demonize/demonization

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

You're right -- there certainly seem to be a lot of uses in that context. I wonder if there could be some Hebrew influence, particularly since it seems to come up a lot in this period in connection with Jews and Zionism: http://bit.ly/pjVDoW
Geoff
> 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 <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <[log in to unmask]>
> > Poster:       Geoffrey Nunberg <[log in to unmask]>
> > 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

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