The current obsession with "Gone Missing"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jun 7, 2009, at 12:24 PM, John Baker wrote:

> 3. ... So "gone missing" was uncommon 15 years ago, somewhat more
> common 10 years ago, and fairly common over the past five years, but
> still far less common than "disappeared," which has a similar meaning.
> The increase has been mostly in British and international sources,
> which
> mostly use British rather than American English.
>
>  4. Even in British sources, "gone missing" has not taken
> over.  For example, the London Times (the timesuk database) used "gone
> missing" 36 times in 2009, but "disappeared" 504 times.

these are important points.  it's *not* that AmE has "disappear" and
BrE has "go missing".  rather BrE has had both for some time, but the
second variant seems to be increasing in use there.  meanwhile, the
second variant seems to spreading in AmE, but it's very far from
taking over there; so now some AmE speakers have both variants.

it's worth asking what function might be served by having two
variants.  Fiske and some other critics just assume that this is
pointless variation, motivated only by fashion, but several posters
here have teased out possible distinctions. Joel Berson picked up on
Fiske's criticism that "go missing" is vague, suggesting that "go
missing" allows you to talk about the change of state (from present to
missing) without being obliged to specify the details of this change
(a good thing if you don't in fact know the details).  that is, "go
missing" is more general than "disappear" and other alternatives;
"disappear", etc.  are then "go missing" plus something (the pattern,
which i've talked about in many other contexts, is Y = X + something).

variants at different levels of specificity have their uses; more
specific is not always better than less specific.

arnold

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