Oxford University Press's Blog, page 210

Why paying tax can be good news for companies

For the past 35 years, Ipsos MORI, the UK market research company, has undertaken a survey of which professions in Britain people trust. Each year, they ask 1,000 people whether they trust people in different professions to tell the truth.

Every year, close to the bottom come business leaders, just above estate agents, professional footballers, journalists, and politicians, below trade union leaders and “the man in the street”, and usually even below bankers.

Mistrust in business is pervasive, persistent and profound.

Over the last few months, we have seen leaders around the world responding as never before: In France, President Macron has defined a new class of company with “raison d’être”. In the USA, Elizabeth Warren has proposed an Accountable Capitalism Act that would impose public charters and German-style co-determination on the boards of large US corporations. In the UK, the Labour opposition party has been galvanizing popular support for nationalization, employee ownership, and board representation, and the UK Financial Reporting Council has proposed a new Corporate Governance Code around corporate purpose.

Rarely has there been such global recognition that there needs to be a fundamental change in the nature of the corporation.

So why is there such mistrust in business?

The answer lies in the conventional view of business, as expounded in 1962 by Milton Friedman: “there is one and only one social responsibility of business ….to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.”

The so-called Friedman Doctrine is embedded in business practice, policy and education around the world. But it was not always like this. For nearly all of its 2,000 year history, the corporation has combined a public purpose with its commercial activities. It is only over the last 60 years that the idea that profit is the only purpose of business has emerged. The consequence has been a growing conflict between business and the rest of society.

This conflict – and the consequent erosion of trust — is well illustrated by the steady decline of corporate tax payments. Globalization has made it increasingly straightforward for companies to locate their tax domicile and taxable profits where their corporate tax liabilities are minimized. The result is that many companies end up paying taxes that are small in relation to their activities and earnings in a particular jurisdiction.

A report in the Financial Times (11 March 2018) revealed that the effective corporation tax paid rate by the world’s ten largest companies (as measured by their market capitalization) has declined by 9% since the financial crisis.

A report in the Financial Times (11 March 2018) revealed that the effective corporation tax paid rate by the world’s ten largest companies (as measured by their market capitalization) has declined by 9% since the financial crisis.

In fact, profit primacy imposes an expectation on directors to minimize their tax liabilities to maximize their shareholder interests. When ownership of companies was concentrated in the hands of a small number of family members in Britain at the end of the 19th century, families’ concerns about their reputation and social standing encouraged some companies (such as Cadbury, Lever Brothers, and Rowntree) to display good citizenship. But with increasing dispersion of shareholdings amongst financial institutions, it has become easier for shareholders to hide behind a veil of anonymity and lack of accountability in seeking minimization of corporate tax liabilities to maximize their wealth.

Where should we look for answers?

In essence, the nature of the problem is that companies do not acknowledge the benefits (physical, social and legal) they derive from the societies in which they operate – a prime example being the privileges corporations enjoy from “limited liability.”

Limited liability means that the private assets of shareholders are protected from creditors in the event of bankruptcy, and only the money that they have invested in a company is at risk. It has promoted entrepreneurship, investment, and R&D on a scale that would have been inconceivable if shareholders’ personal assets had been at stake, and it has encouraged the development of liquid stock markets that allow shareholders to trade their shares at low cost. But as the 2008 financial crisis demonstrated, it means that societies and in particular taxpayers are exposed to bailing out failing industries such as banking during periods of financial distress.

If companies enjoy this public insurance in bad times, they should bear a corresponding responsibility to contribute their fair share of taxes during good times. “Fair” should be measured by the average rate of corporation taxes that companies pay globally on the profits they earn over a number of years. The payment of fair taxes should be enshrined as part of a company’s purposes and licence to operate. Corporate taxation should not be classified as a cost to be minimized for the benefit of shareholders but as the contribution, along with profits, that business makes to society as a whole.

Recognition of fair share of taxes as part of its corporate purpose is one of the most important contributions that business itself can make to regaining public trust.

Featured image credit: Building Glass Architecture by Mikes Photos. CC0 via Pixabay .

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A surprisingly religious John Stuart Mill

Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. In this interview session, we ask Larsen a few questions to learn more about John Stuart Mill’s religious identity.

Oxford University Press: Your most recent book, John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, is in OUP’s Spiritual Lives series and is essentially a religious biography of Mill. What is the best one-word description of Mill’s religious identity?

Timothy Larsen: “Complicated,” I guess. He has been called everything from an atheist to a mystic. One scholar has even claimed that Mill saw himself as the founder of a new religion. Mill himself once observed that his reverence for Jesus Christ gave him the right to call himself a Christian.

OUP: But did he believe in God or not?

TL: Mill decided that strictly in terms of proof the right answer to that question of God’s existence is that it is “a very probable hypothesis.” He also thought it was perfectly rational and legitimate to believe in God as an act of hope or as the result of one’s efforts to discern the meaning of life as a whole.

OUP: Did he go to church?

TL: Yes, surprising often. He attended the Church of England regularly as a boy. At the end of his life, he was a supporter of the Protestant church in Avignon (where he lived). His best friend there was its pastor and Mill gave it a large financial contribution annually. The last public meeting he ever attended was in that church. At it, he accepted a position as an honorary member of the executive committee of its charity which supported religious schools. Whenever Mill visited a city, whether in England or abroad, he was keen to attend a worship service in its principal church. On the continent, he would sometimes wait around in a church for hours hoping that there would be a service. In 1856 he actually left his adored wife at home and took lodgings in Birmingham so that he could attend all of the Holy Week services at St Chad’s.

OUP: You say that he did attend church regularly as a boy, but I thought Mill claimed that he was raised without religion?

