I wrote a paper on this topic concerning Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, which describes how each of these women seem to do gender in a completely different way.

According to my findings, Clinton acts as current research suggests is common for a female politician by trying to make herself appear more masculine with semi-aggressive language and little comment mitigation. Palin does the opposite and tries to make herself appear wholly feminine – contrary to said research.

A PDF of “Dramatis Personae: How Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin Do Gender” is available here.

A look at the Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology of America attributes it to a work written in 1507 by M. Waldseemüller entitled Cosmographiae Introductio, in which the term Americus was used as the Latinized form of the name Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci was an Italian who sailed off the South American coast around 1500, and apparently the word America is derived from a translation of his first name. The word’s use in its current form is recorded in OED in a work by J. Shirley, written in 1659.

While the allusion to Amerigo Vespucci is the most commonly accepted etymology of America, there do exist some thought-provoking alternatives. For example, a work by Jules Marcou, in 1886, reported that Vespucci had actually changed his name to Amerigo from Alberigo (which would have been Latinized Albericus). According to Marcou, it was Vespucci’s dealings with natives around the Ameriqque mountains of South America that prompted him to change his name. This wouldn’t technically change the etymology of the term, of course, as Vespucci was reported as Americus in 1507, but it is interesting nonetheless to consider that the word itself is derived from a native term and not a Latinized name.

Still another theory exists: in 1497, Briton John Cabot embarked for the New World, and is commonly considered to be the first western European to set foot on North America. The financier of his expedition was a fellow Englishman, one mister Richard Amerike. The jump from Amerike to America (if it actually occurred) is a small and believable one, and so America could be named after an expedition financier of years long passed.

There are doubtlessly other examples of theoretical etymologies of America floating around out there; if any readers know of some I haven’t mentioned, please, comment.

Click here for PDF: Morphological Blocking in a Computational Context.

“We’re all getting old and when we go our language goes with us.”
— Margaret Valdez, native Yokuts speaker (qtd. in Larsen, 2004)

At one time, there were over 100 native languages spoken within the borders of what is now California (Hotz, 2000). At the time of this writing, 50 of the original 100 languages are extinct; most of the remaining languages have very few speakers left (2000).

I will look primarily at three native languages: Wiyot, Western Mono and Yurok. These languages are typical of native languages throughout the state, but each is in a slightly different situation. I will also examine some general conditions shared by all native languages in California, and a few examples from languages other than the aforementioned three, in less detail.

United States Policies towards Native American Languages

Even with such high numbers of native languages with fewer than 50 speakers (Ethnologue, 2008), it wasn’t until 1990 that the United States passed legislation to try and protect them. The Native American Languages Act (1990) reads “it is the policy of the United States to […] preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages,” officially recognizing the rights of native americans to preserve their languages (§ 104).

What this legislation actually does, however, is more of a mystery. Government and medical services, for example, are offered primarily in English and a handful of minority languages, which are more widely spoken than native american languages. In fact, I could not find a single example of a government or medical service offered in any native language in California.

Such legislation does little without popular support. Although native american culture has gained a certain niche in terms of marketability of goods and artistic pieces, the popular focus on native languages is nearly nonexistent.

The State of Native Languages in California

All of the indigenous languages I found spoken natively in California could be categorized under Stage 8 of Joshua Fishman’s Eight Stage Model (Perhaps some exceptional cases such as Yurok could be considered Stage 7, for reasons I will illustrate later). As such, most speakers of these languages (especially native speakers) are quite old, and the languages are not being passed on to younger speakers or children (Pitkin, 1984). Indeed, the remaining native languages of California seem doomed to suffer the same fate as their predecessors: a slow death.

One such language is Wintu. Wintu was spoken in the central valley of California, around the area of what is now Sacramento, and up through modern Shasta County (Pitkin, 1984). Like many native languages in the region, there was an effort by linguists to record Wintu before it became too late to do so. In 1984, Harvey Pitkin authored a comprehensive grammar of Wintu, comprised of nearly a half-century of work by himself and others. The writing of Pitkin’s “Wintu Grammar” relied heavily upon contact with native speakers (1984).

The work makes specific reference to three such speakers: Carrie B. Dixon, Joe Charles, and Ellen Silverthorn (1984). The latter of the three was considered the last of the monolingual speakers of Wintu at the time the grammar was released, when she was over 80 years old (1984).

