Oxford University Press's Blog, page 167

How hip hop and diplomacy made an unlikely partnership

Google “hip hop” and “diplomacy” and what images come up? Black men wearing gold chains and baggy clothes, holding microphones. White men in suits shaking hands, flanked by flags. The contrast is stark: informal/formal, loud/quiet, the resistance/the establishment, black/white. These images reflect common perceptions but also misconceptions about diplomacy and hip hop. Both are, in fact, more complex and diverse than most people realize.

But that’s not why I juxtapose these seemingly opposed terms. I do it because hip-hop diplomacy is an actual thing. Since 2001, the United States Department of State has been sending American hip hop artists abroad, and inviting international artists to the U.S., as cultural envoys. These envoys perform, teach, and collaborate for the purpose of promoting understanding, respect, and peaceful relations across cultures, languages, and national boundaries. Why would the State Department hire rappers or DJs or beatboxers? Why would hip hop artists work for the federal government? The partnership is both unlikely and fraught, but at the same time has proven to be powerful, effective, and for those who participate in these programs, often life-changing. For five years I directed the hip hop diplomacy program, Next Level; I have witnessed these life-changing moments first-hand in more than two dozen countries.

Hip hop’s appeal to the State Department is actually easy to understand. It comes down to this. Hip hop is globally beloved; the United States government is not. And hip hop is well known to be the product of young, marginalized Americans of color who insisted on being heard and seen and who reveled in their survival. As the embodiment of struggle and celebration, hip hop resonates deeply with young people around the world. It’s the perfect vehicle for promoting a more nuanced and positive image of the United States and for connecting with populations that our embassies rarely engage. For hip hop artists, this work provides rare, paid opportunities to travel the world as artists, to connect and collaborate with people who face similar challenges, to represent their country as they want it to be seen, and to witness the amazing power of their art to tear down the walls that separate us.

Returning from a performance with local youth in Guatemala City, the American dancer Bboy Kareem marveled, “I’ve never been a part of something as hip hop as this.” It felt more positive than many of the international competitions he attended, purer than the commercial side of hip hop that most people only know. For Moroccan rapper Soultana, hip hop is “a source of life. It’s a way of thinking, it’s a way of talking to people.” She praised my government for inviting her to the United States, for promoting her career when her own government would not. “For me, it’s so big. It’s not just support, it’s an honor.” In my interviews with more than 100 artists across the world, similar themes of fulfilment and empowerment come up over and again.

To be sure, hip hop diplomacy has its challenges and risks. As with any form of diplomacy, it can sow mistrust, exploit, and offend. But when executed thoughtfully and sensitively, when our artists show that Americans can treat others with respect and humility rather than arrogance, bluster, and intolerance, when they use art to transform conflict into understanding and pain into beauty, this unlikely form of diplomacy has an incredible power to heal and unite.

Photo by Atharva Tulsi on Unsplash

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How to address the enigmas of everyday life

Here are some hard questions: Is the value of human life absolute? Should we conform to the prevalent values? What do we owe our country? Is justice indispensable? How should we respond to evil? Is it right to forgive bad actions? Is shame good? Should we be true to who we are? Do good intentions justify bad actions? Are moral evaluations overriding?

The questions are hard because each has reasonable but conflicting answers. When circumstances force us to face them, we are ambivalent. We realize that there are compelling reasons for both of the conflicting answers. This is not an abstract problem, but a predicament we encounter when we have to make difficult decisions whose consequences affect how we live, our relationships, and our attitude to the society in which we live.

I consider these questions from a point of view that is practical, not theoretical; particular, not general; personal, not impersonal; and above all concrete, not abstract. The questions are asked and answered from the point of view of actual people who face actual predicaments whose resolution has implications for the rest of their lives. There are reasonable answers, but they depend on the evaluation of the relative importance of the reasons for and against the conflicting answers. Such evaluations must take into account the character, attitudes, experiences, and the possibilities and limits of the social context of those who face the questions. They vary, and that is why reasonable answers to hard questions must be personal, not theoretical, and be based on comparisons between the conflicting answers given by two people for whom a hard question has arisen in their context.

Some examples of such comparisons are between a Japanese kamikaze pilot who gave up his life for his country and an American draftee who refused to serve his country; between a young girl who endured and survived the horrors she had to endure when she was forced into daily prostitution and humiliation that lasted for more than a year, and a priest who struggled with trying to reconcile his faith with his knowledge of what was inflicted on the girl; between how a communist commander of one of the Gulags thought about the inmates’ hard labor in subzero temperature, on starvation diet, and the brink of death caused by the terrible conditions he imposed on them, and a high-ranking religious SS officer who knew about the exterminations and did what he could to save lives; between the contrary responses of two women one of whom accepted her society’s standards and felt shame because she was shamed by them, while the other defiantly refused to feel shame even though she was shamed by her society’s standards; between a man who valued social harmony more than justice and a woman who gave up her life for the sake of justice; and between an honorable soldier who killed himself when circumstances made it impossible for him to remain true to himself and a young man who was deliberately false to himself by rejecting the past that made him who he was.

