Many places in the world claim to make the “world’s greatest hamburgers.” So many places, in fact, that one is tempted to conclude that many folks have adopted some new meaning for the phrase “world’s greatest.” OK, the temptation is weak in this case, but I suspect that such meaning drifts are common, and that they make positive concepts less positive, and negative concepts less negative. Let me explain.
Louis CK has a bit on this in his latest concert movie, "Hilarious." The title itself functions as one example of the phenomenon. He argues that often when people respond to hearing about an occurrence with "that's hilarious" it would be more accurate to simply say "that happened." He gives a couple of other terms similar treatment. Hilarious, indeed.
yeah, auto insurance commercials are an example of this. there’s not a single insurance company that can’t save you 500 on your bill……
That's actually different, they have hard numbers so they don't get the "puffery" excuse from the FTC. However, it's quite true that "the average person who switches saves $X on car insurance." That's simply because people who would save below a certain amount (or who would paid more) don't bother to switch. If people only bother to change companies when they save at least $200 a year, then the average switcher saves considerably more than $200 a year.
What it doesn't tell you is how likely you are to have those potential savings.
Robert Musil talks about this in his great novel, "A Man without Qualities" when the description of a racehorse as a genius spins him into crisis. His protagonist's answer (or hope) was that objective criteria would come to the forefront displacing such concepts as genius or human greatness.
The epithet "racist" has held a great deal of negative power for many decades now. It does seem to be losing some mojo in recent years.
For comparison, the "sexist" charge seems to have lost it's power many years ago.
Interestingly, I feel that some gay epithets have increased in power as they've become verboten. If somebody says it now in an argument they know they are crossing a line, so it's a good signifier of extreme anger. 15 years ago, "faggot" could be part of macho bantering/insults. Now it's pretty much just fighting words.
Casual superlatives seem to infest modern American language, no matter what the topic or object.
Words like 'incredible' or 'amazing' are constantly used even in the formal network national news programs for quite unremarkable events & people. What is the last incredible (beyond rational belief) event you came across in your life ?
Probably stems from the vast marketing & advertising community that now hypes its commercial products via electronic media into every aspect of our daily lives. Marketeers do use such superlatives 'strategically', but average people just use them because they somehow become culturally fashionable.
Same thing for negative adjectives... using extreme characterizations for routine things.{Hurricane Irene = "Monster" storm}
Language fashions more often dominate... rather than strategic word choices.
I have two related hypotheses. The first is that people are simply smart enough to keep track, in the backs of their minds at least, of manipulative versus genuine uses of words. Many words already have huge numbers of meanings and different ways they can be used, so people are presumably already well equipped to keep track of usage distinctions like this. So the meaning of a word corresponding to genuine usage is protected because it's actually treated like a separate meaning (as if it would be given a different entry in a dictionary) from the common inflationary usage.
Second, maybe it's a mistake to view words like "genius" or "tyrant" as picking out particular levels of insightfulness or oppressiveness (for example) at all. Rather, such words pick out a direction on the corresponding scale and a magnitude, but the magnitude is not absolute at all but relative to the context. Imagine a 1-dimensional vector which can be drawn starting from any point on the number line. People extrapolate an exact position on the scale intended by a given usage of the word using environmental clues. (Thus, the difference between words like "good" and "excellent" can still be understood, even though they are deprived of absolute intensities.) Now, inflation is obviously a non-issue because words do not have particular intensities to begin with. I suppose their magnitudes could still inflate, but it's not clear that there should be a trend in one direction or the other there.
Upon further reflection, I think my second hypothesis more just explains general variation in usage and the first hypothesis is a better bet to explain non-inflation (even if you're thinking without absolute intensities, uses of words by ads and pundits probably still are treated as having lower magnitude in that context--inflation would happen but people track the uses separately and therefore retain their general understanding of the word's meaning).
OK, so stop me if you've heard this one: There were these four coffee shops all on the same street. One day, the owner of the first one puts up a big sign saying "Best Coffee in the City." Not to be outdone, the owner of second shop puts up an even bigger sign saying "Best Coffee in the Country." The very next day, the third shop owner puts up huge sign saying "Best Coffee in the World." A whole week goes by. Then, the owner of the fourth shop puts up a simple, hand-drawn sign that says "Best Coffee on This Street!"
Incidentally, government has very strict requirements about false advertising for saying that your product is "better" than someone else's, but outlandish claims that you make the "world's best" are excused as "puffery," the technical legal term that the Federal Trade Commission employs.
aspie finds a way to translate another portion of normie common knowledge into impressive-sounding insight fellow aspie's judge impressive. gay (and upvoted).
I suspect part of the inflation arises from dealing with 100s of millions of people in our "tribe" when we evolved to handle a few 100 reasonably well. Many of us train the crap out of our minds and still have an extremely limited understanding of the difference between a million a billion a trillion let alone a million and a thousand. How many times have I wondered how a rock star can be rich if they get only like $1 per album sold? Oh yeah, they sell millions.
I expect significantly more "seat of the pants" numeracy from my non-PhD physicist planet-mates.
And of course, we have marketing. Through accidents of history we cannot advertise something as "by appointment to the queen" so we use "world's greatest," "new and improved," and so on.