Pitkin reports 1910 census data in his grammar, citing “399 Wintu speakers, 4 of whom were living in Nevada” (1984, p. 1). However, by the time the grammar was written, Wintu was “spoken only by several older people in Shasta and Trinity counties in northern California” (1984, p. 1).

This type of “slow death” appears to be typical of native American languages in the state and nationally. Even languages that were not recorded by linguists presumably suffered a similar fate.

Native American Language Shift

When looking at language shift, one constantly is confronted with numerous factors that dictate how patterns will develop in a particular language. Many languages encounter several particularly detrimental factors.

One is that of language dominance. In North America, all native languages can be easily considered to be in the extreme minority (Ethnologue, 2008). When compared with English, speakership of these native tongues appears almost non-existent, even for the best-off of indigenous languages (2008). This low speakership can be attributed to the lack of government support or the lack of education in that language.

Native languages seem to have an added difficulty in this regard. No single language before English could have been considered a dominant tongue. Each language was spoken by many (relatively isolated) groups of individuals, most of whom were monolingual. Under these circumstances, even native languages with relatively large amounts of speakers, such as Navajo (which was not spoken natively in California), find themselves in situations of declining native speakership. This decline in speakership, in turn, fuels the further loss of any remaining services in a given language, illustrating a cycle of decline typical of many native tongues.

With government and medical services available solely in languages more dominant than indigenous tongues, there are but a few areas in which native languages could theoretically be spoken:

• At work: it is conceivably possible for native languages to be spoken in workplace environments among several speakers. However, with today’s quickly dwindling populations of native speakers of native languages in California, such a situation is almost surely nonexistent.

• At home: as with many other heritage languages, native american languages can be spoken at home between bilingual children (who speak a native language and the dominant language) and monolingual parents (who speak only the native language). Clearly, however, this type of situation, while possible, no longer exists for most if not all native american languages. Most native languages spoken in California have fewer than a hundred speakers, and some fewer than ten (Ethnologue, 2008).

• In cultural settings: native languages not used at home or at work could still be used in cultural settings. For example, it is conceivable that in certain ceremonies the native language would be seen as essential to the form of the ceremony itself.

Such ceremonial applications of a given tongue, however, can prove to be deadly if that language is already moribund. If ceremony and ritual are the only places where a native language is spoken, that language can easily lose its productivity; that is, bilingual speakers will begin to rely on memorized phrases rather than grammar and syntax, and the usefulness of the language is diminished as speakers forget linguistic intricacies through a lack of use.

Some native american groups do attempt to save their languages from extinction. There is an important distinction here between language revival and language revitalization. Language revival is the reintroduction of an extinct tongue with no living native speakers, while language revitalization is an attempt to save a moribund language (Redish 2001).

Use of Mono in California

Mono (also known as Monachi) is a language with less than 50 native speakers remaining in east central California (Hinton, 1994, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008). The language is fairly typical of a lot of native american tongues with declining speakership; some very informal classes are being organized in an attempt to teach children Mono, but there is little ability for large-scale language revitalization (Kroskrity, 2002). There is interest in the Mono ethnic community in learning the language, however, a fact which perhaps gives native speakers hope of saving their tongue.

The decline of Mono follows a common pattern of native american languages, and it is chronicled in an article by Paul Kroskrity: “Several of the oldest members of the community reported that their parents refused to teach them their ancestral language […] by describing their children as kumasa-tɨka, or bread-eaters (2002, p. 174).” Their parents had associated Mono with hunter-gatherer activities, and therefore saw no need to teach it to individuals who would buy things from stores: “bread-eaters (2002).”

Much of this sentiment dates back perhaps from 1863 to the early twentieth century, when Mono was heavily stigmatized by mandatory education of children, in schools that did not allow the use of any native language (2002). This type of situation is described by Kroskrity as “ethnocide (2002, p. 176).”

The few native Mono speakers remaining, clearly, are bilingual in Mono and English. One speaker recalls of her youth: “I was still a girl when my mother stopped speaking Mono in our home. When I asked her why, she said, ‘you young people will not live as we did. […] The new man’s language is what you need (2002, p. 177).’”