These comparisons reconstruct the predicaments faced by the protagonists, trace the reasons that have led them to arrive at the difficult life-changing answer each gave, and enable us to learn from them as we struggle with hard questions as they arise in our own lives. In discussing them, I rely on the resources of anthropology, history, literature, politics, and religion. They make concrete the predicaments of people who had to face hard questions and how they answered them, some more and others less reasonably. The practical, particular, personal, concrete, and comparative nature of these examples exemplifies an approach to ethics that is an alternative to the theoretical, general, impersonal, and abstract approach that characterizes the mainstream of contemporary ethical thought. I attempt to show that ethics can be done in a way that reasonably and concretely addresses the vital concerns of reflective people.

Featured image credit: “concrete” by Valentin Lacoste. CC0 via Unsplash.

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Philosopher of the Month – A 2019 Review

As 2019 draws to a close, we look back at the philosophers who have featured in our monthly Philosopher of the Month posts and their significant contribution to philosophy and the history of intellectual thought.

Discover more about these philosophers, their works, and schools of thought by clicking on the links below, and let us know who your favourite philosophers are in the comment box beneath the post.

William James (1842–1910) was an American psychologist and philosopher, a brother of Henry James, a Harvard professor of philosophy and psychology, and one of the founders of American Pragmatism alongside Charles Sanders Peirce. His first major work, The Principles of Psychology (1890) in two volumes brought together physiology, experimental psychology, philosophy, elements of pragmatism, and phenomenology. James coined the famous expression, a “stream of consciousness,” now widely used as literary term, to suggest that the human experience was characterized by a complex mental flux of thoughts.

Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was an Athenian philosopher and a dominant philosophical figure of classical antiquity. Socrates taught him and was a formative influence on Plato. He founded the Athenian Academy, which was regarded as the first institution devoted to philosophy and mathematical enquiry, whose most famous pupil was Aristotle.  Plato wrote most of his works in dialogue form. Among his masterpieces are The Republic, an extended dialogue in which he outlines his view of an ideal state and develops a comparison between justice and order in the soul; and Symposium, and Phaedrus which contain profound ideas on the true nature of love.

Philippa Foot (1920–2010) was a British moral philosopher who contributed to the revival of the Aristotelian virtue ethics and for the move away the emotivism and prescriptivism among the Oxford philosophers of the nineteen-sixties and later. She was one of the prominent female philosophers, including Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, and the future novelist Iris Murdoch who studied at Oxford University during the Second World War and shared philosophical viewpoint on moral philosophy.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, philosopher, writer, and educator. He was a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance, a cultural nationalist movement in the city. Tagore helped to shape the development of Indian philosophy in the early 20th century. His philosophical works have religious and ethical themes.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French philosopher and novelist, and winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature. He joined the Resistance movement and was the editor of Combat, its clandestine newspaper. Camus was best known for his philosophical concept of the absurd, which arises out of the tension between our desire for order, meaning and happiness and, on the other hand, the indifferent natural universe’s refusal to provide that. He explored this idea in famous novels, The Stranger (1942), The Plague (1947), and The Fall (1956), as well as philosophical essays, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951).

Foucault (1926-84) was a French philosopher, literary critic, and historians of ideas whose theories on ‘discourses’ and the relation of power and knowledge have been ground-breaking and influential across a wide range of disciplines  including history, literature, feminism,and queer studies. His notable works include Discipline and Punish (1975) and the monumental three volume, The History of sexuality. They examine the ways in which powerful social institutions (scientific, medical, penal etc.) regulate knowledge and submit its citizens to the control of experts.

G.E. Moore (1873-1958) was a British philosopher, who alongside Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein at Trinity College, Cambridge, was a key protagonist in the formation of the analytic tradition during the twentieth century. He is perhaps best known for his opposition to the prevailing British idealism, his criticism of ethical naturalism in his most well-known work Principia Ethica, his contributions to ethics, epistemology and metaphysics and Moore’s Paradox.

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) was a German poet and playwright, and one of the key figures of the Sturm and Drang period and of German Romanticism. In addition to this literary talent, he is a profound philosophical thinker. His works principally concern the role of aesthetics and beauty in human life. Kant was a major influence on Schiller who developed his ethics and aesthetics towards post-Kantian idealism. Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) on the redemptive quality of beauty is perhaps Schiller’s most important works and influenced Friedrich Schlegel and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) was one of the most significant Christian philosophers and theologians of the medieval period. Scotus made important and influential contributions in metaphysics, ethics, and natural theology. He was notable for his approach to philosophy, characterised by rigorous philosophical analysis, meticulous exposition of arguments and its use of technical concepts. Because of his nuanced and technical reasoning, he was referred to as the “subtle doctor.”

