{"id":42757,"date":"2019-05-17T04:17:43","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T09:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=42757"},"modified":"2019-05-17T10:34:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T15:34:11","slug":"42757","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=42757","title":{"rendered":"\"Demoralised\" = \"without morals\"?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marilynne Robinson, \"Is poverty necessary?<\/a>\", Harpers<\/em> 5\/16\/2019:<\/p>\n

Margaret Thatcher said that the redundant\u2014those on the dole\u2014were \u201cdemoralized.\u201d In her dialect group this word doesn\u2019t mean disheartened. It means without morals. An American might put the matter differently, but the attitude is familiar enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

An American might wonder whether that sense was actually dominant — or even prevalent — in Margaret Thatcher's \"dialect group\".<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The OED supports these doubts — it characterizes the \"lacking in moral values\" sense as \"somewhat archaic<\/em>\" and \"chiefly U.S.\":<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Morally corrupted, lacking in moral values; (also) robbed of moral significance or influence. Now somewhat archaic<\/em> (chiefly U.S.).<\/p>\n

1800<\/strong> S. Spring Disc. on Death G. Washington<\/em> 10 Shall the sons of science..bless the stars, Jupiter or Minerva or Dame Nature or any other vanities of a demoralized heart as the beneficent author of education?
\n1816<\/strong> J. Scott Paris Revisited<\/em> xi. 401 The demoralized state of the public character.
\n1883<\/strong> Harper's Mag<\/em>. Dec. 81\/2 You'd be listening to every word through the key-hole, you're so demoralized!
\n1961<\/strong> L. Mumford City in Hist.<\/em> viii. 242 These are symptoms of the end: magnifications of demoralized power, minifications of life.
\n1995<\/strong> Providence<\/em> (Rhode Island) Jrnl.-Bull.<\/em> (Nexis) 23 July 1 a Raising children to be self-centered, irresponsible and ultimately demoralized.<\/p>\n