TL: He did claim he was raised “without religious belief, in the ordinary meaning of the term,” but it turns out to be a rather misleading claim, especially the way that we think of what it is like to grow up without religion today. The part that is true is that his father was a religious sceptic and he taught his firstborn son to be one as well. Mill, however, famously never mentions his mother in his Autobiography and she turns out to have been a Christian from beginning to end. Moreover, Mill’s sisters were also devout Christians throughout their entire lives. This is truly remarkable when one recalls that they were all entirely homeschooled by James Mill and John Stuart Mill himself. Clearly, Mill’s home life was not as secular as that claim has led people to believe.

OUP: Are people then wrong to think of Mill as a famous rationalist?

TL: No, no, he is a famous rationalist. He had an extraordinary mind for logic and his textbook on that subject was and is justly celebrated. Unbelievers tended to assume that these stances are in opposition to religion but, of course, religious people do not think that reason and logic are not on their side. Orthodox Christians were enthralled with Mill’s Logic and were quick to praise it and to assign it in their schools. In his posthumously published essay, “Theism,” Mill made the case for hope in God and in Christ. Mill’s disciple, the agnostic John Morley, fumed that it was “profoundly irreconcilable” with “the scientific principles which Mr. Mill inculcated,” but, once again, Mill himself did not think he had abandoned those principles. In a parallel and interrelated way, Mill was a rationalist but he was also a Romantic.

OUP: As you were doing the research for this book, what most surprised you?

TL: How religion kept leaping out at every turn. That fact tells us as much about what nineteenth-century Britain was like as it does about Mill, but it is striking nonetheless. For instance, Mill’s closest intellectual companion in the later years of his life was his stepdaughter, the feminist Helen Taylor, who also became his literary executor. She was extraordinarily pious when young—again, with no apparent encouragement from any adult in her life—and, it would seem, was received into the Catholic Church toward the end of her life. Mill’s best male friend was a clergyman. Mill would praise works of orthodox theology. Every chapter of the book has additional evidence along these lines that I, for one, often found startling.

OUP: Isn’t there a danger that you have become so enamored with your revisionist thesis that you are making Mill out to be more religious than he actually was?

TL: Yes, I see that possibility. And, as I said, the real answer is: it’s complicated. If I were to push back against your question, I could rightly say that “religion” was actually a positive category for Mill. He would have been quite happy to be thought of as ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’. Still, it is certainly the case that he was suspicious of—and, to a degree, opposed to—dogmatic, organized religion. This means that he was much less religious the way people usually think of that term then the vast majority of nineteenth-century Britons. Still, I think the thing that people today really need to grasp is just how deeply religious Victorian culture was and how much that influenced even a famous sceptic such as Mill. John Stuart Mill was keenly aware of the way that he was not an orthodox believer like most people at that time but, if we want to understand Mill aright, we need to see that he was much less ‘secular’ than people today think he was.

Featured image credit: “Cloud” by Toshiyuki IMAI. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Hasidic drag in American modern dance

Happy Hanukkah from OUP! This year we’re celebrating with a series of eight books celebrating Jewish history and culture over the eight nights of Hanukkah. As your menorah candles burn bright, take this opportunity to honour both the endurance of the Maccabees and the Jewish people.

This blog post is written by Rebecca Rosen, the author of Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance. Rosen introduces us to two women who performed in Hasidic drag during the 1920s and 1930s.

On 27 February 1932, the American modern dancer Pauline Koner presented a concert at New York City’s Town Hall. For the occasion, Koner, who was Jewish, premiered Chassidic Song and Dance, a solo in which she portrayed a young Hasidic Jew. Her characterization of an Eastern European Jew was not so different from the other exotics that constituted Koner’s repertory in the 1930s. Indeed, aided by vibrant costumes (and her mother, who would assist in swift costume changes backstage), the soloist would effortlessly transform herself into an array of foreign types—Hindu goddess, Javanese temple dancer, Andalusian maiden, Italian signorina. Yet Chassidic Song and Dance offered a critical distinction. In all her other solos, Koner portrayed female characters; in Chassidic Song and Dance, she presented herself as a boy—in Hasidic drag.

Interestingly, Koner was not the only Jewish female dancer performing in Hasidic drag on New York City stages and screens in the 1920s and 1930s. In Bar Mitzvah (Chassidic) (1929), Belle Didjah depicted an Orthodox youth on the verge of manhood; Dvora Lapson created a number of Hasidic solos including Yeshiva Bachur (1931), Beth Midrash (1936), and The Jolly Hassid (1937); and Benjamin Zemach outfitted a cast of male and female dancers in Hasidic garb for a 1931 concert. The most famous Jewish drag performer was Molly Picon, a seminal figure in Yiddish theater and film who frequently cross-dressed in such Second Avenue stage hits as Yonkele (1922–25) and the films Ost und West (1923) and Yidl Mitn Fidl (1937), presaging Barbra Streisand’s Yeshiva “boy” in Yentl (1983).

Why were these women drawn to Hasidism? Dance was an acceptable form of expression and exaltation in Hasidism. Thus, it makes sense that Jewish female choreographers working in American concert dance would look to Hasidism as a source for inventing modern dances on Jewish themes. However, each of these performers had different relationships to Judaism and Jewish culture, and their identities as Jewish women impacted how they represented Jewishness in performance.