Use of Wiyot in California

Malcolm Margolin writes of one example in which a native tongue is primarily used in ceremony by a social group in California; this group is the Wiyot (the original inhabitants of the Humbolt Bay area), who spoke a language by the same name (2000). The Wiyot have tried to ensure that their culture does not bleed dry in the face of dwindling numbers and limited public awareness, and admittedly, they “have moved decisively away from the edge of cultural and political oblivion (2000).” Wiyot is classified as extinct (Ethnologue, 2008), but amazingly, it is beginning to be spoken again in northwestern California. The Wiyot language is used for “official votes of yes or no” of the Tribal Council (the only political event that the tribe hosts) (Margolin, 2000). Children in the Wiyot community are being taught the language (by individuals who learned it from written grammars), but only as a second language, as there are still no reported native speakers of Wiyot (the last native speaker, Della Prince, died in 1962) (2000).

The Wiyot are attempting a revival of their language on the Table Bluff reservation near Loleta, California. Wiyot is being taught to children on this reservation, but the tribe certainly has a long trek ahead if they are to truly bring back a language that died in 1962, for several reasons.

Firstly, the language being taught now on Table Bluff could be vastly different from the Wiyot tongue spoken by Della Prince. Presumably, the tribe is using written grammars as their primary reference for the language. While the comprehensiveness of these grammars is clearly abundant (if there is enough there to teach), recreating nuances in pronunciation from a written source will almost certainly prove problematic. But then again, if there aren’t any native speakers to tell anyone that they’re doing it wrong, the problem may be only a superficial one.

Secondly, the children being taught Wiyot are almost certainly being taught it as a second language only. There will be no monolingual speakers of Wiyot, for the simple reason that everyone in the tribe (including, presumably, the teachers of Wiyot) are English speakers. Therefore, Wiyot will be used as a sort of “pleasure” language, where speaking it is done solely by choice and is not necessary for one’s survival.

Finally, there will continue to be a complete lack of government and medical services in Wiyot. This will, almost certainly, always be the case, as even with a successful language revival many years from now, the language will not be spoken by a population greater than that of Table Bluff reservation, which is approximately 350 individuals (Margolin 2000), only 100 individuals short of the entire estimated Wiyot ethnic population of 450 (Yamamoto, 2000, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008).

Use of Yurok in California

With such a widespread distribution of declining language use and speakership, it’s difficult to fathom why there are not a large number of language revitalization projects in existence. Language death (or impending death) is a problem common to all of the California indigenous languages I encountered, and yet, attempts at language revitalization in California are very much few and far between.

One such revitalization project that is fairly impressive, however, is that of Yurok. The Yurok people traditionally inhabited the area around the northern coast of modern California. Their language has approximately 12 native speakers (Goddard, 2002, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008).

A visit to the Yurok Tribe Language Program website proves very impressive. Firstly, the tribe has founded a Yurok Language Teacher Institute, and begun training teachers (Yurok, 2008). The material being used by the tribe is from the University of Califoria, Berkeley, Yurok Language Project, which is an archive of “new and older work on Yurok together […], incorporating material from as early as 1850 to the present day (2005).” Much like Wiyot, the Yurok language is being taught to children as a second language, only with the assistance of a few native speakers (Yurok, 2008).

What makes this particular project truly interesting is the fact that the tribe is not limiting its revitalization project to a single population or reservation of individuals. Instead, they are working with Southern Oregon University’s ACORNS language project, which is an online language learning resource for indigenous languages of southern Oregon and northern California (Southern Oregon 2008). ACORNS stands for the Acquisition of Restored Native Speech, and it offers software on all computer platforms for native language learning, complete with “Picture and Sound lessons, Multiple Choice lessons, Hear and Respond lessons, and Dictionaries (2008).”

In addition, the Yurok Language Project allows free access to a number of Yurok learning materials, including a full book of Conversational Yurok (written by native speaker Georgiana Trull) and audio downloads of native pronunciations (UC Berkeley, 2005). I find the entire repository (UC Berkeley’s archives, the Yurok tribe’s archive and the ACORNS archive) to be very extensive and impressive for a revitalization project of a language with only 12 native speakers remaining (Goddard, 2002, qtd. in Ethnologue, 2008).

Prospects for Some Native Languages of California

As I illustrated, many native american languages of California have quickly declining speakerships. This is due, mostly, to the absolute domination of English and other non-native languages in the state among government and federal services, and very small tribal populations, coming from over a century of public prejudice and federal mishandling.

