Happy New Year, everyone!!!
This should be a relatively quick post. It’s just to say, I don’t like people referring to this as the end of the decade. Similarly, I didn’t like when people referred to 1999 as the end of the century.
Let’s be fair. I will concede that there is a valid, objective reason that people do so.
But, first, let’s talk about why this is wrong. The reason is simple: there was never a year 0. So, the first decade Anno Domini was 1AD to 10AD. Similarly, the first century spans from 1AD to 100AD. Therefore, the end of the 2oth century, the second millennium was the year 2000. See? And right now, we’re entering the last year of the first decade of the 21st century. See? So simple.
That’s why it annoys me when people say it’s the end of the decade. From a certain perspective, we might pick ANY year and refer to it as the end of the decade because every year has had ten years preceding it.
But people who do this have a good reason to do so; it’s not because they’re just wallowing in ignorance.
See, we talk about the Roaring 20’s and the 80’s and the 90’s and, most recently, the Naughties — at least that’s my favorite reference to the last ten years. These references are to specific ten year increments, decades if you will, that start with the first year that starts with the referenced number. So, the 80’s are the years from -80 to -89 and we assume you’re referring to the 1980’s because of our mortal context. The 1990’s were 1990 to 1999.
The immediate utility of referring to the decades this way is really indisputable. It’s conversationally expedient and requires less mental energy to integrate the span into a basic conceptual grasp of the passage of time. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
BUT I am often pedantic about these things and so I do not approve of referring to this as the end of the decade.
Update: Shlevy pointed out I mistake I made in the process of editing! I fixed it.
Update 2 4:45am 1/1/10: I just awoke with a start at how Shlevy tricked me into changing this post. I was right from the beginning!
I, on the other hand, argue that “decade” as a concept is predominantly cultural, not historical, and that therefore the cultural, 0-9 usage is both accurate and proper, whereas “millennium” is predominantly historical, and therefore should be restricted to 1-0 timespans. A 1-0 “decade” may be proper in historical contexts, but the heavy emphasis on the 0-9 “decade” from the start of the 19th Century on has made “decade” used generically refer to a 0-9 timespan. It only refers to an indeterminate 10-year span, or to a 1-0 timespan, in specialized contexts.
On a related note, I had a heated argument with my brother the other day about language and why grammar is so important. Basically he thinks language is primarily communicative (and that grammar is unnecessary so long as the listener understands the speaker’s meaning by private agreement), while I think language is primarily cognitive (and that grammar is a necessary tool for integration and conceptualization).
I really do find debate about the meaning of words, the role of language, and the rules of grammar to be terribly fascinating, because it goes right to the fundamentals of conceptual cognition.
In those cases, I would question what you mean by “predominant.” The use of the term in the way, which I describe as colloquial, is certainly significant in a cultural sense. Given that the average lifespan is a bit shy of a century, we experience “decade” in a sense that “millenium” will acquire only after SIGNIFICANT advances in medical science. I don’t argue that point; it’s the only reason I’m able to restrain myself from being a true ass about that application.
But if your use of the term “predominant” refers to cultural applications, then it stands in contrast to your argument — one with which I agree — that language is cognitive. Because if it is your intent to identify ten-year increments in the passage of time, then you will find some cognitive dissonance when referring to events of ancient history where the 0 – 9 scheme falls apart.
And that;s exactly the argument I ended up having with myself: at what point does a common (if not nearly ubiquitous) usage become a colloquialism, and at what point does a colloquialism become part of the accepted grammar (if ever)? Is language formed or changed over time by what effectively amounts to consensus? Or are Strunk and White the only authors of an English grammar doomed to perpetual stasis due to their untimely (1946 and 1985, respectively) deaths?
And then there’s the deeper question of the relationship between a particular language set (e.g., English) and the fundamental (and, so far as I can tell, universal) grammatical backbone that gives us categories of symbols as verb tenses, pronouns, and adjectives. I note with interest that I find learning different languages extremely easy because I understand the general science of grammar. I can therefore more readily apply it to new linguistic symbol sets. I think they serve different cognitive roles: it doesn’t matter if you call it a chair or a chaise, so long as it’s a properly formed concept and falls into the universal grammatical category of nouns, it’ll work just fine. If that’s the case, I think I could argue that consensus, popular usage, and colloquialism properly play a role in language formation, specifically in determining to which concept a given symbol refers, but that grammar, being fundamental and universal, is required to determine the *kind* of concept to which the symbol may refer.
In this sense, consensus isn’t affecting how the concept is formed — it is either formed correctly or incorrectly according to objective criteria with which both of us are already familiar — but rather affects only the form of the symbol used to represent the concept. Honestly I do not know whether these are properly distinguishable though. I do know that I have difficulty looking around and seeing people use a particular word in a particular way for a particularly long time and continuing to evaluate it as wrong.
(Although I have no difficulty looking around and seeing people use a particular *grammatical construction* that violates fundamental grammar structure and evaluating *that* as wrong, no matter how long they’ve been doing it. I’m thinking specifically of Subjective-Objective Case Confusion and Misplaced Modifiers.)
I haven’t really studied or thought about language in this way, so take that as a qualification of what I’m about to say.
I am rather forgiving of colloquial usage, but that’s because I give a lot of effort to trying to identify the context and tone of the usage. As you mention, there are certain practices which I find annoying and obnoxious, but I am overall amused and intrigued by popular use and practice. (That song “If I Was Invisible” made me scream in my car over and over — not in a good way — when it was popular.)
In this particular case, I forgive the use of “the decade” as a reference to the Naughties. It’s useful, objective, and relevant. Within the context of our experience, I think the “colloquial” use of the term “decade” is valid and true. I think so long as one recognizes this, then the use is acceptable. I can only grant the benefit of the doubt to those who say, “this is the end of the decade,” and assume they understand what is correct, cognitively. That’s why I say I don’t make a total ass of myself when I hear it. If it were completely wrong, confusing, and unclear, then I would feel obliged to ask pointed questions about what one means with that usage. But it’s not, so I’m OK.
It’s only OK, though, given a certain context, frame of reference. It makes all the difference in the world and allows me to get through the day.
I would rush to point out that this is a legitimate qualification of interpretation. Words and phrases have different meanings, not only within the context of specific use, but within the broader context of the conversation. By that I’m referring to the sentence or paragraph as the specific use, and the broader context as that of the conversation.
I may be naive in granting this concession to so many, but even if the vast majority of people are ignorant to the context and meaning of what they’re saying, it doesn’t make this usage any less legitimate given the proper context. I only persist in pointing out how, in the broader contexts, usage such as this is NOT applicable. Again, that’s just me being pedantic about it, though.
I think I should like to study grammar and language more and get a better understanding of how language works conceptually. Perhaps I’ll buy Peikoff’s lecture on the matter!