For Koner, who had grown up in a secular home, Judaism was foreign and mysterious. In her autobiography, she likened her occasional childhood trips with her grandfather to a Lower East Side synagogue to visiting a distant land: “To me it was all wondrous theater.” Koner’s approach to representing ethnic material on the American concert stage was to transform it through creative interpretation and invention or, as she explained it, to capture “the flavor rather than the fact.” The actual choreography of Chassidic Song and Dance is not documented, though a stunning photograph of the dancer still exists, depicting her as a Hasidic boy with peyes (side curls), black cap, and black suit. In it, the dancer’s vivid features are highlighted by makeup and her body is positioned against a backdrop of angular shadows. Koner made the Hasidic Jew soulful, yet glamorous. At the same time, by performing so many ethnic types on one program, she suggested that these characterizations were all an act. To a certain degree, the choreographer represented the Hasidic boy, the Hindu goddess, and the Javanese temple dancer in the same way—from a distance, reinforcing her distinction from all the exotics in her repertory. She could portray the Jew, but Jewishness did not define her—she could put it on and take it off at will (or through swift costume changes between acts).

Unlike Pauline Koner, Dvora Lapson’s deep knowledge of Hasidic culture and dance stemmed from extensive ethnographic research that she conducted both in her native New York City and in Poland, where she traveled in 1937 only three years before the Warsaw ghetto was established, after which Poland’s Jewish population was virtually annihilated. Proudly describing herself as a “Jewish dance mime” and a “pioneer of the new Jewish dance,” Lapson wrote that her dance “compositions not only mirror and reflect Jewish life and folklore but present a keen commentary upon them.” In fact, Lapson’s lifelong dedication to Jewish dance would lead Jerome Robbins to hire her as a dance consultant for Fiddler on the Roof. Lapson boasted a vast repertory of Jewish dances in the 1930s, many of which were on Hasidic themes. Photographs of the dancer demonstrate that she was every bit as glamorous as Koner, though Lapson did not exoticize Jewish characters. On the contrary, Lapson believed that dance had the potential to instill pride in American Jews about their heritage and combat anti-Semitism. As she said to an interviewer in 1938, “I want the Gentile as well to find something in my work which makes him more sympathetic and appreciative of my race.”

Dvora Lapson in Yeshiva Bachur (House of Study). Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations and Beril Lapson.

It is significant that Hasidic drag thrived on the American concert stage during the 1920s and 1930s. By the late 1920s, American modern dance had already emerged as field in which female artists were making great strides by creating dances that portrayed women as autonomous subjects. When they commanded the stage as solo artists, female performers also asserted their ability to play an active role in American society. While Lapson’s dances aimed to increase American audiences’ understanding of Jewish culture and traditions, Koner’s Chassidic Song and Dance emphasized Jewish difference. It should be noted, however, that Koner premiered the dance at a benefit supporting the seventh anniversary of the Pioneer Women’s Organization of America, a left-wing association that rebuffed the chauvinism of American Zionism and aimed to educate Jewish women to become equal participants in a just society. Although their approaches were distinct, both Koner and Lapson used dance to intervene in a patriarchal religion that restricted women’s participation in religious and public life. By dancing in drag and by dancing solo, they subtly demanded a platform for women in Jewish spheres while underscoring women’s growing leadership in American modern dance and modern Jewish life.

Featured Image credit: Simple microphone shot on the stage by Matthias Wagner. Public Domain via Unsplash.

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Forty years of democratic Spain

Spaniards are celebrating with some fanfare the 40th anniversary of their democratic constitution that was approved overwhelmingly in a referendum on 6 December 1978, sealing the end of the 36-year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, the victor of the country’s civil war.

Whichever way one looks at it, Spain has been transformed profoundly since then. Be it economically with, for example, the creation of significant number of multinationals (more than Italy) or the world’s second-largest tourism industry in terms of visitors (81.8 million in 2017), politically with a vibrant democracy that ranks high in international classifications, socially with the greatly improved status of women (11 of the 17 ministers in the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez are female, the highest proportion in the world) or in foreign policy–where Spain has reclaimed its place on the international stage–the recent past seems like an unrecognisable foreign country.

Per capita income at purchasing power parity has increased fivefold to $38,285 and average life expectancy at birth by almost 10 years, to 83 years, one of the highest in the world (above that of the United States and the United Kingdom). Change has been deep too in the private sphere. The Franco regime lumped “pimps, villains and homosexuals” into one criminal group. This year’s LGBT Pride parade in Madrid was led by Fernando Grande-Marlaska, the gay Interior Minister.

The face of Spain has changed enormously in the last 40 years and is no longer ethnically homogeneous. When Franco died in 1975 there were only 165,000 foreigners officially registered in the country. That number rose to 800,000 in 1990 (2.1% of the population) and peaked at 5.7 million in 2012 (12.1%). To Spain’s great credit, the huge influx of immigrants has not produced any significant xenophobic, far-right movements or parties, making the country in this respect an exception to the norm in many other EU countries, such as the UK, France and Germany. Spain’s far-right Vox won a mere 0.2% of the vote in the June 2016 general election, but it obtained 12 seats (11% of the vote) in the regional election in Andalucía this month. There are no French-style banlieues or US-style ghettos in Spain.

Image credit: “Spain Flag Flutter Spanish Cabrera” by Efraimstochter. CC0 via Pixabay.

Few countries have telescoped so much change into such a short period. Alfonso Guerra, the Deputy Prime Minister (1982-91) put it colourfully when he said: “We’re going to change Spain so much that not even the mother who gave her birth will recognise her.” So much for Franco believing he had left his regime and its institutions, as he famously put it, “tied up, and well tied up.”

The transition to democracy, guided by King Juan Carlos I, Franco’s heir as head of state after he restored the Bourbon monarchy (the king’s grandfather went into exile in 1931), was achieved in the face of considerable adversity. It was not guaranteed from the outset to be successful: the Basque terrorist group ETA killed an average of 50 people a year in the first decade of democracy (and mounted assassination attempts in 1995 on both the king and Prime Minister José María Aznar), and Francoist officers staged a coup in 1981.

