In a famous set of scenes in the 2004 classic movie Mean Girls one of the main protagonists, Gretchen Wieners, attempts to introduce a novel expression into the discourse with her friends, insisting upon ending every conversation with the exclamation, “That is so fetch!” After failing to have the terminology catch on for so long, the main antagonist, Regina George, finally exclaims to her to, “stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen, it’s not going to happen.” While we cannot fault Ms. Wieners for her attempts to try and formulate her own catchy neologism, what she is arguably doing in this scene is engaging in an activity that many of us engage in without even reflecting on it, namely, stipulating some new word or verbiage into our discourse, in hopes that it might “catch on” so to speak in everyday conversation, whether that be among our peers and friends, our engagement with academic scholars and theorists, or even among our widespread use of social media and the internet.
Which begs us to ask the question: what exactly is it that we do when we come up with new words and terms in our discourse? When we attempt to change the meaning of phrases and terminology, what does this entail in our social interactions with people? Furthermore, if it does have implications in our social interactions, does it mean that there is an ethic to how we stipulate new verbiage into everyday discourse?
Language and Discourse
To say that we have a responsibility in our employment of using terminology and language seems uncontroversial enough, as much of our social interaction presupposes a “correct” way in which we should speak and interact with one another verbally. Nobody ought to shout or formulate expletives to launch at peers in official academic conferences— though this may happen well enough— simply on account of what justice requires of us in our interaction with peers in such a social setting. So too with our interactions with family members, justice simply demands that we remain civil with one another in the verbiage we employ with familial ties etc. But in coining new terms and phrases, what ethical implications does this have for us? Charles Sanders Peirce muses that there are indeed such ethical concerns in the employment, principally in communicating effectively what the other is thinking, and if there is to be such a need for coining new verbiage and terminology, as the developments of science and philosophy seem to require, we must take care to effectively communicate what such neologisms mean in our writing, and to safeguard against equivocation and subterfuge. This does not mean that we should simply be content to develop a language which is rigid and unchanging in its verbiage, because, as Peirce would surmise, it is simply natural for languages to develop alongside the progresses of science and philosophy.
For every symbol is a living thing, in a very strict sense that is no mere figure of speech. The body of the symbol changes slowly, but its meaning inevitably grows, incorporates new elements and throws off old ones. But the effort of all should be to keep the essence of every scientific term unchanged and exact; although absolute exactitude is not so much as conceivable…Science is continually gaining new conceptions; and every new scientific conception should receive a new word, or better, a new family of cognate words. The duty of supplying this word naturally falls upon the person who introduces the new conception; but it is a duty not to be undertaken without a thorough knowledge of the principles and a large acquaintance with the details and history of the special terminology in which it is to take place.
Peirce, C. S. (1998). “The Ethics of Terminology” in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, vol.2, p.264
Given the natural fluidity of the signifiers employed in our speech, it seems only natural that neologisms and novel stipulations should arise in our discourse. But given such a need, is there any ethical component which accompanies the formulation of neologisms?
Ethics of Signification
Given that the social realm of human discourse is a smaller part in the larger whole of sign relations, we must then finally ask the question: if there is such a thing as a semiotic, does this bring forth a consideration of an accompanying “Semioethic”, i.e., an ethics concerned specifically with signifying in a way morally right? While many different animals, and even flora, employ and utilize signs in their species-specific discourse, it is only humans that are capable of reflecting upon and distinguishing the difference between the sign-vehicles employed, and the sign relation as such.
But a new kind of animal is born, the semiotic animal, as the human animals become aware not only of the difference between objects and things, but more profoundly of the difference between sign-vehicles and signs in their proper being…I think the recognition that the boundaries of semiotic reality are never fixed and always shifting is the key realization for this new, this postmodern, humanism, wherein traditional objective “ethics” is transformed as “Semioethics” by the discovery that human knowledge in the whole of its extent— speculative no less than practical— depends upon the action of signs, an action that is presupposed to every “world of objects”, every Umwelt around the whole planet.
Deely, John. Basics of Semiotics, 8th ed., p.226-27
On account of this capability to not only stipulate novel signs into discourse, but to meaningfully reflect on what occurs ethically in the act of stipulating, it seems necessary to ask the question; both for speculative reasons as well as for pragmatic, what is it that we do when we stipulate novel signifiers, and what implications does it have morally and ethically?
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