Louis CK has a bit on this in his latest concert movie, "Hilarious." The title itself functions as one example of the phenomenon. He argues that often when people respond to hearing about an occurrence with "that's hilarious" it would be more accurate to simply say "that happened." He gives a couple of other terms similar treatment. Hilarious, indeed.
Your awesome work here is awesome. Awesome, simply awesome.
yeah, auto insurance commercials are an example of this. there’s not a single insurance company that can’t save you 500 on your bill……
That's actually different, they have hard numbers so they don't get the "puffery" excuse from the FTC. However, it's quite true that "the average person who switches saves $X on car insurance." That's simply because people who would save below a certain amount (or who would paid more) don't bother to switch. If people only bother to change companies when they save at least $200 a year, then the average switcher saves considerably more than $200 a year.
What it doesn't tell you is how likely you are to have those potential savings.
Robert Musil talks about this in his great novel, "A Man without Qualities" when the description of a racehorse as a genius spins him into crisis. His protagonist's answer (or hope) was that objective criteria would come to the forefront displacing such concepts as genius or human greatness.
The epithet "racist" has held a great deal of negative power for many decades now. It does seem to be losing some mojo in recent years.
For comparison, the "sexist" charge seems to have lost it's power many years ago.
Interestingly, I feel that some gay epithets have increased in power as they've become verboten. If somebody says it now in an argument they know they are crossing a line, so it's a good signifier of extreme anger. 15 years ago, "faggot" could be part of macho bantering/insults. Now it's pretty much just fighting words.
http://spiedigitallibrary.o...
Exceptionally relevant paper delivering an outstanding viewpoint on this matter.
Casual superlatives seem to infest modern American language, no matter what the topic or object.
Words like 'incredible' or 'amazing' are constantly used even in the formal network national news programs for quite unremarkable events & people. What is the last incredible (beyond rational belief) event you came across in your life ?
Probably stems from the vast marketing & advertising community that now hypes its commercial products via electronic media into every aspect of our daily lives. Marketeers do use such superlatives 'strategically', but average people just use them because they somehow become culturally fashionable.
Same thing for negative adjectives... using extreme characterizations for routine things.{Hurricane Irene = "Monster" storm}
Language fashions more often dominate... rather than strategic word choices.
I have two related hypotheses. The first is that people are simply smart enough to keep track, in the backs of their minds at least, of manipulative versus genuine uses of words. Many words already have huge numbers of meanings and different ways they can be used, so people are presumably already well equipped to keep track of usage distinctions like this. So the meaning of a word corresponding to genuine usage is protected because it's actually treated like a separate meaning (as if it would be given a different entry in a dictionary) from the common inflationary usage.
Second, maybe it's a mistake to view words like "genius" or "tyrant" as picking out particular levels of insightfulness or oppressiveness (for example) at all. Rather, such words pick out a direction on the corresponding scale and a magnitude, but the magnitude is not absolute at all but relative to the context. Imagine a 1-dimensional vector which can be drawn starting from any point on the number line. People extrapolate an exact position on the scale intended by a given usage of the word using environmental clues. (Thus, the difference between words like "good" and "excellent" can still be understood, even though they are deprived of absolute intensities.) Now, inflation is obviously a non-issue because words do not have particular intensities to begin with. I suppose their magnitudes could still inflate, but it's not clear that there should be a trend in one direction or the other there.
Upon further reflection, I think my second hypothesis more just explains general variation in usage and the first hypothesis is a better bet to explain non-inflation (even if you're thinking without absolute intensities, uses of words by ads and pundits probably still are treated as having lower magnitude in that context--inflation would happen but people track the uses separately and therefore retain their general understanding of the word's meaning).
yeah, auto insurance commercials are an example of this. there's not a single insurance company that can't save you 500 on your bill......
this happens with lots of advertising in general, i imagine.
OK, so stop me if you've heard this one: There were these four coffee shops all on the same street. One day, the owner of the first one puts up a big sign saying "Best Coffee in the City." Not to be outdone, the owner of second shop puts up an even bigger sign saying "Best Coffee in the Country." The very next day, the third shop owner puts up huge sign saying "Best Coffee in the World." A whole week goes by. Then, the owner of the fourth shop puts up a simple, hand-drawn sign that says "Best Coffee on This Street!"
Incidentally, government has very strict requirements about false advertising for saying that your product is "better" than someone else's, but outlandish claims that you make the "world's best" are excused as "puffery," the technical legal term that the Federal Trade Commission employs.
aspie finds a way to translate another portion of normie common knowledge into impressive-sounding insight fellow aspie's judge impressive. gay (and upvoted).
These sound like great questions to base an empirical study on.
Brains, groups, and language tend toward euphemism (elision of painful things).
Irony can only do so much to keep language honest.
The inflation of words like this makes me literally explode.
I suspect part of the inflation arises from dealing with 100s of millions of people in our "tribe" when we evolved to handle a few 100 reasonably well. Many of us train the crap out of our minds and still have an extremely limited understanding of the difference between a million a billion a trillion let alone a million and a thousand. How many times have I wondered how a rock star can be rich if they get only like $1 per album sold? Oh yeah, they sell millions.
I expect significantly more "seat of the pants" numeracy from my non-PhD physicist planet-mates.
And of course, we have marketing. Through accidents of history we cannot advertise something as "by appointment to the queen" so we use "world's greatest," "new and improved," and so on.