Today’s problems, such as the very high jobless rate (15%), particularly among young adults, acute income inequality, increased social exclusion, the push for independence in Catalonia and corruption in the political class do not detract from the fact that Spain has enjoyed an unprecedented period of prosperity and stability over the past 40 years. The constitution has given Spain institutional stability. There have been seven prime ministers since 1978 (Italy has had 25, one of whom served three times); during Spain’s Second Republic, between the spring of 1931 and the summer of 1936, before the civil war, the country had seven Prime Ministers and three Presidents of the Republic.

Spaniards can be proud of what has been achieved, but the next 40 years will be very different. The challenges ahead will test the largely cohesive society that has been created over the last four decades. The most visible one is the rapid ageing of the population and the pressure this is already exerting on the sustainability of the healthcare system and the viability of the state pension system. In 2050 35% of the population is forecast to be over the age of 67 compared with 16.5% today. Within a decade, unless there is a significant demographic change, only around 400,000 people will be entering the labour market every year whereas up to 800,000 will be retiring annually. Such a change will put a heavy burden on public finances and weaken Spain’s economic growth.

Featured image credit: Toleda Spain Landscape by Steven Yu. Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Words always matter

The run-up to the recent mid-term elections saw commentators across the political spectrum claiming that “words matter.” Much of this was in response to violent acts – in particular the Pittsburgh Synagogue massacre and the pipe bombs sent to Democrats – that some argued was a consequence of Donald Trump’s rhetoric. Words always matter of course. But due to the timing and the stakes – in this instance, an upcoming mid-term election of considerable consequence – it turned into a literal war of words. Language was weaponized to an extent not seen before.

But how do words matter? The White House claims President Trump bears no responsibility for the violent actions of the Pittsburgh shooter or the Florida pipe-bomber, even though both appear to have been followers of the president. It is true that Trump has never directly issued a command, or even a request, for his followers to perform a violent act, although he has sometimes come close, such as when he told a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that they should knock the crap out of anyone planning to throw tomatoes and that he’d pay their legal fees. But as advertisers, attorneys and other professional persuaders are aware, language can be used to influence the actions of others in more subtle ways. The relationship between language and reality is multi-faceted. For example, people can use their words to alter reality by explicitly directing the actions of others (e.g., “Send pipe bombs to my critics”). In speech act theory these expressions are referred to as directives, and the speaker is on-record for having made such a command or request. But the relationship between language and reality is more complex than this. Sometimes, for example, words by their very nature can alter reality, such as when a minister pronounces a couple man and wife, or when an umpire declares a pitch to have been a strike. In speech act theory these expressions are termed declaratives and their use is tightly governed (e.g., not everyone can perform a marriage).

Language can be used to influence the actions of others in more subtle ways.

At an even more subtle level, words can help create the social reality within which we live. Our experience of the world is largely mediated through language, as we read about, think about, and talk about our world as it unfolds. The words we use to describe our experiences, to our self and to others, can influence those very experiences. For example, if someone describes a caravan of migrants as an invasion, and if many people, especially those with power and reach, use this terminology, then it becomes a shared reality, one that can be drawn upon for understanding our world and how we should react to it. If it’s an invasion, then we better send troops to the border. And the sending of troops to the border simply reinforces that reality; it really is an invasion.

At an even more subtle level, words have important consequences beyond their simple meaning. The use of certain words can activate categories and semantic associates that are not part of the meaning of the word, but which can still color our perceptions and thoughts, and much of this happens without awareness. The descriptors “thrifty” and “stingy” are synonyms but differ greatly in the emotional reaction they elicit. Similarly, a word’s level of abstractness can have a substantial effect on our perceptions. To describe someone as a hateful person implies a consistent and enduring level of hate that is absent if that person is simply described as hating someone or something. And finally, there is the possibility of intentionally using words that might carry extra-coded meanings, often referred to as dog whistles. For example, the recent and frequent mention of George Soros has been described by some as anti-Semitic code for Jewish globalist. Although empirical research on the use and consequences of these terms is sparse, the frequency with which speakers (on both the right and the left) are called out for using them indicates their political effectiveness.

All of these instances involve using words in ways that provide the speaker with complete deniability. In other words, their effects are off-record and the speaker can deny any one interpretation or consequence in favor of another. A speaker who calls a migrant caravan an invasion being funded and organized by George Soros is not commanding people to act or think or feel a particular way. But there is no doubt that the choice of these words will clearly influence how people think, act, and feel. Words always matter. But they matter more when they come from the most powerful person in the world. Presidential language can take on a life of its own, due to its reach and significance. Language is a tool, a means of creating a shared social reality. Donald Trump did not command anyone to send pipe bombs to his critics. But he didn’t have to; his language created the social reality in which it simply made sense to do so.

Image credit: “Neon light, neon, neon sign and minimal HD” by Alexandra. CC0 via Unsplash.

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Etymology gleanings for November 2018

I used to post my “gleanings” on the last Wednesday of every month, but it is perhaps more practical to do it on the first Wednesday of the month following, for, given this schedule, I can also answer the most recent questions.

Plants and the home of the Indo-Europeans

I used gorse in the previous discussion, because gorse was the subject of my post. To be sure, there are many more plant names (trees, cereals, weeds—everything) that shed light on the problem. But this question cannot be discussed in passing. I’ll only say that, though the literature on the origin and expansion of the Indo-Europeans is enormous, the conclusions are far from definite. Linguistics and archeologists sometimes talk at cross-purposes.  At least two reasonable hypotheses compete on the homeland of the Indo-Europeans and on what must have been their language. The very notion of Indo-European is less obvious than it may seem to non-specialists.

