Letters from France
Debate on the Changing Meaning of Words
By Robert Thompson
Jul 5, 2008, 05:18

When I wrote on this subject*, I had not thought that I would start a debate, but I have above all been criticised for wishing to prevent the development of living language.
 
This was not my aim, since, like Eric Arthur Blair, who (in "1984" published in 1948 under his pen-name of George Orwell) pointed out many examples of such deliberate changes, I am deeply concerned about the fiendishly clever misuse of words by rulers to enslave their people.
 
Among the grossest of such misuses, equal to the famous and unforgettable "War is Peace" used in "1984", is the meaning given in recent years by some of the worst terrorists in our world to the term 'terrorist' and among them we can see George W. Bush and various of his 'poodles' using it of anyone who opposes their desire to enslave the whole world.
 
I therefore repeat my warning that we should all think before we go along with deliberately altered meanings, but I would hate to see language fixed forever.   As well as changed meanings, we can import words from other lands and languages, often with comic results.   To give an example of a useful importation from North America, some people here in France insist on calling a e-mail a mail (often pronounced 'mel') which I find inelegant, and I greatly prefer the word which has come to us from Canada, namely courriel (an abbreviation of courrier électronique - i.e. electronic mail).   English has thousands of such importations, and we have only to think of a word such as 'bungalow', but, like many other languages, English has at least two roots, from Germanic and Romance tongues, and this often gives anyone using it a wonderfully choice when speaking or writing.
 
In other words, I am not for a pure language without growth but I suspect the world's rulers when they give new meanings to key words.
 
 
 

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