It is difficult to suggest a good prognosis for most of the native languages in the state. In fact, based on the information I found, it’s almost certain that the vast majority of native languages extant today will be extinct within the next 50 years.

A language like Wiyot, with a dedicated tribe attempting revival, probably has the brightest prospects, but only for the fact that Wiyot is already dead. It’s been 40 years since it’s had a native speaker, and so even a growing (but still small) population of learner speakers could be considered an improvement. Realistically, starting from extinct means that things can’t get any worse.

Yurok, on the other hand, which (to me) has the most impressive revitalization project in the state, has prospects little better than those of most other languages. Even with increasing speakership, the affected population is still vastly small for most government and medical services to consider offering programs in Yurok. Certainly, the possibility exists for there to be a surge in public interest in the language, and therefore a rise in the count of non-ethnic speakers, which could, in theory, raise speakership further than tribal populations. However, the situation produced by such a program is similar to a hypothetical revival of Latin; people might speak it, but only for pleasure. The road to public services in Yurok is long, and perhaps far longer than such a program can muster, no matter how impressive said program may be.

Mono speakers in California, who report organizing informal language classes, seem to be between the Wiyot and Yurok situations. These speakers have clearly less resources, and therefore even less of a revitalization chance than the Yurok tribe. Certainly, all of this sounds a bit pessimistic, but unfortunately, when it comes to native american language maintenance and revival, there isn’t much room for optimism.

Works Cited

Hotz, Robert Lee. (2000). The Impassioned Fight to Save Dying Languages. [Online]. Available http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/article004.html [21 April 2008].

Kroskrity, Paul V. (2002). Language Renewal and the Technologies of Literacy and Postliteracy. Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas. London, University of California Press.

Larsen, Nicola. (2004). Language Revival. [Online]. Available http://www.tuleriver.org/heritage/language_revival.html (20 April 2008).

Margolin, Malcolm. (2000). The Wiyot: Completing the Circle. [Online]. Available http://ecologycenter.org/terrain/article.php?id=13136 (24 April 2008).

National American Languages Act of 1990 § 104, 101 U.S.C. P.L. 101-477 (1990).

Pitkin, Harvey. (1984). Wintu Grammar. London, University of California Press.

Raposa, Tim S. (2006). Fishman’s GIDS Scale. [Online]. Available http://web.scc.losrios.edu/raposat/stories/storyReader$58 (22 April 2008).

Redish, Laura. (2001). Native Languages of the Americas: Endangered Language Revitalization and Revival. [Online]. Available http://www.native-languages.org/revive.htm [22 April 2008].

SIL International. (2008). Ethnologue, Web Version. [Online]. Available http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp (22 April 2008).

Southern Oregon University. (2008). Acorns Language Restoration Project. [Online]. Available http://cs.sou.edu/%7Eharveyd/acorns/ (24 April 2008).

University of California, Berkeley. (2005). Yurok Language Project. [Online]. Available http://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~yurok/web/goals.html (22 April 2008).

Yurok Tribe. (2008). Yurok Tribe Language Program Homepage. [Online]. Available http://www.yuroktribe.org/departments/education/Yurok_Tribe_Language_Program/index.htm (24 April 2008).

Works Consulted

Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival Homepage. [Online]. Available http://www.aicls.org [26 April 2008].

Forbes, Jack D. (1979). American Words: An Introduction to those native words used in English in the United States and Canada. Davis, University of California.

The volume, which has maps of linguistic features (a relative first) including word order, morphological features and more, has proven a bit pricy. Not anymore, however: the entire work is now available online for FREE! It’s even better than pie and chips.

Give it a look at http://www.wals.info/.

Technorati Tags: language, typological classification

Technorati Tags: etymology, native american language

The work is essentially a listing of English words with native american etymologies. If you can get your hands on a copy, I’d highly recommend it.

Some words of particular interest are:

Chum (meaning friend) comes from “Chamay,” in Powaton.

Gee! (meaning an exclamation as in Gee Whiz!) comes from “Chee,” in Chinook.

Hooray (another exclamation) comes from “Arr-arr-ay” in Keshwa.

Okay (expression affirmation) comes from “Okey” in Chakta.