More on gorse

German garstig “nasty; forbiddingly unpleasant” seems to have a reliable etymology that does not lead to the idea of “prickly” and “bristling.” German Ginster “gorse” is a borrowing from Romance (the source is Latin). As often happens, the word’s so-called ultimate origin is unknown. I mentioned Edwin Fay’s idea of –sta, the root of plant names, to make my discussion complete. Fay may have developed his idea in one of the many articles he authored, all of which stand in my office, but the only way to find the relevant place (if it exists) would be to read several hundred pages. I am not sure that the needle I may or may not discover is worth the effort. Apropos of nothing: there is a rhyming English simile as coarse as gorse and a more limited one as coarse as Garasse (Cornwall), possibly with reference to the first.

Bread

The origin of this word remains undiscovered. Latvian briest, with its allusion to rising, may make one think that the Germanic word contains the root pointing to a product made with yeast, but briest has some ties only with Slavic (where all the words are obsolete or dead in the modern languages) and Celtic, and, according to the most authoritative sources, had n in the root, which makes briest unrelated to brauð-.

My Rumanian colleague Ion Carstoiu informs me that many languages associate the word for “bread” with roundness. This observation tallies with the fact, mentioned in one of the previous posts, that pancakes are the oldest cereal products in human history. Unfortunately, the etymology of Engl. broad (from brād) is also unknown. In any case, the vowels of brād and brauð– don’t match. In one of the comments, Old Engl. cicel (or cycel) was mentioned and glossed as “pancake.” I am not sure whether we know the word’s exact meaning. From an etymological point of view, it has a diminutive suffix added to the root of the verb cook; thus, simply “cookie.”

Russian khleb “bread” and khlebat’ “to slurp”: I am sure Jules Levin’s objection is correct. The vowels do not match. But the verb is so old and has so many cognates in Slavic that I thought that perhaps there was a way to obviate this difficulty. If my approach to “liquid (or not solid) bread” is untenable, pursing it would be a waste of time. This is how the cookie crumbles.

Similar but unrelated. Image credit: Stars in the sky by Juskteez Vu. Public Domain via Unsplash.

Miscellaneous queries

Can solar and solid be related? No, even though both are Romance words. Latin sōl “sun” has a long vowel, while o in Latin solidus, a word, related to salvus “safe,” is short. It seems that today’s gleanings are all about recalcitrant short and long vowels.

Time and being. The question was formulated with regard to German Zeit “time” and Sein “being.” Zeit is a cognate of Engl. tide, but time and tide, which proverbially wait for no one, are nouns formed from the same root with the help of different suffixes. Rather probably, the root referred to division. The root of sein “to be” perhaps referred to stability or staying in one place. If this reconstruction is correct, the two words are not related. But they are so different that, whatever the meaning of the ancient roots, from a linguistic point of view thy can hardly have anything in common.

Do shooting in shooting star and chute, as in parachute, share a common origin? No, even though the similarity is astounding. The phrase shooting star appeared in English books at the beginning of the 16th century and was associated with shoot (from Old Engl. scēotan), while chute, “steep slope down which stuff is shot (!),” from French chute, “fall,” does not predate the 19th century. As The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology notes, it is “often extended to senses which originated with SHOOT or are still commonly so spelt.”

Similar but unrelated. Image credit: Paragliding above the Chartreuse massif by Nicolas Tissot. Public Domain via Unsplash.

The English suffix –en, as in the adjective leaden. (If someone knew how I hate the word lead! For decades I have been imploring students, with very moderate success—in older books, they called such success slender—not to spell the past tense of the verb lead as lead.) This suffix has a venerable pedigree: not only did Gothic have its cognate, but we also find it, among other languages, in Latin (-inus) and Classical Greek. The Latin suffix is familiar to English speakers from words like divine, pristine, and others. The origin of suffixes is seldom known. We can only say that at one time such elements were probably meaningful words. In Standard Modern English, few adjectives still have –en: leaden, golden, earthen, and wooden are probably the only ones in everyday use. Wheaten is recognizable, and in silvern, –n is all that remains of the old morpheme. Lenten is understood as one of such words but does not belong here. Its oldest form was lenctgen, that is, lengten, most probably, with reference to the lengthening of day. The word had a suffix of a different origin.

Earth-en-ware. Image credit: Clay Pottery Ceramic by sebadelval. CC0 via Pixabay.

Why Thomas but Tom?

What’s yours? Oh, I know. It’s Thomas Sawyer. –That’s the name they lick me by. I’m Tom when I’m good. Image credit: Tom Sawyer – frontispiece by True Williams. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The name Thomas came to English from the New Testament, where it was spelled with the Greek letter theta, pronounced as th. Yet in English the pronunciation seems to have always been with t, as in Tom. During the Renaissance, a regular th-for-t orgy began. In Thomas, Thames, asthma, and thyme, the pronunciation with t withstood the onslaught of Greek scholarship. Anthony fared worse: it is pronounced with t in British English but with th in American English. Alas, the sounding of author, throne, Dorothy, Catherine (as opposed to Kate!), Goth, and a few others has succumbed to their spelling.

Kibosh. I would like to make my point clear. If the verb kibosh “to finish,” with regard to Portland cement, ever existed, this fact has nothing to do with the word’s origin.

This is a proper item to FINISH the gleanings, but I have a Postscript:

The progress of spelling reform

The work on the reform has reached a stage at which the Spelling Congress encourages all those who have alternative spelling schemes to submit them.

All kinds of questions and suggestions are encouraged at spellconf.pss@gmail.com.

