Oxford Dictionaries has released its word of the year, a now-annual event that can be relied upon to unleash a torrent of pithy comment pieces about the evolution of language, pop culture and the state of society. Last year, it was an emoji spouting tears of joy; in previous years, it has been “selfie” and “vape”.
But this year, forsaking other options such as “adulting’”, “hygge” and “chatbot”, Oxford Dictionaries opted for a decidedly political stance with “post-truth’.
On one level, this was the perfect choice for a year in which emotions became more important in decision-making than fact.
This has been an awful, vitriol-spewing, invective-filled year, a polarising year, a year when – quite literally – friends stopped talking, and families fell out in rows over what constituted the truth. A year of Brexit. A year of Trump.
A year in which Michael Gove declared that British people had “had enough of experts”. A year in which Trump pumped out lie after lie, while his supporters repeatedly said how much they appreciated his “straight-talking”.
A year in which Turkish politicians claimed a bungled coup was the work of the CIA. A year in which Facebook and Google, too late to make a difference, announced plans to restrict ads on fake news sites amid claims that these had played a part in the outcome.
Public opinion
Post-truth – defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” – seems like the ideal word to sum up 2016.
The Oxford Dictionaries editors said use of the term grew by about 2,000 per cent over the year.
“We first saw the frequency really spike this year in June with buzz over the Brexit vote and Donald Trump securing the Republican presidential nomination,” said Oxford Dictionaries president Casper Grathwohl.
“Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time.”
Implicit in any discussion about the “post-truth society” is the notion that the world is divided into those who care about the truth and those who are turning their backs on reality.
That may be comforting to those of us for whom the election of Trump and the Brexit result are frightening. But wasn’t it exactly the liberal certainty in the rightness of our own position that blinded so many in public life and the media – and I include myself in this – to Brexit and Trump’s election?
For a start, those “facts offered up by the establishment” that Grathwohl cites as a counterpoint to the post-truth world have not proven such a reliable measure of reality.
The same people who are now rubbing their hands at the demise of truth are the ones who made data a quasi-religion. They are the ones who relied on polls and pundits to the exclusion of more traditional methods of finding out what’s going on – methods such as reporters pounding the streets – and as a result completely missed the truth that was staring them in the face not once, but twice.
Conflicting versions
To compound the problem, well-intentioned, long-established journalistic practices, such as the requirement for balance and fairness in reporting, have contributed to the rise of false equivalences and a subsequent dilution of reality.
It is simplistic to suggest that the world is divided into those who have the truth on their side and those who have entered a realm where it no longer matters. In reality, people are chiefly concerned with their own, deeply conflicting versions of truth. My truth as a woman, a feminist, is very different from the truth of a divorced, male factory worker in Detroit.
Undoubtedly, the notion that we are living in a post-truth world is intellectual comfort food for liberals. It’s a neat term, a clever term, one that I’m sure I’ve used myself. It puts us squarely on the side of the what is truthful and right, while it puts the rest of the world far “over there”, on the side of the liars, the megalomaniacs and the deranged fantasists.
It doesn’t get us any closer to making sense of the forces that led more than 60 million Americans to choose to elect a proudly racist, misogynist bully to the White House or 17.5 million people in Britain to leave the European Union.
The other contenders
adulting, n. [mass noun] informal the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.
alt-right, n. [in the US] an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterised by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content.
Brexiteer, n. [British, informal] a person who is in favour of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union.
chatbot, n. a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the internet.
coulrophobia, n. [mass noun] extreme or irrational fear of clowns.
glass cliff, n. used with reference to a situation in which a woman or member of a minority group ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high.
hygge, n. [mass noun] a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or wellbeing (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture).
Latinx, n. [plural Latinxs or same] and adj. a person of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina); relating to people of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina).
woke, adj. (woker, wokest) [US informal] alert to injustice in society, especially racism.