Mary Astell (1666–1731) was an English philosopher and one of the first and foremost English feminists. She was best-known for her theories on female education in the early modern period and had a profound influence on later generation of feminists. Astell’s key feminist work A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, proposed establishing an academy along Platonist lines where women could receive a proper and serious education in religion and philosophy. Another book, Some Reflections on Marriage, examined women’s subordination in marriage.

Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) was an American historian and philosopher of science. He was notable for his highly influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn argued that science does not progress in a linear and consistent fashion via an accumulation of knowledge, but proceeds within a scientific paradigm. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions sold more than a million copy and influenced history and philosophy of science, and the social sciences.

We hope you have enjoyed our journey through philosophy this year.

We’ll be back in 2020 with a new series of Philosopher of the Month posts, until then, keep in touch with us on our Twitter channel @OUPPhilosophy and in the comments section below.

Featured image credit: “Hanging pendant lamps” by Dil via Unsplash.

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How to use the existential “there”

When I read something, one of the things I notice right away is overuse of non-referential there as a means of sleepwalking from topic to topic. Also known as the existential there, this grammatical form asserts the existence (or non-existence) of something and is often used to introduce new information, to shift the topic of discussion or to call something to mind. Let’s look at some examples of existential there used well.

In Jody Rosen’s 12,000 word New York Times Magazine piece “The Day the Music Burned” (19 June 19  2019), there occurs just thirty-nine times. That’s once every three hundred words. About a third of those occurrences are referential, denoting places, such as “There, he found an inferno” or “what was stored there.”  When Rosen uses existential there, it is often to enumerate a detail or to introduce another topic:

There were at least a dozen fire engines ringing the vault, and as Aronson looked around he noticed one truck whose parking lights seemed to be melting.

There were recordings from dozens of record companies that had been absorbed by Universal over the years, including several of the most important labels of all time.

There is another defining characteristic of masters—the “Sgt. Pepper’s” tapes, the tapes stacked on the shelves of Building 6197 and countless other masters as well. They are corporate assets.

Or consider William Langewiesche’s article “‘Good Night. Malaysian Three-Seven-Zero’” in the July 2019 edition of The Atlantic. It has twenty-nine instances of there in its roughly 10,000 words, or just over one per three hundred and fifty words. About a third of those are locational rather than existential.  Langewiesche uses existential there to

enumerate:

All told, there were seven linkups: two initiated automatically by the airplane, and five others initiated automatically by the Inmarsat ground station. There were also two satellite-phone calls; they went unanswered but provided additional data.

introduce a series of details:

There was a bit of music on a stage. In the background a large poster showed the silhouette of a Boeing 777, along with the words where, who, why, when, whom, how, and also impossible, unprecedented, vanished, and clueless.

and negate or quantify:

Given that there was nothing technical that Zaharie could have learned by rehearsing the act on a gamelike Microsoft consumer product, Iannello suspects that the purpose of the simulator flight may have been to leave a bread-crumb trail to say goodbye.

There is a strong suspicion among investigators in the aviation and intelligence communities that he was clinically depressed.

Outside of these prestigious publications, other bits of writing I’ve read recently have used there  between 14 and 26 times in essays of about 1600 words.  That’s one there every 50 to 110 words. The impression is of writers stumbling through transitions, especially when there introduces vague, indefinite phrases like:

there is a growing need

there are some who are

there are countless techniques

there are several different

there are reoccurring issues

there is a multitude of different

there are studies

there is support

there are many views

In such instances, there is filler, a pause while the writer shift to a new topic. The various needs, techniques, issues, studies, views, and individuals could be better introduced by describing their significance. The more polished examples in The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic use existential there with specifics not generalities:  a dozen fire engines, recordings from dozens of record companies, two satellite-phone calls, a strong suspicion among investigators. And they use far fewer of them.

Take an inventory of your use of existential there to make sure you are using it intentionally, sparsely, and specifically. You might be surprised.

Featured image credit: Typography by Photo by Diomari Madulara via Unsplash.

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Why young people suffer more from pollution

Around the world, young adults are voicing concern that the climate is in crisis and are correctly describing this as an intergenerational inequity. The adults who determine the quality of our air are continuing to burn fossil fuels, which release the pollutants that science shows could negatively and dramatically alter planetary conditions as early as 2100. Why do we continue to do so? Because it is too expensive or inconvenient, or both, to change course. Our generation will leave the next with very different and diminished opportunities. This is not only selfish, it is unfair.

But intergenerational inequity is not just about the climate crisis. People under the age of five, who make up roughly 10% of the world’s population, are especially at risk of having unhealthy adulthoods. In addition to the dangers of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, many other major pollutants particularly damaging to them are underregulated or not regulated at all.

