The anticipation of reading is almost always wonderful, but the actual reading is often frustrating. You can spend hours enjoying the wonderful indecision of the bookstore before you walk away with the comforting weight of a new release hardcover in your hand. The book can sit on the coffee table for days, weeks, or months before you finally find the time to sit down with it. At some point, you finally find time some quiet evening to pick up the book, sit yourself down with a nice glass of the beverage of your choice, and open the cover. And by page six, you're wondering what on earth the author could possibly have been thinking.
That's what happened to me last night. I get home from work, get a glass of scotch, sit back, put my feet up, and pick up that book that I've been anticipating getting to for the last week. (I'm not going to tell you the title just yet, for reasons that will be clear shortly.) The introduction was good, but very shortly into the first chapter, I was treated to a display of the author's willingness to substitute her assumptions and prejudices for rational thinking and research. The topic of her little excursion from rationality involves the military, politicians, the media, and the use of language. Specifically, it involves the question of just how corruptive the use of the word "troops" can be:
It is difficult to determine exactly how, why, or when this locution began to enter the common language. Soldiers were almost never described as troops during the Second World War, except when a large military operation (like the Allied landing on D-Day) was being discussed, and the term remained extremely uncommon throughout the Vietnam era. My guess is that some dimwits in the military and the media (perhaps the military media) decided, at some point in the 1980s, that the word "soldier" implied the masculine gender and that all soldiers, out of respect for the growing presence of women in the military, must henceforth be called troops. Like the unremitting appeals to folks, the victory of troops over soldiers offers an impressive illustration of the relationship between fuzzy thinking and the debasement of everyday speech.
I can definitely see the involvement of fuzzy thinking here, and it's possible that a dimwit was involved. But I'm not looking in the same place as the author. She's looking at the military, the media, (perhaps the military media), and politicians. I'm looking at her.
It might not be unreasonable to start out with "misguided attempt at finding gender-neutral language" as a first guess at why the word "troops" is used instead of "soldiers", but it does not take very long at all to disprove that particular hypothesis. A quick look at the Army's public relations website reveals that the Army uses the words "soldier" and "soldiers" to describe its servicemembers, regardless of gender. That's not something new; my wife has been on active duty for over ten years, and every bit of Army writing I've seen in that time has used the word soldier to refer to both the men and the women of the United States Army.
If the change isn't driven by gender issues, then why is the word "troops" used? As it turns out, the author's assertions notwithstanding, it's remarkably easy to find out why - it took me a total of three and a half minutes (yes, I did time it) to use google to find some very reliable sources to explain the change.
According to NPR Ombudsman Jeffery Dvorkin, the reason is related to issues of identity - in this case, the branch of service:
[Ombudsman's Note: Ms. Joshi's note contrasts with e-mails I receive from Marines and ex-Marines who object everytime NPR refers indiscriminately to the military in Iraq as "soldiers." "Troops" has become the all-purpose description of the men and women in uniform. Don't get the USMC upset...]
LanguageLog's Arnold Zwicky addressed the issue back in 2006, and came to the same conclusion:
And whatever the source, ~COLL troop is a useful thing to have. The alternatives have various defects: soldier properly applies only to the Army (the Navy, Marines, and Air Force regularly object to having the word used with reference to them); serviceman is sex-marked; serviceperson is an awkward multi-syllabic substitute; (military) personnel is (like police) a PL-only word (yes, there are all sorts of exotica in the world of SG/PL); and so on. So troop is a good solution. Now we just have to get used to it.
All of this might seem like a relatively minor thing to quibble about. An author decided to use her guess about the source of a problem instead of taking the very minimal amount of time and effort needed to arrive at a reasoned conclusion. Big deal. Happens all the time. It's not good, but that's the way things are done all too often today. So why on earth would I bother to get worked up about it?
In fact, I probably wouldn't have, were it not for the topic of the book. The descent into unreasoned argument that I quoted is found on page six of Susan Jacoby's new book "The Age of American Unreason". The entire book is supposed to be devoted to the need for a return to a more intellectual and rational kind of public discourse. I did not expect that the book would provide examples of "do as I say, not as I do" behaviors.
I haven't finished the book yet, and I still have high hopes for the whole, but it was disturbing to find that unreasoned debate has become so much a part of our current style of discourse that it even infects a book about the need to change the way we argue.
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The more I think about this, the more wrong I think you are.
Modern American rhetoric (frustratingly frequently) lacks *both* a reasoned analysis and a correct conclusion- arguing in favor of reasoned analysis is not negated by simply coming to a single incorrect conclusion.