Mr. Gregory Name has his variant of Spelling Reform and invites everyone who is interested to visit his website.

I hope to see the day when the past tense of lead will be spelled led, and the past tense of read spelled red.

Featured image credit: Skytrails by Cecil Montour. Public Domain via Unsplash.

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Kosher beers for Hanukkah

Happy Hanukkah from OUP! This year we’re celebrating with a series of eight books celebrating Jewish history and culture over the eight nights of Hanukkah. As your menorah candles burn bright, take this opportunity to honour both the endurance of the Maccabees and the Jewish people.

In this blog post, Garrett Oliver, the author of The Oxford Companion to Beer, recommends kosher beers to compliment your Hanukkah dinners.

I always knew that my family was a little different, but it wasn’t until my mid-teens that I realized exactly how weird we were. An African-American family living in the suburban greenery of Hollis, Queens, at the outskirts of New York City, we thought little of the fact that my father’s big hobby was hunting game birds. With dogs, no less. Often on horseback. Around the holidays, my Aunt Emma made wonderful chopped liver, and in the springtime, our table was often festooned with matzoh bread. It never occurred to us that these last two items were Jewish food traditions that rarely made forays into our community, and to this day, none of us are sure how they got there.

In a way, I think that this sort of culinary experience is at the heart of being an American, and as I travel the world, it’s one of the things that makes me proud of this country. As I prepare for Hanukkah celebrations with friends, I’m glad to say that beer is very much at the heart of the holiday meals. Some of my friends keep kosher, and many do not, but thankfully most beers are considered “kosher by default” in most parts of the world. Jewish dietary laws, kashrut, is interpreted by local councils of rabbis. In the United States, Canada and Israel, some people only eat foods that are specifically certified as kosher by rabbis, especially around Passover. At my brewery, we actually have some of our beers certified kosher for Passover, and a rabbi comes and blesses the beer!

Unless your own diet is very strict, there are very few beers that would ever cross your table that are off-limits, so you can tuck right into your holiday beer pairings. It’s nice to start off the meal with light, spritzy saisons, the farmhouse ales of Belgium. They’re dry and lively, and often show appetizing peppery and lemony aromatics. Re-fermentation in the bottle gives them a Champagne-like carbonation and texture, which is one reason why we often drink them out of Champagne flutes. Full-flavored beers can work wonders with the classics on the table, especially beef brisket and latkes. Both of these dishes are fatty, a little salty, and typified by caramelized flavors (no wonder we love them!), and beers with caramel and roasted flavors work well here. British and American brown ales are a good place to start, bringing light chocolate, caramel and coffee flavors that harmonize with everything, even sautéed Brussels sprouts. If you want something more complex, go for dark Trappist and abbey ales, where the dark color and caramel flavors come from highly caramelized sugars rather than grains. This translates into dried fruit and raisin-like flavors, along with rum-like flavors that remind me of Cracker Jacks or the burnt surface of a crème brulee.

When it’s time for dessert, beer really does outshine all other beverages. My favorite dessert beer style is imperial stout, a strong dark beer originally made for Catherine the Great. Brewed with large amounts of malts that have been roasted as dark as espresso coffee beans, imperial stouts taste like dark chocolate, coffee and dark fruit, making them a perfect foil for a range of desserts. With chocolate desserts, they play harmony, rowing in with similar flavors. With pastries such as rugelach, the coffee-like character is perfect, and the beer has just enough sweetness to match without becoming cloying. And these beers are a wonder with ice cream too — many people enjoy making ice cream floats with imperial stouts. Just make sure to have a soft-drink version ready for the kids!

The great thing about serving and bringing beer to the holiday table is that it’s fun. Everyone’s had one at some point or another, and though wine is great and has a wide range of flavor, it rarely surprises people. Beer, however, can be very surprising, because it can tastes like almost anything, from lemons and bananas to chocolate and coffee. Some friends and family might even leave your holiday table having discovered something brand new to like, and wouldn’t that be cool? This time of year I can’t help wishing that my Aunt Emma was still here; I’ll bet that Belgian abbey ales would have been great with her chopped liver, but I never learned how to make it. So among the other things you do this Hanukkah, teach the kids how to make your latkes! Though I’ll bet they’re not quite as good as mine.

Featured Image credit: Glass of IPA by mnm.all. Public Domain via Unsplash.

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The secrets of newspaper names

A few years ago, two colleagues of mine traveled around the country documenting what was going on in the newspaper industry, talking to editors, reporters, and publishers in all 50 states. Reading their book, Practicing Journalism: The Power and Purpose of the Fourth Estate, I was struck by the great passion of journalists and their commitment to public service. But I also found myself entranced by the variety of newspaper names. What might names reveal?

Most, if not all, newspaper names have some geographical component. From the Hartford Courant (the oldest continuously published newspaper in the country) to USA Today, names give us a clue about who newspapers serve and what they cover. Some newspapers even tout their local credentials in just a single word like the Oregonian, the Oklahoman, and the Chattanoogan, but many papers follow their geographical designation with a description of their contents.

That description may be fairly generic, simply announcing it as “the news” or the “daily news.” We find the Birmingham News, the Pittsburg News, the New York Daily News, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Bangor Daily News, the Dallas Morning News and many more. Often though, the contents are presented in a more lofty fashion than just what’s new: we find the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle and the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal and the Providence Journal.

Some papers emphasize the historical means of delivery to the reader: the Washington Post and the New York Post, the Charleston Daily Mail, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. Some announce the news, trumpet-like: the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald and the Ashland Daily Tidings.

Contents and delivery play a role in names, but the newspapers also use names to position themselves with readers. In colonial times, we find names like the National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser, the Massachusetts Spy, and the Green Mountain Patriot.

