The Adoption of Technical Terms in Popular Discourse

One of the most common expressive devices in modern prose is the appropriation of technical terms from various specialties to express ideas that the writer thinks are analogous to these terms. In recent years words from the terminology of the computer have been ubiquitously imported into general prose by journalists and others. Access (as a verb), download, mainframe, software, database, user-friendly, and a host of other terms have been used so frequently in modern discourse that some people no longer recognize them as technical terms adopted for general use.

What I should like to suggest in the ensuing remarks is that when writers do import technical terms into their prose, they are obligated (if they are responsible writers) to use the terms accurately, being mindful of where the terms come from and of what precisely they mean. By way of example I should like to invite attention to one group of words—literary terms—and the way they are used (or misused) in popular discourse. I choose literary terms because I believe that of all technical vocabularies they are the most widely known. But, after reviewing some of these usages, I shall briefly call attention to other terminologies that have been exploited by modern prose writers and then suggest the importance of writers' using such terms precisely and accurately.

We can start with the words tragedy and tragic. Anyone who has had a course in English literature knows that these words have very specific meanings in literary usage. Ever since Aristotle defined tragedy in his Poetics there has been general agreement that a tragedy is an account of the downfall of an important person (i.e., a person of high estate) caused by a character defect in that person. Macbeth, a king, falls because of excessive ambition; Othello, the leading military figure of his day, comes to grief because of excessive jealousy; Prince Hamlet's tragedy is the result of his procrastination caused by compulsive overintellectualizing, or, as one critic has said, the play Hamlet is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind. In every case an important highly placed person comes to misfortune (and usually to his or her death) because of a tragic flaw, which Aristotle called hamartia. In real life tragedies are not uncommon, because many important people have defects of character that lead to their undoing. But, when we use the term tragedy in our prose, we should use it accurately. Newspapers are full of references to "tragic accidents" as in "Two small children died in a tragic accident yesterday in New Jersey." Now this makes no sense at all. A tragedy, by its very nature, cannot be an accident, for the victim in an accident suffers misfortune through no fault of his or her own. What is the tragic flaw that brought about the deaths of the two small children in New Jersey? And in what sense were the children people of high estate? Their deaths are a misfortune or a disaster or a calamity, but they are not a tragedy. The word is used in numerous other inappropriate contexts as well; a flood or a famine or an earthquake will be described as a tragedy. Such misuse runs the danger of erasing altogether the true significance of the word.

Aristotle also said that tragedies arouse "pity and fear" in the spectator. This consideration should also restrict our use of the word. The indiscretions of John Edwards and Tiger Woods have been described by some journalists as "tragedies." Both cases involve the downfall of people of high estate brought about by a character flaw, but to dignify their misbehavior with the term tragedy seems inappropriate. Their costly dalliances do not inspire pity and fear—at least not in most of us. The same might be said of the Parisian dentist who, when attempting to extract the tooth of an American tourist, broke the tooth and exclaimed (inappropriately), "Quelle tragédie!" To which the American calmly (and wittily) replied, "Une tragédie de Racine, n'est pas?" punning on the meaning of the common noun...