Environmental health professionals, pediatricians, and policymakers are fond of saying that children are not little adults. Children do not experience pollution the same way adults do; assumptions used to evaluate pollution impacts on adults should not necessarily apply to children. A classic example is air pollution. Children’s lungs are not fully formed at birth, nor are  their immune systems. In part due to these differences, air pollutants such as exhaust have a greater effect on them and exacerbate lung diseases such as asthma.

Similarly, lead pollution in soil, water, air, and dust can affect brain development and put children at risk for learning disabilities and hyperactivity. Such exposures can have greater consequences earlier than later in life. Pollution impacts on children also last longer than they do on adults. A 5-year-old will suffer decades longer than a 45-year-old.

It is encouraging that there is some awareness of the special status of children by those setting environmental standards. Since 1995 it has been official US federal policy to “consider the risks to infants and children consistently and explicitly as a part of risk assessments generated during its decision making process.” The only major US federal environmental legislation in the twenty-first century, amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act, requires chemical safety evaluations to include infants and children. On the international level, the United Nations, through its World Health Organization, has issued findings and urged action, stressing the impacts of air pollution on children’s health and development and including data showing that more than nine out of ten children breathe dangerously polluted air. And some policymakers have come to understand the connection between children’s health and long-term cost-savings: Healthy children become healthy adults with lower medical expenses. Economic consequences can be potent drivers of environmental policy.

The problem is that, like the human response to the climate crisis, our response to pollutants as they affect children is too little and maybe too late. Take, for instance, the regulation of particulate matter, common airborne organic and inorganic chemicals like soot, smog, and aerosols. Particulate matter is a criteria pollutant, meaning that it is heavily regulated internationally. But studies indicate that particulates still account for such outcomes as significant early miscarriage, preterm delivery, and low birth weight, as well as childhood high blood pressure. Heavy metals are another example. These are very dense (at least five times the density of water) and usually highly toxic elements, including lead and cadmium. They are ubiquitous and easily inhaled, ingested, or absorbed by the skin. Although they are regulated internationally they still impact children’s health.

What should decision makers and regulators do? First, make children’s health a top priority when setting environmental policy. Second, make sure chemicals are tested using methods and assumptions that include impacts on children. Third, employ the precautionary principle, which holds that when there is significant doubt about the safety of a pollutant or chemical new to the commercial market, don’t give industry the benefit of the doubt. Rather, we should exercise caution and regulate it aggressively to reduce risk. Fourth, consider fundamental fairness: ensure intergenerational equity every step of the way.

Feature image: Shanghai by Holger Link via Unsplash. 

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Rescuing capitalism from itself

In mid-August, 2019, 183 leaders of some of America’s largest companies—AT&T, American Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Chevron, Caterpillar, Citigroup, and John Deere—issued a “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” under sponsorship of the Business Roundtable. The letter attracted immediate praise—and an abundance of skepticism. Here were the titans of capitalism admitting that they, and their corporate allies, have been seriously indifferent to the economic anguish of a large majority of American workers. The letter stated:

Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity. We believe the free-market system is the best means of generating good jobs, a strong and sustainable economy, innovation, a healthy environment and economic opportunity for all…While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.

Among commitments to customers, suppliers, communities, and shareholders, the letter promised to transform the American corporation by:

Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.

It is important to reflect on this profound admission by a small number of corporate elites. Why now? Perhaps there is an emerging sense of guilt after years of aggressive suppression of labor unions, stagnant wages, moving jobs abroad, and shifting corporate profits overseas where tax exposure is minimized. The 2017 Trump tax cuts that produced large-scale stock buy-backs (a gift to owners)—coupled with scant regard for the plight of their own workers—may also have played a role. But is this epiphany motivated by guilt or fear?

In light of recent news, fear may well be the primary motivation. Late in 2019 it was revealed that FedEx, whose CEO Fred Smith was one of the signers of the manifesto of new corporate behavior, managed to reduce its tax obligations for 2018 to exactly zero. In fact, it seems that the federal government owes FedEx a tax refund. Smith had been an assiduous presence in Donald Trump’s campaign, and a few days after the election he was in Trump’s New York office. David Abney, CEO of UPS, another signer of the promise to do better, joined his greatest competitor in lobbying for Trump’s tax cuts. The two of them discovered their mutual interest and joined hands to write an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal on August, 13, 2017 advocating the Trump tax cuts.

Several things might be said about the negative tax liability of FedEx. We need not engage here in theoretical discussions about whether or not corporations should pay taxes as long as their employees do so. Nor is it necessary to explore the subsequent investment of corporations that is often advanced as justification for such lobbying. The evidence suggests that companies receiving the largest tax cuts actually invested less in the following year. And of course we know that virtually all companies used the savings to reward share-holders with massive share buybacks and dividend boosts. The point here, and it is one that defines the central argument of Possessive Individualism, is that such behavior plausibly stands as yet another reason why the long-forgotten workers under managerial capitalism have begun to feel anger. After all, many of them actually do pay taxes.