Contents and delivery play a role in names, but the newspapers also use names to position themselves with readers.

Later newspapers, from about the 1830s on, took a more public-interest role as watchdogs, like the Philadelphia Public Ledger, The Christian Science Monitor, The Charlotte Observer, The Roswell Record, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and more. Elkhardt, Indiana, somewhat immodestly offers up The Elkhardt Truth. And the Detroit Free Press refers not to the cost but to its role in society. The paper was launched in 1831 as the Democratic Free Press and Michigan Intelligencer and renamed the Detroit Daily Free Press four years later.

Politics is present in the form of names like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Arizona Republic, which until 1930 was the Arizona Republican. Gone are the papers with Federalist or Whig in the title, but Union remains popular, as in the long-running New Hampshire Union-Leader.

Light plays a role: suns, star, searchlights, and beacons are common, all suggesting illumination. Astronomy is represented as well, not just in the various suns and the stars, but in older names like the New York Aurora. The broad scope of the news is also sometimes suggested by names like Globe or World, and Illinois even has a Metropolis Daily Planet, named for Clark Kent’s employer.

I was pleasantly surprised at the number of newspapers around the country with Bee in their title: There is a swarm of Bees in California, in Sacramento, Fresno, and Modesto. An editorial in 1857 when James McClatchy founded the Sacramento Bee explained: “The name of The Bee has been adopted as being different from that of any other paper in the state and as also being emblematic of the industry which is to prevail in its every department.”

There were earlier Bees, however, and even some Wasps. The New York Wasp once stung Thomas Jefferson with an expose of his attacks on Washington and Adams. The editor, Harry Crosswell, was prosecuted under New York’s libel laws and defended by none other than Alexander Hamilton. He lost and The Wasp, whose motto was “To lash the rascals naked through the world,” folded after just 12 issues.

Every name has a story and knowing a bit more about the names of newspapers makes me even prouder of the tradition of American journalism. I’m headed to the newsstand to celebrate freedom of the press.

Featured image credit: Newspapers by David Crosby. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Let us now praise human population genetics

Happy Hanukkah from OUP! This year we’re celebrating with a series of eight books celebrating Jewish history and culture over the eight nights of Hanukkah. As your menorah candles burn bright, take this opportunity to honour both the endurance of the Maccabees and the Jewish people.

In this blog post, Harry Ostrer, author of Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People, discusses how population genetics should be used to understand human origins, similarity and diversity.

Exactly who are we anyway? Over the last generation, population genetics has emerged as a science that has made the discovery of human origins, relatedness, and diversity knowable in a way that is simply not possible from studying texts, genealogies, or archeological remains. Viewed as the successor to a race science that promoted the superiority of some human groups over others and that provided a basis for prejudice, forced sterilization, and even extermination, population genetics is framed as a discipline that is based on discovery using the amazing content of fully-sequenced human genomes and novel computational methods. None of the recent discoveries would have been possible in the past. And what have we learned?

Humans descended from chimpanzees approximately 5 million years ago and that descent was not strictly linear. Other human-like species (“hominins’) emerged along the way, some fairly recently. Neanderthals emerged in Europe 300,000 years ago and Denisovans emerged 40,000 years ago. The latter group was identified only a few years ago when the DNA from a tooth in a Siberian cave was found to be that of a unique hominin species. Neither group kept strictly to itself. Rather, both mixed with humans who left Africa 50-60,000 years ago and left imprints in the genomes of contemporary Middle Easterners (Neanderthals) and Southeast Asians and New Guineans (Denisovans).

Humans originated in Africa 200,000 years ago. Although a Molecular Adam and Mitochondrial Eve have been inferred to have lived in Africa, they were not the first and they were not contemporaneous with each other. Instead, they were the successful pair among a number of early humans who were able to transmit the male-determining Y chromosome (Adam) and egg-transmitted mitochondria (Eve) to future generations. Differentiation occurred along the way. The click-speaking Khoisan split from other Africans 125,000 years ago and maintained this differentiation despite living in proximity with other groups. In fact, because humans spent most of their history in Africa, far greater genetic diversity accumulated among people on that continent compared to those in the rest of the world combined. This explains why contemporary Africans and African Americans have greater difficulty with finding compatible organ transplantation donors — there is simply a far greater range to choose from. It also renders the racist statements of the distant and not-so-distant past meaningless. Unlike Dr. Watson, we should not be “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa,” because the genetic diversity may give Africans a leg up on meeting the challenges of diverse environments.

Much of the population genetics of the Old World is local. Not only can the major continental groups be readily distinguished from one another, but within each of those continents, the residents of countries, provinces, and villages can be distinguished from their neighbors. A genetic map of Europe tends to overlay almost perfectly with the physical map. The same is true for the genetic maps of China, India, the Middle East, and North Africa. Some interesting exceptions exist. Religious groups who kept to themselves over the past two millennia, such as Jews and Gypsies, tend to resemble themselves genetically more than they resemble their neighbors — despite covering large geographical distances. People who speak Bantu-Niger-Kordofanian languages across equatorial, eastern, and southern Africa also tend to share greater genetic similarity than they do with their foreign language-speaking neighbors.

Much of the population genetics of the New World is not local. Because of the contact among Native Americans, Africans and Europeans, most of the people of the New World have hybrid genomes. Thus genetic maps do not tend to mimic geographical maps. Variation among the contributing populations — Native American tribe, African tribe, and European, Jewish, or North African ancestry — can all be identified. But as the result of geographic isolation and selective mating procedures among religious groups or social castes, a local population genetics has also developed in the Americas. This has occurred among the Plain People (Amish, Mennonites) of Pennsylvania as well as among the residents of the Central Valley of Costa Rica and other isolated valleys in North and South America. Oftentimes, the degree of relatedness of any two random people within these populations is what one would observe for first cousins once removed.

