bad words cleansed

[Harold F. Schiffman]

I think that perhaps the terms used in grammaticalization, for when a
lexical item is recruited to serve as a grammatical marker, such as
'weakening' (originally in French 'affaiblissement' and German
'Verbleichung') might be appropriate; bleaching (because of the German
Verbleichung) is also used.  This refers to the weakening of bleaching of
the meaning of the borrowed term as it undergoes grammaticalization--it
loses specific meaning and becomes more general and abstract.

Example:  'going to' in English originally had directional and motion
meaning only: 'I am going to work' meant 'I am proceeding/moving in the
direction of my job' but as 'going to' has been recruited as a kind of
immediate future marker, it has lost the motion/direction meaning (which
probably originally required animate subjects) and now means only future.
Of course it also gets phonologically reduced, to 'gonna' which can not be
used for the directional meaning: *I'm gonna London' has to be 'I'm goin'
to London' but 'I'm gonna work' means only future/intentional, not
directional.

This isn't of course the same as the weakening of lexical items or idioms
but still it seems appropriate to use 'weakening' here.

BTW, I was thinking recently of the origin of the term 'joystick' which I
think may have had a sexual connotation, then because of the shape of it,
used for the stick on an airplane, and now on video games etc. There's
weakening for you, I think!  (Was that a bad word cleansed, or what?)

Hal Schiffman

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Larry Gorbet wrote:

> peterson <peterson at aucegypt.edu> wrote
>
> >We use several word for this, primarily idiom or cliche.  At some point, most
> >idiomatic expressions were creative bits of language play, metaphorically or
> >metonymically linking various domains of meaning.  As the expression enters
> >into general circulation, it loses its original significance.  It remains,
> >however, difficult to translate.
> >
> >Mark Allen Peterson
> >
> >>===== Original Message From Robert Lawless <robert.lawless at wichita.edu> =====
> >>It is so exciting to hear from professional linguists. I have another
> >>question that i suppose is linguistic. The other day I overheard the
> >>teacher of my first-grade twin sons use the word "brown-nosing" in class.
> >>After class I asked her whether she was aware of the origin of the phrase.
> >>Of course, she wasn't. When I told her, she was horrified. How common is it
> >>for bad words to be cleansed so that people use them with no knowledge of
> >>their origins as pejorative comments? Is there a particular linguistic
> >>label for this? Robert.
>
> Cliche has very little to do with this. A cliche may perfectly well
> be quite literal  (e.g. "vicious rumor", "frivolous remark" (cf.
> "vicious libel", "frivolous joke", which are less cliches but
> nonetheless English, and with the modifiers having essentially the
> same meaning as in the cliches).
>
> And certainly many expressions that most linguists (and most ordinary
> English users) would call idioms have rather transparent origins. For
> a person to "lose steam" is idiomatic, but it is also rather
> transparently related to the loss of power of steam-powered
> locomotives when climbing a difficult hill. To "nose around" is
> idiomatic but is similarly transparent in origin.
>
> The term that Robert is seeking is one I don't know if it exists. The
> essence is that a term acquires a new meaning as an extension (via
> metaphor or otherwise) from a taboo or pejorative source and then the
> relation between the source and the extension gets lost, but I don't
> know a term for a semantic extension that has, for most speakers,
> lost its relation to its source --- regardless of the nature of the
> source. For example, "fall" (autumn) is not usually noticed as
> related to "fall" (event of falling). Nor have people connected
> "private" (military rank) to "private" (adj. contrasting with
> "public").
>
> - Larry
>
>