And now, with a presidential election approaching, and the word “socialist” wafting through the air, maybe there are good reasons for the one percent (or the upper crust of the one-percent) to be looking over their well-tailored shoulders. Setting aside intrigue with this corporate mea culpa, two questions require answers: Why has this problem been allowed to fester for so long? And  what can be done about it?

First, the persistent disregard for workers burdened by stagnant household incomes is the inevitable result of a meritocratic winner-take-all economy. American capitalism is now so involuted, disfigured, and encrusted that it has ceased to be a source of hope. The burst of material plentitude that began with the Industrial Revolution seemed to offer a better life all around. Instead, it has bred a culture of acquisitiveness and self-centered hedonism. It also has become an excuse for the embrace of the worst of human instincts—social differentiation and exclusion. The American version of capitalism is no longer an engine of improved livelihoods and social hope. How did this happen?

The defining spirit of our time is the alluring fiction of modernism. The autonomous acquisitive individual was both rational and moral. Prevailing economic orthodoxy provided the necessary benediction. Reigning ideology insists that the economy—the market—is a separate and quite delicate sphere of efficiency and rectitude. When held up against the self-dealing incoherence of politics, tampering with the economy can only inflict harm. Kenneth Arrow proved that social choices were inconclusive and contradictory. Only markets offered consistent clarity. Politicians must not interfere with the mystical workings of the economy. Private firms now comprise the sacred temples of modern capitalism. Government intervention in the market is dangerous and must be avoided. This protected realm is the fragile fount of future well-being.

Ironically, the celebrated individual of American mythology is now an unwitting accomplice in her own economic marginalization. Dependent on the constellation of sanctified private firms for her precarious livelihood, she is unknowingly enlisted in the self-defeating cause of laissez faire. We are now in an era of hedge fund conjurers and private equity tormenters. Think of it as managerial capitalism. Here, the exquisite wrangler rules. Millions of nervous employees live in fear of the abundant caprice of “scrunching” and “the deal funnel.” As politicians quake and bluster before the alleged hordes of migrants seeking a better life, their constituents exhibit behavior that further confounds the anomie and paralysis.

The solution will require two profound changes. First, the acquisitive individual must rediscover a sense of loyalty to others as neighbors, as colleagues, and as participants in the shared social process of living. Second, the private firm—falsely celebrated as a job creator—must be reimagined as a public trust in which the economic well-being of employees becomes a central part of its purpose. In the absence of these dual transformations, capitalism as we know it cannot endure.

Featured Image Credit: “Low angle photo of glass building” by Lee Ferrell. CC0 via Unsplash.

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Thanksgiving: Behind the Pilgrim Myth

The driving force behind making Thanksgiving a national holiday was Sarah Josepha Hale, who was born in 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire. After her husband’s death, Hale turned to writing to generate money. Her novel Northwood: A Tale of New England (1827) included an entire chapter devoted to a Thanksgiving dinner. Its publication brought Hale fame, and she ended up as editor for Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most influential women’s magazine in the pre-Civil War era. For seventeen years Hale campaigned to proclaim the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day. Hale encouraged other magazines to join the quest of making Thanksgiving a national holiday, and many published Thanksgiving-related stories, poems, and illustrations. During the Civil War, Hale redoubled her efforts. A few months after the North’s military victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national day of thanksgiving. Every president since has proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national holiday.

Hale’s pre-1865 letters and editorial promoting Thanksgiving Day made no mention of the Pilgrims or the first Thanksgiving feast. There were several good reasons for this. Jamestown had been settled before Plymouth, and colonists in Jamestown had observed days for thanksgiving before Plymouth was settled. Hale made the connection between the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving holiday in an 1865 editorial in Godey’s Lady’s Book. This connection was picked up by newspapers and by other magazines. By 1870 school textbooks contained the story of the “first Thanksgiving.”

By the late 1880s the concept of a Pilgrim-centered Thanksgiving had blossomed in popular books. Thanksgiving plays were produced annually, and many schools offered special dinners based on fictional visions of life in Plymouth in 1621. This curriculum spawned a large body of children’s literature focused on the Pilgrims and the “first Thanksgiving.” These myths were enshrined in books, magazines, and artworks during the twentieth century.

The rapid adoption of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving myth had less to do with historical fact and more to do with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe flooding into the United States. Because the immigrants came from many lands, the American public education system needed to create an easily understood history of America. The Pilgrims were an ideal symbol for America’s beginning, so they became embedded in the nation’s schools, as did the Thanksgiving feast.