It doesn't sound to me like her reasoning was necessarily far off, and in any case in general form the argument is the exact same you offer as the "correct" conclusion that two others came to. That is, each argument can be paraphrased as: "troops" is a more all-encompassing term than "solider" and was therefore substituted out of concerns to a minority group. She may have gotten the minority group wrong, but then again, she may not have. Why do you believe the other two sources instead?
The difference between Susan Jacoby and Mike is that Susan is *wrong*. She claims that troop is being substituted for soldier because soldier is masculine, but Mike showed that the Army still calls its people "soldier," regardless of gender.
Becca:
Mike's complaint was that the author made an assertion as fact without any actual research to back it up. She even admits it's a guess, then goes on to assume it's true. That isn't reasoned analysis, that's arrogance.
You wonder why Mike trusts those other two sources more than the author. Mike checked the Army's website and found that "soldier" refers to Army members of both sexes. That kills the author's argument right there. One of those sources is the omsbudsman from NPR, explaining the issue. Both mention that non-Army Armed Forces members protest being referred to as soldiers. The second adressess the shortcomings of alternative terms. Read the links. That's why.
Well... during WWII, there was no USAF, and so pilots were either Army Air Corps ("soldiers" if we use the logic of "soldier" = Army trooper) or Navy Air Corps ("sailors" if we use analogous naming logic to the Navy). Of course, they could well have been called "Army/Navy pilots", too. (Duh.) Of course, when there was a "large military operation," then members of all branches of the military (i.e., Army, Army Air Corps, Marines, Navy, and Navy Air Corps) were used, thus necessitating the use of the word "troops."
Of course, if you go to the origin of the word, I doubt that many would be surprised to know that it had land-army roots: from cavalry.
From it's definition on Dictionary.com:
But it annoys the heck out of me when "troop" singular is used to refer to an individual person. Isn't it supposed to be "trooper"? I suppose that word has police and/or Star Wars baggage around it, though. Still, using "troop" to mean "soldier" or "sailor" (or whatever is correct for the individual under discussion) makes me grind my teeth almost as much as using apostrophes in plurals (or apostrophe's [grind] in plural's [grind][grind]).
Damn, dentistry is expensive, too.
Becca:
I would completely agree that it's possible to use impeccable reasoning to arrive at an incorrect conclusion. Similarly, it's possible to arrive at a correct conclusion while using absolutely atrocious reasoning.
In this case, unfortunately, Ms. Jacoby did neither. Her conclusion that the rationale for the change was based in gender identity is easily disproved by examining the way the military uses the term; she apparently arrived at the incorrect conclusion via the well-known and intellectually rigorous process of uncritically accepting something that she had just extracted from the place where the sun shines not.
I find the sources that I found rather than her gut instinct because they seem to be reliable sources. One of them is an explanation provided by the ombudsman for a major media organization in response to a question about why his organization uses the term in that manner. The other comes from a very highly regarded group blog that focuses on issues related to language, and was written by a respected academic. I found other sources that agreed with those two, but did not cite them for reasons of space. I found none that agreed with Jacobs.
Interesting. I'm cynical enough that I would have guessed that it was purely because "troop" is easier for journalists to spell than "soldier". That it turns out to be because it's too hard for journalists to figure out what to call military personnel based on which branch of the military they're discussing doesn't seem too far off.
Perhaps yet another situation explained by my hypothesis explaining human nature. ("1:People are lazy. 2:Thinking is work.")
"Troops" was never used before WWII to mean soldiers?
"Before a march is undertaken by foot troops, company commanders will personally inspect the bare feet of their men." Annual Reports of the Secretary of War, by United States War Dept (1918), p. 432.
"No troops in the world ever fought with such desperate courage as ours." The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, by Frank Moore, Edward Everett (1863), p. 534.
On the return trip the troops suffered severely, nearly one-half the horses died of exhaustion, . . ." Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Her Generals, and Soldiers, by Whitelaw Reid (1868), p. 800.
John Marley- my reading of the original author's text is not that "soldier" literally means "man" but that it has masculine connotations. The exact nature on how connotations of words can reflect gender bias is far beyond the scope of my comments, but you can either 1) read up on feminism 2) go ask Zuska (politely) to see if she could direct you more specifically or 3) remind yourself of the old "riddle" or "joke" about the doctor who says "I can't operate on my son!".
An alternative guess about the word history- around WWII, the media changed from soldier to serviceman out of respect for Marines, ect. Once women began entering the military in significant numbers (at some time post-WWII) we switched from "serviceman" to "servicemembers" in military press (see US DoD website, as a more appropriate citation for the military broadly than the Army website) and "troops" in some of the general media (assuming that we can agree with both the original author, and the alternatives Mike quotes on what "the media" uses).
I think we all agree, the singular "troops" sounds fatally akward... indeed, the gramatical akwardness is rather reminiscent of overly "gender-PC" terms- which, I suspect, is how the connection was made in the original author's mind. This is a primitive, unrigious form of reasoning by analogy. It is not tight logic, nor (likely) correct... but it is not entirely *unreasoned*.
