{"id":26024,"date":"2016-05-31T05:10:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T10:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=26024"},"modified":"2016-05-31T05:38:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T10:38:46","slug":"unnecessariat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=26024","title":{"rendered":"Unnecessariat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anne Amnesia, \"Unnecessariat<\/a>\", More Crows than Eagles<\/em>, 5\/10\/2016:<\/p>\n

In 2011, economist Guy Standing<\/a> coined the term \u201cprecariat<\/a><\/span>\u201d to refer to workers whose jobs were insecure, underpaid, and mobile, who had to engage in substantial \u201cwork for labor\u201d to remain employed, whose survival could, at any time, be compromised by employers (who, for instance held their visas) and who therefore could do nothing to improve their lot. The term found favor in the Occupy movement, and was colloquially expanded to include not just farmworkers, contract workers, \u201cgig\u201d workers, but also unpaid interns, adjunct faculty, etc. Looking back from 2016, one pertinent characteristic seems obvious: no matter how tenuous, the precariat<\/strong> had jobs. The new dying Americans, the ones killing themselves on purpose or with drugs, don\u2019t. Don\u2019t, won\u2019t, and know it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren\u2019t precarious, we\u2019re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top<\/span><\/a>. The wages have gone to the top<\/span><\/a>. The recovery has gone to the top<\/span><\/a>. And what\u2019s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that<\/em>. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as \u201cYoung Gods\u201d believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die<\/a> economy, and are busily planning to escape into space<\/a> or acquire superpowers<\/a>, and instead of worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don\u2019t worry, the recession\u2019s over and everything\u2019s better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!<\/span><\/p>\n

The article starts by comparing the rise in suicide and overdose deaths to the history of AIDS deaths in the 1980s, and her\u00a0punchline is this:<\/p>\n

If I still don\u2019t have your attention, consider this: county by county, where life expectancy is dropping survivors are voting for Trump<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since this is Language Log and not Political Analysis Log, I'll let you digest the article<\/a> on your own, and turn my attention to the word formation principles behind unnecessariat<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The OED glosses proletariat<\/em> as \"Wage earners collectively, esp.<\/em> those who have no capital and who depend for subsistence on their daily labour; the working classes\", and gives its etymology as<\/p>\n

< French prol\u00e9tariat<\/em> condition of being proletarian, proletarian class (1832) < classical Latin pr\u014dl\u0113t\u0101rius<\/em> proletary n. + French -at<\/em> -ate suffix1. With sense 1a compare German Proletariat<\/em> (1844 in Marx, or earlier), Russian proletariat<\/em> (1864 or earlier).<\/p>\n

The -at<\/em> affix was the earlier form of -ate<\/em>, as the OED explains:<\/p>\n

In popular words which lived on into Old French, Latin -\u0101tus, -\u0101tum,<\/em> became (through -ato, -ado, -ad, -ed, -et<\/em>) -\u00e9,<\/em> as c\u016br\u0101tus, sen\u0101tus, avoc\u0101tus, st\u0101tus, pecc\u0101tum,<\/em> Old French cur\u00e9, sen\u00e9, avou\u00e9, est\u00e9, p\u00e9ch\u00e9<\/em>; learned words, adapted from Latin, took -at<\/em>, as in estat, prelat, primat, magistrat<\/em>. After 13th c. many of the popular words were refashioned with -at,<\/em> as sen\u00e9, senat, avou\u00e9, avocat<\/em>; and all new words have been thus formed, e.g. assassinat, attentat, \u00e9piscopat, palatinat, professorat, syndicat<\/em>. In English these were originally adopted in their French form, estat, prelat<\/em>, etc.; after 1400, -e<\/em> was added to mark the long vowel, estate, prelate<\/em>, etc., and all later words from French took -ate<\/em> at once. After these, English words are formed directly on Latin, as cur\u0101tus<\/em> \u2018curate,\u2019 or on Latin analogies, as alderman-ate<\/em>, cf. triumvir-ate.<\/em><\/p>\n

The earliest OED citation for proletariat<\/em> explicitly notes the German and French origin:<\/p>\n

1847 \u00a0 Daguerreotype<\/em> 16 Oct. 264 \u00a0 The proletariat, which has not morally and physically any thing to lose, has allied itself to this revolutionary tendency… [Note] This word, which has lately become familiar to all readers of German and French literature, signifies the lowest and poorest classes, those in fact who are totally destitute of property.<\/p>\n

And presumably it was the perceived foreignness of the word that led to retention of the French form in -at<\/em>, rather than adaptation to the normal English -ate<\/em>. Whatever the reason, the final \"-at\" in proletariat<\/em> is nearly unique in the contemporary English vocabulary, and so leads naturally to portmanteau forms like precariat<\/em><\/a> (precarious<\/em> X proletariat<\/em>) and unnecessariat<\/em> (unnecessary<\/em> X proletariat<\/em>), or perhaps to the notion of\u00a0a\u00a0suffix -at<\/em>\u00a0used to form terms for \u00a0social classes defined by the their role in the economy.<\/p>\n

The entry for pr\u014dl\u0113t\u0101r\u012dus<\/em>\u00a0from Lewis and Short:<\/p>\n

According to a division of the people by Servius Tullius, a citizen of the lowest class, who served the State not with his property, but only with his children<\/em> (proles), a proletary<\/em>: \u201cqui aut non plus mille quingentum aeris aut omnino nihil in suum censum praeter caput attulissent, proletarios nominavit, ut ex iis quasi proles [id est quasi progenies] civitatis exspectari videretur,\u201d Cic. Rep.<\/strong> 2, 22, 40;<\/p>\n

We should note, by the way, that the idea<\/a> of \"condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness\"\u00a0is not entirely new<\/a>, nor is the idea that such people<\/a> might be politically disruptive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne Amnesia, \"Unnecessariat\", More Crows than Eagles, 5\/10\/2016: In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term \u201cprecariat\u201d to refer to workers whose jobs were insecure, underpaid, and mobile, who had to engage in substantial \u201cwork for labor\u201d to remain employed, whose survival could, at any time, be compromised by employers (who, for instance held their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-language-and-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26024"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26033,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26024\/revisions\/26033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}