demonize/demonization

[Jonathan Lighter]

A quick search of GB and JSTOR suggests that the modern popularity of
"demonize" owes something to discussions of Arab-Israeli relations,
beginning as early as the mid-70s.

During the '80s it was used increasingly in broader contexts of
international relations.


JL


On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Geoffrey Nunberg <
nunberg at ischool.berkeley.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Geoffrey Nunberg <nunberg at ISCHOOL.BERKELEY.EDU>
> Subject:      demonize/demonization
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The OED has these going back to the end of c.18 as theological terms, =
> and that's pretty much the only way they're used (occasionally =
> metaphorically, but with real demons in the picture) until the =
> mid-1980's, when they became dramatically more common in a looser =
> political or social meaning of "portray as evil" or some such. Google's =
> ngram viewer has them increasing 12-fold between 1980 and 2000 -- see =
> http://bit.ly/pWgMAB -- and in the NYT the number of hits went from 11 =
> in 1980-84 to  131 in 1990-94 to 283  in 2000-04. But no single trigger =
> seems to jump out here -- by the mid-1980s it was being used of Willie =
> Horton, Israel, South Africa's attitude toward the DNC, etc. Yet it =
> feels like the kind of word that emerges in some salient context -- not =
> like 'roil', say, which popped at about the same time for no good =
> reason.=20
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey Nunberg
> Professor
> School of Information
> University of California at Berkeley
> Berkeley CA 94720
> ph. 510-643-3894
> http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/
> nunberg at ischool.berkeley.edu
>
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