Featured image credit: Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash

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Etymology and delusion, part 2

Last week (November 20, 2019), I discussed one aspect of etymological lunacy. Looking for a (or even the) protolanguage is a sound idea, even though specialists’ efforts in this direction have been both successful and disappointing. The existence of Proto-Indo-European and Proto–Semitic can hardly be doubted; yet many crucial details remain unknown. For example, the homeland of the Indo-Europeans and the circumstances that led to the triumph of that language in the enormous Eurasian territory remain a matter of controversy and speculation. Even attempts to reconstruct the language that was at one time spoken all over Eurasia have not been unsuccessful (the branch of linguistics devoted to this attempt is called Nostratics), but here the details are even murkier. Madness begins when someone points to a certain modern language (Irish, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, or any other) as either the proto-source or at least a main source of another language or of several languages. It is instructive and frightening to see how successful such attempts sometimes appear to be: given enough ingenuity, almost anything can be “proved.”

Pondering the imponderable: a single source of all languages. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

The other common symptom of this disease consists in tracing all the words of all languages to a limited (usually very few) number of roots or a single concept. A certain D. P. Martynov (stress on the second syllable), providentially not known outside Russia and now forgotten even there, held this view and wrote a book that did not escape the attention of psychiatrists. The book, titled (in translation) The Discovery of the Mystery of the Human Language, Exposing the Failure of Scientific Linguistics, appeared in Moscow in 1897. I have seen the book and even copied parts of it, but below I will quote Roman Jakobson’s characterization of the author. Martynov was a principal of public schools in Petrozavodsk (a town in northwest Russia) and compiler of primers. The discovery was “a ludicrous treatise combining fanciful etymologies, with mysticism and vulgar nutritive materialism, in which he advanced, with a great deal of inventiveness, morbid vituperation, and coarse humor, the idea that all words in all languages derive from the verb ‘to eat’.” Don’t miss a great deal of inventiveness.

Martynov is impossible to read. But In 1822-1825 three volumes appeared in Cambridge, England (published by the University Press for Richard Priestley), under the title Etymologicon Universale; or Universal Etymological Dictionary. The entire set is extremely rare, but it is now available online. Just like some of the authors mentioned last week, the Reverend Walter Whiter, who put together that enormous work (over two thousand pages, with excellent indexes), was a learned man, known for his work on Shakespeare. It is unclear what made him turn to etymology. He taught that all the words can be traced to the idea of “earth.” This central thesis of his is sometimes lost in long passages, but one can follow it through a welter of paragraphs and passages.

To be sure, in the 1820s English etymology was in almost every respect “prescientific.” I have often consulted the Etymologicon and found many “thought-provoking” remarks there, but failed to discover a single useful etymological suggestion. In recent times, no one except for me has probably studied this work for philological purposes. Wikipedia offers a tiny article on Whiter, but, apparently, its author did not analyze the enormous compendium. Criticizing someone who tried to discover the origin of words two centuries ago may not be worth the effort. But the dangerous idea that inspired Whiter never dies and invites caution. Why should all the words have a single nucleus, whether at the phonetic or the semantic level? However, as usual in etymology (and probably everywhere else), the line separating normalcy from delusion is easy to cross.

Primitive labor, primitive words. Relief from Trier, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Some people reasoned that all or most words have roots in labor activities: people work, and create words in the process. However speculative, this looks like an attractive idea. Johann Steyrer, a German researcher, combined the lines of sound and sense development. On the one hand, he believed that vowels invariably develop in this order: oa (ua, uo)—ō, ā—ou—au, and iu—ū. Such a universal is suspicious by definition, but Steyrer arrived at his conclusion by comparing only the history of English and his native east Bavarian dialect (clearly, an insufficient database!). He also thought that the most basic human activity was weaving and derived all kinds of words from the root of German flechten “to weave.”  His main works appeared in 1887 and 1905. Today no one reads Steyrer, but all serious etymologists read Jost Trier (1894-1970). Inspired by the idea that language should be analyzed from the point of view of the community and its work, he derived numerous words from labor processes.

From ancient weaving to the itsy bitsy spider in light of etymology. Image 1: Hataori by Yanagawa Shigenobu; no known copyright restrictions, via the Library of Congress. Image 2: spider weaving by Wonderland, CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

Unlike Steyrer, Trier was an excellent word historian, but many of his “monomaniacal” etymologies are open to criticism, to put it mildly. They are never silly, but often too goal-oriented, the goal being a universal principle of word derivation. His emphasis on the unifying spirit of the community attracted him to the Nazis. The German Wikipedia says nothing about his being a member of Hitler’s party, while the English Wikipedia says nothing about his etymologies! His most ardent follower was the great Dutch Germanic scholar Jan de Vries, another Nazi. Trier’s career ran smoothly in the postwar years, while Jan de Vries, who was an active functionary of the Third Reich, spent several years in prison and, unlike Trier, was never allowed to teach after the war, though publishers were happy to bring out his books and articles, and he gave numerous guest lectures at German universities. (Alas, scholarship and politics are capricious partners. I don’t know anyone in the medieval field who has not benefited by de Vries’s excellent books.)