Anyway, out of context, it's hard to see the original author "assuming (her guess) is true". If we instead assume her guess is wrong, the singular troops could still be considered a 'debasement' of language (as Karen focuses on). Her argument doesn't hinge on her guess.
Mike-
Re-reading the quote carefully, the first source you provide seems to make plenty of sense. Since she the speculated motivation is attributed to "the military and the media(or perhaps the military media)"- you do provide a source that is at least in the media. Though, I have to say, I *wish* NPR could be considered a cross-section of the media- then there is a much better chance the impetus for the book (and indeed the whole argument in favor of reasoned analysis) wouldn't be nearly as pressing.
The second source is more worrisome. Your tendency to view "respectable academic" as "appropriate authority" is highly understandable considering you are a fellow grad student. I'm not sure it doesn't skirt close to a logically fallacious 'appeal to authority' in this case though.
My overall summary- consider yourself biased since you live in a world where you get to set your standards for logical debate by respectable academics who listen to NPR. This is a very high standard, and even those of us that fit that sterotype must sometimes fall short.
Becca:
I mentioned (some of) the LanguageLog author's credentials because you asked me why I had chosen that particular citation. The fact that the author of the quotation is a highly regarded professor of linguistics does not, of course, prove that his view is correct, but the background of the author is absolutely relevant in deciding whether or not something is likely to be a reliable source. That is not remotely similar to an argument from authority. If you honestly believe that it is, I'd strongly suggest that you take some time and read up on that particular form of logical fallacy.
As for the more substantive portions of your reply:
As was the case with Jacoby's writing, your "guess" lacks anything remotely similar to actual evidence. It is possible that the use of "troops" is somehow connected to gender equity, but it's also possible that it's not. If you want to convince me, show me the evidence - not another guess.
That's true enough, and if you look at my original post, I think you'll find that I did not criticize that aspect of her argument. I simply criticized her uncritical acceptance of her own guess.
People certainly make mistakes, and I'm no exception. In this particular case, however, I have absolutely no qualms about holding Jacoby to a very high standard. Her book is in large part a criticism of various aspects of common public discourse in America today - including unreasoned arguments, "junk thought", a disdain for logic and evidence, and such similar things.
Under the circumstances, it's at least ironic (if not downright hypocritical) for Jacoby herself to indulge in an argument that demonstrates a disdain for logic and evidence. Her decision to label the people in the military and media that she assumed made the decision she had "guessed" that they made "dimwits" only ads to the perception that she wants others to behave in a way that she doesn't.
When I was on active duty for training (ANG) in 1957-8, we were specifically told not to use troops or trooper in discussing soldiers. I never really understood why.
While Mike has found some good sources that gave a reasonable explanation, I wonder if there is not a more informal rationale as well. While troops and trooper could refer to foot soldiers, it was more commonly used to refer to mounted soldiers. Cavalry became obsolete (for the most part) after WWI. However, people who recalled the use of trooper for a mounted soldier were still around. It seems plausible that troops and trooper would not be used to describe all military personnel until the people who thought of troopers as mounted were gone.
The generic term for Air Force personnel is Airmen (sometime Aviators, but that really is a term reserved for pilots). They have a rank of Airman, and the Navy has Seaman, Airman, and Fireman, all regardless of gender. In the Navy, we always refer to the Army as soldiers, and Marines as Marines (call them soldiers and you'll hear about it) There is still plenty of masculinity in the Armed Forces, so it seems that there would have to be some other explanation.
People like the word 'troops' because it sounds friendly. Even the Boy Scouts have 'troops'
It would be just as easy to use the term 'Military' instead of troops. But that term is probably too, well, militaristic for most people to use.
Adding to what Ted says, enlisted Air Force personnel receive a Airman's Performance Report (APR) annually and this is the basis for their advancement within or dismissal from the USAF.
I am disappointed to hear/read that Jacoby produced such a visible faux pas. Our heroes have feet of clay? Say it ain't so!
If we are to end the use of all words that end in "man" or "men" will that satisfy any woperson or the wopeople in general?
I don't accept the assumption behind either guess, considering the author's ignorance of the use of the word "troops". I would want to see evidence that the use of the word "troops" was uncommon. (This statement: "Soldiers were almost never described as troops during the Second World War, except when a large military operation (like the Allied landing on D-Day) was being discussed" is true in a trivial sense. "Soldiers" would most likely be referred to as "soldiers" when no Marine, Navy, or Air Force personnel (who are not "soldiers") were involved, and they would be collectively referred to as "troops" in joint combat operations. But I think even this gives the author too much credit.)