, 2008 @ 1:41 am
apologies for errors in that post (it's early). I meant to say:
hello there
so are you assuming that all language naturally turns up on the web? Having sat through numerous UK arts council and government funding meetings, there is a language of funding/project management that never finds its way into their corporate front-facing literature, such as websites and brochures.
dr pepper said,
October 22, 2008 @ 4:02 am
As long as you have those interns sifting the corpus for irony, you might as well have them check for joviality, mercuriality, and biliousness as well.
Geoffrey K. Pullum said,
October 22, 2008 @ 4:47 am
We do in fact have the interns divided up into six teams: Irony, Joviality, Mercuriality, Biliousness, Idiocy, and Mendacity. They have specialist training. Supervising all this is a large job. I mean, until you've supervised a project like this, you don't know the meaning of the word 'tedium'. Some of our interns cannot even remember how when they heard the word 'off" with the word 'day' before it…
Boris Zakharin said,
October 23, 2008 @ 7:06 pm
Was that use of "how when" intentional? I seem to want to treat it as a misspelling of "now when", but I vaguely recall seeing it elsewhere. Yet, I find it ungrammatical…
Neal Whitman said,
May 4, 2009 @ 11:32 pm
Linguification goes to the next level, with actual meaningless numbers to back up the claim that any sentence containing the name "Jeff Goldblum" also contains the word "quirky". Details here.