Emphasis on labor and primeval magic seduced the Georgian-Russian archeologist N. Ya. Marr (1864-1934). He embraced Marxism, announced Indo-European scholarship to be a product of imperialism, colonialism, and racism; propagated his own (the only correct) model, and taught that all words of all languages go back to so-called diffused exclamations sal, ber, yon, and rosh (the concept of primordial diffused complexes was also his invention). And of course, his opponents were silenced, and he acquired a huge and belligerent following, with many talented young people seduced by his revolutionary teachings. As expected, books appeared showing how ancient legends reflect the labor process and ancient magic and how words do derive from sal, ber, yon, and rosh. His teachings were the laughing stock in the West, but Russia, as we know, can at times become self-sufficient. Marr’s cult came to an end, when another great linguist, Joseph Stalin, subjected it to harsh criticism in 1950, and, lo and behold, it turned out that Indo-European scholarship was not racist, that Marr had been a bad Marxist, and that the words of all languages did not go back to sal, ber, yon, and rosh. My collection of such works is rather large. Surprisingly, quite a few monomaniacs were medical doctors. If someone has not read Chekhov’s Ward Number 6, do so.

We know next to nothing about the beginnings of language, but we have learned from bitter experience that any attempt to find a master key to its origin or to the origin of all words will invariably open a door to a closet with ghosts and skeletons in it.

Feature image credit: Image by Paul Brennan, public domain from Pixabay.

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The truth about ‘Latinx’ [a revision]

In recent years, the term Latinx has become popular in academic settings in English to designate a group of people without reference to gender, which is designated by -o and -a endings in some Romance languages. While academics and Twitter users have begun to use the term, only 2% of the U.S. population actually identifies with this word. Latinx has become so widely used that Elizabeth Warren has taken to using it on the campaign trail. This has led to a reflection on its political implications in a recent Ross Douthat piece in the New York Times. The interesting question is why a term that is thought to help unify a large group of people would fail to gain wider traction.

Since Spanish is my mother tongue, I can understand why this term would befuddle Spanish speakers. From a linguistic perspective, it makes no sense to create a genderless word in a gender-marked language. Yes, the -o and -a endings signal the grammatical gender, such as in the terms niño and niña. But the endings for the adult form are not always straightforward, such as in elhombre and la mujer. In fact, all nouns carry grammatical gender and some of these end in -o/a (i.e. la tierra) and others do not (i.e. el arbol). Finally, even within categories that have similar meanings there can be variation. In Spanish, it’s el puma and la pantera. But in Italian, one would say la tigre. Confused yet? Grammatical gender is confusing, especially with regard to animals.

With all this confusion, Spanish speakers lose a connection between sex and gender. No one would be insulted if they are considered part of el pueblo Latino or la gente Latina. Just because someone says I am part of la gente Latina doesn’t make me feel that they are referring only to women. For a speaker of this class of Romance languages, the notion that gender and sex are the same thing makes little sense. Yes, gender originates in sex but it is not the same thing when it comes to non-sexed nouns.

The problem arises when we use a gender-marked Romance language term in English contexts. For example, one day I ran across a cover for Newsweek that characterizes Selena as “Tejano’s Queen.” I was confused by this. Did they mean Tejano’s (i.e. people from Texas) music? The word music was never used so I kept on reading. I found that the special issue was “proud to present Selena, a 100-page tribute to the most beloved Tejano singer of all time.” Oh, so she was a Tejano singer and the reference was to music. But, in fact, she would be una cantante de musica Tejanaor una cantante Tejana. Either way, the gender would be feminine not masculine. Tejana and Tejano had been masculinized to the latter. This is not unusual for Anglophones. You might remember the once Terminator, and now ex-Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger stating “No problemo.” The problem (no pun intended) is that it should be No hay problema. Again, an Anglophone (probably the scriptwriters) “masculinizes” a Spanish noun. Spanish has two genders but for some reason Anglophones think there is only one. Thus, what grammatical gender is and is not becomes entirely lost when moving to a language where gender and sex are the same thing.

But let’s leave my linguistic perch for a second and think about the implications of the term X is. The term X is sought as one that would be all inclusive. The term reminds me of algebra where X represents a variable that has no defined meaning. As such it is perfectly suited for equations where a term is unknown. In this case, it can take on any value and in human terms would represent a more inclusive term.

The problem with creating a new genderless word, is that it already exists in gender-marked languages that have a true neuter. In Latin, -a is the plural neuter. In this language, the inclusive term would be Latina, plural without reference to gender. The tricky part is that Latina is also used for feminine singular nouns in many Romance languages, and therefore would not be interpreted as gender neutral. In recent years, some Spanish speakers facing the same dilemma have preferred the ending -e to create a more inclusive term. Rather than using a synthetically, anglophonically derived ending such as X, we could opt for a more organic one that arises from a gender-marked language. In that sense, Latine is all-inclusive and derives from a language that sought to create a genderless ending system. Spanish is after all a descendant of Latin, the natural language of science and the one used to represent complex concepts in English.