The content of human genomes has been shaped by exposure to diets and infectious agents through the process of natural selection — exactly as Darwin predicted in Origin of Species. The ability to digest milk sugar as an adult was selected by different genetic mechanisms both in Eurasia and in East Africa. Resistance to malaria, Lassa fever, HIV, and other infectious agents gave certain groups a leg up to exposure. In the Americas, not only were these agents brought by colonizing Europeans and enslaved Africans, but so too were the mechanisms of resistance.

Rather than promoting prejudice, population genetics should peel it away. Along with the study of history and cultures, population genetics should become a required part of curricula for understanding human origins, similarity and diversity.

Featured image credit: “DNA genetic material helix” by Geralt. CCO via Pixabay.

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The Oxford Place of the Year 2018 is…

Our polls have officially closed, and while it was an exciting race, our Place of the Year for 2018 is Mexico. The country and its people proved their resilience this year by enduring natural disasters, navigating the heightened tensions over immigration and border control, engaging in civic action during an election year, and advancing in the economic sphere. The historic events in Mexico in 2018 have resonated with our followers.

Mexico withstood multiple natural disasters in 2018. Using a measurement called accumulated cyclone energy, which combines the number of storms and their intensity through their duration to indicate a measurement of tropical activity in a region, the 2018 hurricane season in the northeast Pacific is the most active on record. Including the most recent Hurricane Willa on the western coast of Mexico, there have been 10 major hurricanes in the area this year. Additionally, tropical Storm Xavier became the 22nd named tropical storm of the 2018 eastern Pacific hurricane season in early November. Mexico has also had multiple earthquakes, including one with a magnitude of 7.2 in southeastern Mexico, epicentered in the state of Oaxaca. Following a surprise victory over World Cup champions Germany in June, it was initially reported that the ferocity of the fans celebration caused earthquake detectors to go off. However, it was later discovered to be a naturally occurring earthquake, unrelated to the fans’ festivities.

Following almost a year of intense negotiations, in early October the United States, Mexico, and Canada agreed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with a significantly revised trade deal. The newly named “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” (USMCA) has replaced the 1994 pact that governed upwards of $1.2 trillion worth of trade between the three countries. While the comprehensive agreement is lengthy, there are significant changes on cars, new policies on labor and environmental standards, intellectual property protections, and provisions on digital trade.

The country and its people proved their resilience this year by enduring natural disasters, navigating the heightened tensions over immigration and border control, engaging in civic action during an election year, and advancing in the economic sphere.

Despite the cooperation in negotiating USMCA, there has been and continue to be intense clashes at the border of Mexico and the United States. Immigration and disputes over the border have dominated the political dialogue in both nations throughout 2018. This tension is best demonstrated by the 7,500 migrants arriving at the border in the past weeks, fleeing from the threat of violence in their home countries. These large groups, referred to as “caravans” by the media, plan on seeking asylum within the United States. US President Donald Trump is intent on preventing this from coming to fruition, and has sent troops to the border in order to prevent the migrants from crossing. Recent reports have shown the soldiers have thrown tear gas at some of the migrants as they attempt to enter the US.

Mexico also had a dramatic year in domestic politics, as general elections were held on 1 July 2018. After 18 years of establishment politics in office, leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president in a landslide victory, securing more than half the vote. He campaigned on a development agenda that would increase spending on social programs, including increased pensions for the elderly, expanded educational opportunities for students, and stronger subsidies for farmers. He will begin his 6 year term in office on 1 December 2018. On the federal level, outside of the President, Mexicans elected 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 128 members to the Senate. Overall there were 3,000 positions up for election, making the 2018 election unprecedented in its impact upon the political sphere in Mexico.

Many of those in politics in Mexico work to make government more democratic for its citizens. Watch below to hear how Cecilia Soto González (a leading member of Congress and Mexico’s first female presidential candidate to receive nearly 1 million votes) explain how she incorporates that into her work.

In order to gain a firsthand perspective about life in Mexico, we asked our colleagues at Oxford University Press México to share what they love most about their country. We had an overwhelming number of responses about what Mexico has to offer the world. While we have many more to share with our followers later this week, we wanted you to see one of our favorites, from Luis Miguel González:

If I could sum up what Mexico is in just one word I would have to choose FAMILY.

Mexico, just like a family, is a microcosm of emotions and feelings, of smells and flavors, sights and wonders.

Our country is a place where sometimes you’ll encounter chaos but also the place where the word peace finds its meaning.

Mexico like our family is where the heart always returns. We return to its millenary traditions mixed with 21st century life style; to its vast variety of heartwarming food and drinks; to its beautiful narrow cobble stone streets and old churches, but also to its hectic and feverish cities. We return to the white sand beaches and to the mountains and volcanoes, to the rivers and the deserts, to the warmth of a coal-stove kitchen, to the melody of a mariachi-played song, to the loudness of a soccer match and to the quiet mayhem of our graveyards in Dia de Muertos.

But where everything comes together is in the heart and soul of the Mexican people. We are unique, we know how to bring a smile to our faces even in the most difficult of times. We are collaborative and giving. We love like no one else does, if you’re accepted and welcomed you become part of our families. We can party (and do it in style), but we’re also as hardworking as any.

Mexico is like family. We as a country are far from being perfect. We have many issues to tackle, but we wouldn’t change our country for the world. To me Mexico is the greatest place on earth.

Featured image credit: Close-up of Red, White, and Green Country Flag by Tim Mossholder. CC0 via Pexels .

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