And even in the first half of the 20th century, British elite usage seems to be dominated by the \"disheartened\" meaning. I'm not sure whether this counts as Margaret Thatcher's \"dialect group\", but Roy Irons (Churchill and the Mad Mullah of Somaliland<\/em><\/a>) quotes British General (and Baron) Hastings Ismay<\/a>, writing about a 1920 battle:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The word \"demoralised\" (in the British spelling) is not found in Thatcher's book Statecraft<\/em><\/a>, nor in her memoir Downing Street Years<\/em><\/a>, nor in Andrew Crines et al., The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher<\/em><\/a>. The American spelling \"demoralized\" isn't found in those works either. But the Margaret Thatcher Foundation<\/a> offers a \"Complete list of 8,000+ Thatcher statements & texts of many of them\", and a search of that site yields 24 hits<\/a>. Among the first ten of these, there are eight that clearly mean \"disheartened\", the sense that Robinson suggests that Thatcher's \"dialect group\" doesn't use:<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] The Government have chopped and changed policies; they have created confusion and uncertainty. They have added countless burdens. They have destroyed profits. They have raised the cost of borrowing to intolerable heights. And they have demoralised<\/strong> management and they have sapped the will to work. No wonder investment in industry has slowed to a crawl.<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] The Prime Minister himself is in no position to rejoice. His Parliamentary programme is in total disarray; and with the failure of his attempt to ram through the Devolution Bill any reason the Nationalists may have had to sustain him in power seems to have vanished. His demoralised<\/strong> backbenchers are not rejoicing. The Labour Party, drifting to the Left, locked in internal feuds, riddled with extremists, crumbling at the edges, is certainly not rejoicing. And the people of Britain see no cause to rejoice as they wearily wait for the opportunity to turn out of office a Government that has been totally discredited.<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] The events of last week's public expenditure debate are of a kind that we have never seen before. It is true that Governments have been defeated before. But no Government faced with a parliamentary battle, has turned and fled, then claimed: \u201cWe were not defeated, we did not vote\u201d . It is as if a demoralised<\/strong> army, when they had lost the day, said: \u201cWe cannot have been defeated because we just ran away. We dared not fight, we just surrendered, but of course we were not defeated\u201d . But in effect they were defeated, and a Government that cannot get its major policies through the House of Commons cannot survive.<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] The Chancellor was wise to give relief to those in the middle management band. There has been no more demoralised<\/strong> group in society than middle management. People in middle management. People in middle management have often seen their pay squeezed and have suffered heavy taxation on that pay. Many in middle management have had their standard of living drop not by 3 per cent. or 4 per cent.\u2014which is the average\u2014but by 20 per cent. or 25 per cent. They, at least, have managed to get some encouragement from the Chancellor's Statement.<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] Absurd public relations exercises, like the so-called Industrial Strategy, have been used as the cover-up for inertia; for flat output and flat prospects. Management has been demoralised<\/strong>; incentives to build up new wealth hacked away.<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] Eddison:<\/em><\/strong> You took over a demoralised party about three years ago. You've had a string of by-election successes; the latest poll, I think, shows the Conservatives about 10 per cent ahead of Labour. How have you done it? Thatcher:<\/em><\/strong> I wouldn't have called it a demoralised party<\/strong>. Every party has setbacks and we had a set back. We were all bitterly disappointed at the result of the last election and I think the history of Britain might have been different if we hadn't lost in February 1974. What we've done is set out what we believed. We're not only interested in politics because we like being MPs.<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] Finally, what provision will be made to cover the special and vital role of those employees in junior and middle management? The Prime Minister will be aware that a number of them have felt demoralised<\/strong> because they are not involved as much as they might be. He will note that in the German scheme they are not bypassed. There is a special place for them. What special provision will be made for junior and middle management in participation?<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] There used to be in this country, a Socialism which valued people. It had dignity and it had warmth. Its methods were those of the collective, of putting all decisions to the centre, which was why it was not our creed, but its aims to raise the living standards of the people were the same as ours. Well, what a world away that is from the officious jargon filled intolerant Socialism practised by Labour these last few years. What a world away it is. What a world away that sort of brotherhood is from flying pickets, from kangaroo courts, the merciless use of the closed shop power, and all the other ugly apparatus which has been strapped like a harness on our people and our country, turning worker against worker, and society against itself. I'm reminded of Cromwell 's words to another demoralised <\/strong>faction. He said to them, to some of the then Members of Parliament, \u2018You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed and are yourselves become the greatest grievance.\u2019 That is what we say of the Labour party today\u00a0[applause]<\/i>.<\/p>\n

There's one example where \"demoralised\" seems to mean \"disheartened\" (…\"begin to lose confidence in the spirit of your country\") but where Thatcher also talks about the country \"declining spiritually and morally\":<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] You can't go on letting a country decline economically without finding something else: that it declines spiritually and morally as well. If you no longer have confidence in your country to solve its economic problems, very soon you begin to lose confidence in the spirit of your country and you find all kinds of other things happening as well. I believe that's what happened this last winter. None of us ever expected to see some of the strikes we saw. We said those things can't happen in Britain, but I believe it was because some of our economic failures had so demoralised<\/strong> us that we got a decline of a sort we never expected to see here.<\/p>\n

And there's one example (among the ten) where \"demoralised\" arguably means \"without morals\":<\/p>\n

[link<\/a>] GULAG was the consequence of socialism. It was not the work of one man. It only happened because socialism demoralised<\/strong> the whole nation, replaced the individual conscience by the party, right and wrong by what was good for the revolution.<\/p>\n

Someone else may have the time to check the rest of the Thatcher Foundation hits, but those ten examples are enough to convince me that Robinson mischaracterized Thatcher's \"dialect group\".<\/p>\n

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

Marilynne Robinson, \"Is poverty necessary?\", Harpers 5\/16\/2019: Margaret Thatcher said that the redundant\u2014those on the dole\u2014were \u201cdemoralized.\u201d In her dialect group this word doesn\u2019t mean disheartened. It means without morals. An American might put the matter differently, but the attitude is familiar enough. An American might wonder whether that sense was actually dominant — or […]<\/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":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words-words-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42757","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=42757"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42771,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42757\/revisions\/42771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}