Uh-oh (expressing worry or concern) comes from “uh-oh” in Lenape.

Barbeque comes from “Barbakóa” in Taino.

Tuxedo comes from Lenape. (Actually named after Tuxedo, NY, which was named after the Lenape phrase “P’tuksit,” meaning “he has a round foot or a wolf.”

Poncho comes from “Pontho” in Araucanian.

Tequila comes from “Tekila” in Mexicano.

Jerky (dried meat) comes from “Charqui” or “Charki” in Keshwa.

Cigar comes from “Sikar” in Maya.

Hubbub (meaning noise or excitement) comes from the same word in Algonkian, in which language it means “a game like cards or dice.”

And finally: Koochi-koo (what’s said when tickling a baby) comes from the “Kutch-” stem in Powhatan, meaning “itching, tickling, etc.”

Source: Forbes, Jack D. (1979). American Words: An introduction to those native words used in the United States and Canada. Davis, University of California.

Number systems like the one in English are regarded as “Base-10,” where 10 is an especially meaningful unit. For example, the addition of ten turns “twenty-two” into “thirty-two,” and number prefixes (“twenty,” “thirty,” “forty”) are always increments of ten. Historically, however, it would appear that English was different.

There are some other number systems commonly used in some areas of the Anglophone world. For example, hexadecimal (Base-16) is used often in computer programming, as is binary (Base-2). English, however, has hints at a Base-12 system somewhere in its past.

Consider the vocabulary of counting in English:

one,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten

As illustrated before, numbers generally are marked at tens; using numerals this marking is clear, as 1 is added in first position to make a so-called “teen”:

8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14

But herein lies the clue: consider the first two “teens”:

eleven,
twelve

The number “thirteen” is technically the first “teen.” However, in a purely Base-10 system, one would expect numbers like “Oneteen” and “Twoteen” instead of “eleven” and “twelve.”

What’s this mean? At some point in its history, English (at that time probably Indo-European) utilized a Base-12 system for its numbers. Sound far fetched? English isn’t alone.

Anyone who’s ever wondered about French’s weird number system (and other romance languages, for that matter) should take note: this is evidence of an old Base-20 system.

When one wants to say “eighty” in French, they say “quatre-vingt,” literally “four-twenty.” This is exactly what one would expect from a Base-20 system, which divides complex numbers into multiples of 20, not 10.

An equally strange Base-20 system may have existed in Scandinavian, as evidenced by Swedish numbering:

50 = halvtres
60 = tres

60 is “tres” (an old form of Indo-European 3) and 50 is, literally, “half-three.” But how is 50 half of 60? It’s not, but the difference between the two is half of 20, exactly what one would expect in a Base-20 system.

So, the next time any of you are in French class or otherwise and question the usefulness of a Base-20 vocabulary, consider this: it’s even harder to divide by 12.

The study says:

The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought [...] [It is]estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

The reason that this is so interesting is that “mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa, who appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.”

Yes, that’s right. The Khoi people, who speak languages like !Xüu in the Khoi-San family.

A look into a recent typology book shows four distinct groups in Africa: Khoi-San, Niger-Kordofanian, Afro-Asiatic, and Nilo-Saharan. Four groups may not seem like a lot for a continent, but considering the land space, one would actually expect more. If we are to believe Greenberg’s hypothesis, all the native languages from the Canadian border to the southernmost tip of South America are in a single “Amerind” family!

Certainly, 70,000 years places the “drought” a bit before linguists believe language to exist. However, with such an interesting correlation, it does make one wonder…

Many of you may be familiar with the German derogative phrase “Schweinhund,” literally “pig dog.” However, did you know that “pig” and “dog” may give us clues about the who inhabited the British Isles before the Anglos (and, consequently, the Indo-European language family) arrived?

Consider this: historical linguists, on the whole, have done quite well attributing modern day words to historical roots. In fact, a quick look at the etymologies in the Oxford English dictionary will give you much more information than you probably wanted about any given word.

The words “pig” and “dog,” however, are a bit strange. Looking in their etymologies gets you back to around the 15th century, after which come the words “ultimate origin unknown.” Ooh. Spooky.

Words like “swine” and “hound,” of course, are far simpler to come up with etymologies for, both having pretty clear cognates in other Germanic languages. “Pig” and “dog” are different, though, as they are ultimately descended from an unknown parent.

