the "new normal"

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:29 PM -0500 2/21/11, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>The earliest example I can find in the medical literature is from
>1978, referring to patients who have suffered a heart attack.

Great.  Is there any indication that it had been transferred to ill
economic as opposed to physical health before the recession of the
last few years?  In any case, I think it's opaque (or translucent)
enough to earn an explicit place in dictionaries.

>---
>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/752666
>"Cutting Back After a Heart Attack: An Overview." _Health Education
>Monographs_ 02/1978; 6(3):295-311.
>p. 299: "The stages of cutting back are 'immobilization,'
>'resumption,' and 'new normal.'"
>p. 304: "New Normal: Adjusting to a New Identity" (section heading)
>p. 306: "Negative standards of comparison set a worse peril against
>the new normal. People who feel they came close to death are glad to
>be alive at all; and comfort can be derived from comparing one's own
>lot with that of another whose fate is even more unfavorable."
>---
>
>The article also uses the less elliptical "new normal stage" and "new
>normal state."
>
>--bgz
>
>On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>>  I was wondering if the first use of this compound or phrase can be
>>  determined.  There's no entry for "new normal" in the OED, and while
>>  it's partly transparent, the specific uses it currently has,
>>  presupposing a recalibration of the standard setting, would seem to
>>  demand an entry.  I first encountered it in the early years of the
>>  new century in connection with the community of those undergoing
>>  cancer treatment, and recognizing the permanent effects of both the
>>  disease and the treatment (particularly chemotherapy) on their
>>  default "settings", but since then I've seen quite a lot in
>>  connection with the economy and with families who recognize that in
>>  the face of external pressures, they have to adjust their
>>  baselines--usually (or always?) in a less favorable direction.  Most
>>  of the first few pages of the many many g-hits for "the new normal"
>>  involve changes resulting from the recession, but am I right in
>>  thinking that the use in the cancer recovery community (or maybe more
>>  generally among those adjusting to changes in their baseline
>>  resulting from disease and treatment) predated this use?
>>
>>  (If there were an entry in the OED, it would slip in around subentry
>>  5 of the noun entries for "normal".)
>
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