If you miss the X, you could tune in for reruns of The X-Files. Here, you would be presented with the motto “The truth is out there,” which also applies to our search for a genderless all-inclusive term. If modernization is what we seek, we could opt for the new term in Spanish Latine. Alternatively, we could choose Latina, the original word from Latin. Which one do you prefer?

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the plural neuter term in Latin is “Latinae.” The author has offered this updated article to address this. We regret the error.

Featured Image Credit: “Spanish Dictionary” by Abigail Luke. CC by 2.0 via Flickr

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Connecting families through open adoption

The term “open adoption” is unfamiliar to much of the general public, and yet it describes the reality of adoption today. These are adoptions in which there is some contact or exchange of information between birth families and adoptive families, before or after the adoption. With growing awareness of the benefits of openness for children and families, the vast majority of adoption agencies—95%—do not facilitate closed adoptions (the old adoption arrangements, where no identifying information was shared between adoptive and birth families).

Historically, many people have surmised that a clean break between adopted children and their birth families enables both parties to move on. We now know that is not true. Openness benefits kids by providing them with biological continuity and not denying them the truth of their origins and background, thus aiding in identity development. It benefits birth parents as well. Given that birth parents are unlikely to forget the children they place for adoption, openness may help to alleviate their pain and guilt. For adoptive parents, openness can ease fears and questions, reassuring them about the permanency of the adoption, and promote empathy toward the birth parents.

It was research on the benefits of open adoption—and the downsides of closed adoptions—that, over time, moved adoption agencies to gradually shift their practices towards that of facilitating open adoptions. So what does open adoption look like in practice?

The realities of open adoption are complex. Some adoptive and birth families exchange basic information through the adoption agency, either before adoption or on an ongoing basis. No information is shared directly between parties. Adoptive parents send photos and updates to the agency, which pass these on to birth families, who can respond in kind—again, through the agency. Other families have direct contact with one another. Contact of any type may range from fairly regular and frequent to infrequent.

Among families who are initially hesitant about the idea of open adoptions, most ultimately embrace it, as they grow to understand and appreciate the benefits of openness—and to view it as less unfamiliar and scary. Far more common than stories of adoptive parents who wish for less contact are stories of adoptive parents who long for more contact, especially over time, as their children grow older. Indeed, sometimes birth parents drop out of contact (due to mental health, substance abuse, or housing issues, or pain and loss associated with the placement), and this is typically very challenging for adoptive parents, who recognize that the birth parents’ presence (or absence) would likely become more significant for their children over time—not less.

As one lesbian adoptive mom, Mariette, puts it: “It’s been very disappointing for me because we did an open adoption and we really wanted there to be more of a connection.” A heterosexual adoptive dad named Matt describes how his 8 year-old son was struggling with a loss of contact with his birth mother: “That realization of, ‘Why doesn’t she want to have contact with me?’ We’re getting those questions now. We tell him, ‘We wish we had contact with her too.’ Recently we’ve been involving him in the letters that we send to her. We ask, ‘Is there anything you want to add?’”

Family relationships are complex—and those between adoptive families and birth families are no exception. Sometimes adoptive parents express sadness or even frustration with birth parents—such as surrounding their ongoing mental health or substance abuse struggles, which are often among the issues that had led them to make an adoption plan in the first place. Yet alongside feelings of sadness, disappointment, or frustration, these adoptive parents are often also deeply committed to and appreciative of their children’s birth parents, recognizing all that they are up against and continuing to value them their children’s first, and birth, parents. Deb, a lesbian adoptive mother, has a particularly nuanced set of feelings about her daughter Marlo’s birth parents, explaining that,

“The fact [is] that they have certain issues that might impact their ability for a healthy relationship with Marlo [child]. That’s part of why they chose us to raise her. I think there will be some sad lessons ahead, but I think one thing that makes it easier is their decision to place her with us was a decision made out of love. They loved her.  . .and they made one of the toughest decisions of their lives. We feel that every time we talk with them in person or on the phone; you can feel that pain still. It’s awful to witness and it must be horrible to feel, but that pain comes from the fact that they do love her. If we can help her know that they love her, that she wasn’t abandoned, that would be one of the greatest gifts I think we could give her”.

Deb’s quote illustrates what so many stories reveal: the power of acknowledging, in all its complexity, the pain and the beauty in adoption. Open adoption, in its best sense, means acknowledging and embracing complexity, rather than wishing it or willing it away. It means a both/and perspective, not an either/or perspective. It means staying present to loss—and inviting in connection. It means doing family in a way that is authentic and real, and not the stuff of storybooks. All families are complex. Families in open adoptions are perhaps especially complex—and, in an ideal world, deeply aware of and in conversation with that complexity.

Featured Image Credit  by Ben Kerckx from  Pixabay .  

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