Universitaet van Amsterdam
International School for Humanities and Social Sciences

The Etymological Argument
Fallacy or Sound Move?

M.A. Thesis in Discourse and Argumentation Studies

by

Frank Zenker

August 2002

Contents

Preface

1. Introduction ... 4

2. Etymology and the Meaning of Terms ... 6
2.1 Distinction from Conceptual History/ Cultural Studies ... 10
2.2 Opinions about the Etymological Argument/ the Etymological Fallacy ... 12
2.3 Divergences of the Meanings of Terms ... 14
2.4 The Term-Meaning Relation: Dynamic versus static Meaning ... 16

3. Etymology in Argumentation. From historical Meaning to lived Praxis ... 20
3.1 An illicit Reasoning Scheme for the Etymological Argument ... 22

4. Evaluation of the Etymological Argument ... 26
4.1 The modern Status of Etymology after Saussure ... 26
4.2 Popper′s Criticism of ontological Platonic Epistemology ... 28
4.3 Implications: Key-Terms, Meanings and Definitions ... 33
4.4 The Use of Etymology for the Purpose of Giving a Definition ... 35
4.5 Fallacy Criteria for the Etymological Argument ... 39

5. Conclusion & Outlook ... 41

6. References ... 44

7. Notes ... 46

Graphics
Table 1: Matrix of relevant action constituents ... 11
Table 2. Comparative overview -- Pragma-Dialectics, Toulmin, PPC ... 22
Table 3: Symptomatic Argumentation-Scheme, ~ essentialised ... 23, ... 38
Table 3: Fallacy-Matrix ... 40
Table 4: Sound change ... 46

Preface

This text is concerned with the place of etymology as an argument in a critical discussion according to the Pragma-Dialectic model. My thesis is a criticisms of the etymological argument for an ontological presupposition of essences beyond the observable real world that seem necessarily implied in forwarding etymology as a means to formulate and justify definitions of key-terms.
The research spells out criteria of fallaciousness and, eventually, suggest that all essential definitions are to be avoided or mitigated so that no ontological import takes place, but the essential method instead assumed as functionally equivalent to the Aristotelian method of defining according to the genus proximum and differentia specifica scheme to get rid of the ontological problem, at least.
The criticism of essentialism used is the German-Englishman Karl Popper′s forwarded in The Open Society which is published, in English, at the end of the second world war in criticism of the European totalitarian political excesses at that time. It is a modern criticism that I bring in relation to the comparably relevant, yet somewhat older postulation of an arbitrary relation between the linguistic form and its meaning by the French linguist Ferdinand Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics, published by students in 1915.
Popper′s criticism is, in his full intent, also a criticism of the methods of 20th century Social Sciences and Humanities in contrast to the Natural Sciences. I try to give this discussion some room but will disappoint anyone who reads the text for a statement on the methods debate. Its centrality is pointed out, though.
I make ample use of notes that distract a smooth reading substantially, especially as I decided to use endnotes. The first reading should be exercised in complete disregard of the footnotes. This way, you get what is in the text. The second should include the endnotes. This way you get to where I come from and it is the level at which criticism should find its most fruitful soil.
′Essentially, what you do in parliament is talking. Parliament. Look at the French word parler - to talk. There you have it′.

From a discussion on a Netherlands Radio Station, July 2002

1. Introduction

Take the above statement from the radio discussion and look up parliament in a dictionary. In the American Heritage College edition (1993:994) you will find the following definition of the term parliament:

par·lia·ment (phonetic) n. 1. A national representative body having supreme state legislative powers. 2. Parliament. The national legislature of various countries, esp. that of the United Kingdom. [ME, a meeting about national concerns > OFr. parlement > parler, to talk. See PARLEY]

What is spelled out in this dictionary entry will be regarded a definition of the descriptively adequate term-to-meaning relation at the time of writing the dictionary. The entry states the term parliament and makes available by specification two of the term′s meanings. Distinguished are the meaning ′material body′, a group of people if you like, and ′constituent of a legal system′, which is not a material body in the same sense. The legal constituent is what gives the body its de facto legal powers.

Obviously, what is said in the square brackets shows that the radio-speaker above was in agreement with the dictionary′s editors. The text in the brackets is titled Etymologies (1993:xxvi) and defined thus: ′An etymology traces the history of a word from one language to another as far back as can be determined with reasonable certainty.′
What the speaker above has forwarded will be termed an etymological argument. The standpoint ′Essentially, what you do in parliament is talking′ is linked to an argument in which the French term parler and its meaning to talk are presumed to support the standpoint.

From a Pragma-Dialectical perspective, the example constitutes a use of etymology as an argument. The practical question is: What can I justifiably do with an etymology in an argumentative situation? The theoretical questions is: What is the general form and what are the criteria for evaluating the soundness of an etymological argument?

The questions are obviously related: If criteria for fallaciousness are distilled, these can be used to classify uses of etymology as constituting sound and fallacious discussion moves. Good criteria will only be found if there is a principled reason for the exclusion of certain uses and the exclusion, then, takes place because and only because of this reason. Hence, we are looking for what goes wrong in particular variants of what, at this point, is still an undifferentiated notion of the etymological argument.

Both questions find their answer in this thesis. It is an answer that rejects etymology as a function of what is de facto done in using etymology in a discussion. Precisely, the use of etymology as a method will show to be fallacious in the context of a critical discussion if this method is employed for the purpose of giving a definition of the term that features in the etymology.
The evaluation is, thus, based on the postulation of a discrepancy between the tool, the end and the situation. The standards under which tool, situation and end are evaluated are inspired by the Critical Rationalist tradition following, most notably, Karl Popper (1963, 1976, 1977). I use his criticism of essentialism, his stance for pluralism and against dogmatism as guidelines for the critical inquiry into fallacy conditions.

For the purpose at hand, I use the following crucial distinctions: term vs. referent, term vs. meaning, diachronic vs. synchronic, intensional vs. extensional, word meaning vs. speaker meaning. I start with a description of the methods and object of etymology as a branch of historical linguistics. The remaining distinctions, borrowed from linguistics and the philosophy of language, are introduced in due course.
Overall, two insights are employed for an evaluation: We judge from an informed perspective upon the scientific study of language change and stability on the one hand. On the other, we judge from an informed perspective on the dangers of dogmatic or essentialistic meaning assigning processes in discussions.

The minimal-strategy, then, is to arrive at the possibility of identifying two distinct types of the etymological argument, a real and a nominal variant. We will distinguish them according to their ends or outcomes and rule them out of a critical discussion because the employment of one of these types contradicts the normative postulate of pluralistic term-to-meaning relations and, like the other, fails to provide an acceptable reason why the meaning suggested by etymology is a critically potential meaning in the discussion at hand.

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