Word of the Year

“Confusion about culture was just part of the culture this year.”

-        -  Joshua Rothman

Guess which word Merriam-Webster declared as 2014 Word of the Year? The surprising answer: “culture”! Why that word? Joshua Rothman explains:

“The word “culture,” they explain, was simply the word that saw the biggest spike in look-ups on their Web site.”

Raymond Williams, Rothman points out, talks of 3 divergent meanings of the term:

1)      “There’s culture as a process of individual enrichment”;

2)     “Culture as a group’s “particular way of life”” (e.g. French culture); and

3)     “Culture as an activity, pursued by means of the museums, concerts, books, and movies that might be encouraged by a Ministry of Culture”.

Worse, says Williams, these meanings often compete with each other.

Ok, so the word has multiple, divergent meanings. But why the sharp spike in lookups on the site this year? Here’s Rothman’s take:

“More people looked up “culture” this year because it’s become an unsettling word. “Culture” used to be a good thing. Now it’s not.”

Mostly because:

“The idea of culture as unconscious groupthink is ascendent.”

Seth Godin’s use of the term certainly conveys the negative connotation of the term:

“Culture works against pure merit. That's because culture creates insulation and connections and histories that count at least as much as the pure horsepower of merit.”

More and more, says Rothman, the term “culture” is used in these ways:

“Today, “culture” has a furtive, shady, ridiculous aspect. Often, when we attach the word “culture” to something, it’s to suggest that it has a pervasive, pernicious influence (as in “celebrity culture”). At other times, “culture” is used in an aspirational way that’s obviously counterfactual: institutions that drone on about their “culture of transparency” or “culture of accountability” often have neither.”

For example, take the term “rape culture” that got revived this year:

“The term’s weight is placed, fully and specifically...on the subterranean, group-defining norms (misogyny, privilege) that encourage violence against women, and on the cultural institutions (movies, fraternities) that propagate those norms. The term works, in part, because of its dissonance.”

And so:

“Our sense of the word “culture” that has grown darker, sharper, more skeptical.”

Those changes in what the term is being used to mean may well be the reason the term got looked up so many times this year at Merriam-Webster’s site.