Let’s call this parent “Old European,” as does this site:

Old European is a designation for the (mostly unknown) languages that were spoken in Europe prior to the spread of the Indo-European family which dominates the continent today. In this sense, Basque and the Caucasian languages are Old European languages. The term Old European, however, is often used more narrowly with reference to the unknown languages of the first Neolithic farmers in central Europe, who appear to have immigrated from the east around the year 5500 BC. Their original homeland probably no longer exists: it is drowned beneath the Black Sea, and was where now is the Bay of Odessa. (Before about 5500 BC, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake – the Euxine Lake – with a level much lower than the present day sea level. Then the rising sea burst through the Bosporus and flooded the Black Sea basin within a few years to almost the present day level.)

So who were these people, and what was Old European like? Some would suggest that Old European was actually Semitic, as it would explain the related VSO word order in Celtic languages. However, anything this far out is pure speculation… and that’s what makes it fun.

At the very least, “pig” and “dog” are the last remnants of a lost tongue, one that has become lost in the sands of time…

I’m putting myself in a position for some serious debate here, so let me start by making a statement: I am “pro-choice.” That being said, I’m curious as to the use of the two above terms as they relate to Pragmatics.

Let’s take a look at the first one: “Pro-life.” It sounds really nice, doesn’t it? If you say that you’re “pro-life,” you sound like someone who likes to go outside a lot and play with puppies, or perhaps has a house filled with cats and plants. The word “life,” indeed, has a wonderful connotation, and in and of itself is, possibly, one of our most treasured English words, as it pertains to our most treasured fact of humanity.

Now let’s examine briefly the other: “Pro-choice.” At first glance, this doesn’t sound bad either. “Choice” is a word commonly associated with “freedom,” in fact, and so “pro-choice” has a sort of french-revolution-y flair to it.

Or does it?

The problem here is the suffix: “pro-.” The use of “pro-” implies a “con-”, which is the opposite of whatever concept lies after the suffix. In other words, the deeper connotation of these words is thus:

• If you are not “pro-choice,” then you must be against choice (or freedom, as it were).

• If you are not “pro-life,” then you must be against life… so no more playing with puppies for you.

In fact, these words are horribly inaccurate descriptions of viewpoints on abortion. Certainly, pro-choice is not so harsh as its counterpart, but both words really do not play fair… linguistically.

For example, to be “pro-life” has implications dealing in the “abortion clinics are baby-killers” area, which one might expect, as that is the position of many who are “pro-life.” But those supporting abortion rights are not “anti-life;” rather, they disagree (on a philosophical level) that abortion is killing. Scientifically, fertilized eggs may be expelled from a would-be-mother… in fact, it is not uncommon for fertilized eggs to be expelled by a woman much in the same way that an unfertilized egg is. All that needs to happen is the egg not attach itself, and voila: from the “life-begins-at-conception” viewpoint, a good percentage of women are murderers without even knowing it.

This is what makes “pro-life” inherently inaccurate: those who are not “pro-life” do not believe that they are killing anything. Therefore, the connotation of the term (which is heard constantly in the media) unfairly demonizes those who support abortion rights.

To better illustrate this concept, let’s imagine the terms in reverse: keeping the “pro-choice” term as our “control variable,” let’s imagine a new term for “pro-life” called “anti-abortion.” Now then, look at the two next to each other:

PRO-CHOICE ANTI-ABORTION

The term on the left seems good (at a subconscious level) while the one on the right seems bad (simply because it starts with a negative prefix).

There is another problem, however: just what else would “pro-choicers” be called? After all, they aren’t actually “pro-abortion,” but rather they support the right to have an abortion, not an abortion in every case.

I suppose the closest you could come to being fair with connotations would be thus:

• Use a positive prefix with each term.

• Use an accurate descriptive word after each prefix.

In short, both “pro-choice” and “pro-life” fail pragmatically, both because of the words “choice” and “life,” respectively. Indeed, there may not be a way to designate two diametrically opposed viewpoints without giving one a more negative connotation than that of the other. The closest that I could come up with was:

ABORTION RIGHTS ADVOCATES ABORTION RIGHTS OPPONENTS

Of course, both new terms smack of American political correctness… which is never a good thing.

Technorati Tags: language, abortion, connotations