Sloppy use of scientific words is a symptom of a wider malaise
“She’s developed something called anorexia.”
“I was reading about that in the newspaper. It’s quite serious, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and more young women are getting anorexia these days.”
A simple enough conversation. What the speakers did not realise is that they were not talking about anorexia at all. Anorexia means loss of appetite. That is its definition in both medical and general dictionaries. There is, however, also a condition called anorexia nervosa – a psychological illness, commonest among female adolescents, in people who deliberately starve or use other methods, such as vomiting, to lose weight. But relatively suddenly, anorexia has lost its original meaning. In the media and in everyday conversation, anorexia now means anorexia nervosa.
Language and the connotations of words and expressions evolve over time – helpfully so, when new distinctions and subtleties arise. But meanings also change simply as a result of ignorance or error. So when, some years ago, more and more people began to say “disinterested” when they meant “uninterested”, the misuse gradually became a normal meaning of that word.
What seems to be happening today is that such shifts are occurring more and more quickly. Consider the word “issue”. I heard a cricket commentator saying that an Indian batsman was “having issues with” an opponent’s spin bowling. As recently as five years ago, he would have said the batsman was confused by the spinning ball, which he was failing to hit in the way he intended. “Issue” then meant something quite different. Since then, however, it has come to mean “problem”.
What is especially surprising nowadays is that misuses of words can increasingly be found even in specialised communications – as in my own particular field of science. Long ago, when I was a microbiology student, I learned that the singular of bacteria was bacterium. Then, towards the end of the 20th century, print and broadcast journalists began to say “this bacteria”. And the alteration did not stop there. It is now affecting professional discourse too. In the past three months, I have seen “a bacteria” or “this bacteria” six times in research journals. I have even heard a speaker making the same mistake throughout his conference presentation.
So too with the genetic code. There is only one such code – it is the form in which DNA carries genetic information which cells convert into proteins. The entire stock of coded information in an animal, plant or microbe is termed the genome. Yet we are now regularly reading in newspapers and on websites that scientists have “discovered the genetic code for” a daffodil, wasp or koala. This is a categorical mistake. Daffodils, wasps and koalas all have the same genetic code. But they do have different genomes. Unfortunately, this distinction (which is important for public understanding of science) is now disappearing in technical journals.
Why are these things happening? In the case of anorexia nervosa, I can see a credible explanation, via the subeditors who write headlines for newspapers and websites. Always seeking the most succinct ways of highlighting stories to save space, subeditors began to drop “nervosa”. One consequence is that we can no longer use “anorexia” for its original purpose, or we will be misunderstood.
Sports commentators appear to be culpable in another area – the demise of the adverb. Within the past 10 years, firstly snooker commentators and then those in other sports began to tell us that “he hit that one strong”, that “she’s playing confident”, and that “he’s bowling accurate”. The habit is now spreading more widely.
In many cases, although it is impossible to pinpoint the initial change, the reason why people begin to adopt erroneous usages so quickly is probably one of fashion and a desire to demonstrate familiarity with the modish vernacular. Consider “fantastic”, which is now a universal expression of hyperbole. Anyone interviewed in the media about anything that impresses or excites them will repeatedly call it “fantastic”. Over recent weeks, I have heard a celebrity chef describe a particular dish as fantastic (when he meant unusually succulent), a drama critic call an actor’s performance fantastic (when she meant disturbingly realistic) and a politician describe a party conference speech as fantastic (when he meant inspiring).
The specific grounds for the speakers’ enthusiasms were thereby totally lost. Meanwhile, the true meaning of fantastic has gone out of the window. If, during a winter walk, I come upon a scene which I feel has the characteristics of fantasy, I can not now describe it as such.
One word we can see in transition at the moment is “literally”. “I was literally boiling,” someone told me the other day. “He hit that one literally miles,” said a cricket commentator. They did not really mean these statements literally. They meant them metaphorically. Drifting away from the meaning it has held for decades, “literally” is becoming instead simply a term of emphasis.
In times past, illiterate misuse of language would have been marginalised by the perpetuation of literate writing and speech, encouraged by the teaching of conventional English grammar in schools. Is the reverse now happening? Is illiteracy becoming a driver of what passes for literacy? And how are teachers coping? Do they still explain the important difference between “who” and “whom”, which newspapers and other media increasingly ignore? Why are even the editors of scientific journals adopting fashionable but incorrect usages?
Maybe teachers and editors alike simply go with the tide (metaphorically) and ignore pedants like me who get quite cross (literally) about these things.
Dr Bernard Dixon is a former editor of New Scientist.
via Media: Mind your language | theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2013/jan/10/mind-your-language-bacteria-genetic
