2019年经济学人 词汇意义的变化(3)（在线收听）

Sometimes they succeed. In 2012 Julia Gillard, Australia’s prime minister, gave her renowned “misogyny speech”, lambasting her rival Tony Abbott for referring to Ms Gillard “making an honest woman of herself”, and for posing by a sign reading “ditch the witch”. Traditionalists pounced; Mr Abbott didn’t hate all women, they said, so Ms Gillard obviously didn’t know what misogyny meant. In response, Macquarie, an Australian dictionary publisher, expanded its definition of the word to include “entrenched prejudice against women”.

有时确实成功地这样做了。2012年，澳大利亚总理朱莉娅?吉拉德发表了著名的“厌女演讲”，痛斥竞争对手托尼?阿博特称吉拉德“让自己成为一个诚实的女人”，并在一个写着“抛弃女巫”的标牌前摆造型。传统主义者出击了；他们称艾伯特并不憎恨所有女性，所以吉拉德显然不知道厌女症是什么意思。作为回应，澳大利亚词典出版商麦格理将这个词的定义扩大到“对女性根深蒂固的偏见”。

There are other ways to wage a social struggle on the lexical front. Inventing a word is one; Ms Manne has written about “himpathy”, which she uses to describe outbreaks of disproportionate concern for the future of a man accused of harassment, rape or other violence towards women. The term is pointed and memorable, and is spreading online.

还有其他方法可以在词汇方面发动社会斗争。发明一个词就是其中之一；曼恩曾写过一篇关于“himpathy”的文章，她用这个词来描述对一名被控骚扰、强奸或其他针对女性的暴力行为的男子的未来爆发的过分担忧。这个词很有针对性，令人难忘，并且正在网上传播。

Repurposing an existing word is harder; the inertia of the older meaning must be overcome. But this can be done, as (more intentionally than Ms Gillard) theorists and activists managed with “queer”. Whether inventing or repurposing words, in refusing to kowtow to inherited concepts Ms Manne is emulating Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that philosophers “must no longer accept concepts as a gift, nor merely purify and polish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them convincing”. Sound argument is needed to persuade other philosophers of such intellectual leaps; to enlist the wider world, a compelling vocabulary is vital.

重新定义一个现有的单词更加困难；必须克服使用其旧意义的习惯。但这是可以做到的，正如(比吉拉德更有意为之)理论家和活动家成功使用了“queer（同性恋者）”一词。无论是发明词汇还是重新使用词汇，曼恩拒绝向继承下来的概念低头，都是在效仿弗里德里希?尼采，尼采认为哲学家“不能再把概念当作礼物来接受，也不能再仅仅净化和润色它们，但首先要制作并创造它们，呈现它们，让它们令人信服。”要说服其他哲学家实现这种思想上的飞跃，需要有充分的论据；要争取更广泛的世界，一个引人注目的词汇是至关重要的。