2023-12-27 11:27:33
The Urgent Spanish Foundation (FundéuRAE), promoted by the Royal Spanish Academy and the EFE Agency, has chosen polarization as its word of the year 2023.
The term polarization has been imposed on the rest of the candidates due to its great presence in the media and the evolution of meaning it has experienced. In recent years, the use of this word, which has been included since 1884 in the academic dictionary, has spread to refer to situations in which there are two very defined and distanced opinions or activities (in reference to the poles), sometimes with the implicit ideas of tension and confrontation.
It is common to find in the media examples that allude to various forms of polarization, worldwide: the polarization of society, politics, public opinion, positions on social networks, etc. And both the verb polarize and its corresponding noun polarization are frequently used to express the idea of division into two opposing blocks, positions or opinions.
According to the Dictionary of the Spanish Language, polarizing is, among other things, ‘orienting in two opposing directions’, and the Essential Dictionary offers the following example: The war polarized society.
In addition to its linguistic interest, the other reason for choosing this term has been its high presence in the media in recent months. Applied to politics and the ideological field, to the sports world, to the debate on digital platforms and, in general, to any scenario in which disagreement is common, the word polarization has spread throughout 2023.
The word in the dictionary
This word appears in the academic dictionary since the 1884 edition with the same definition it currently has: ‘action and effect of polarizing or polarizing’. However, more than a century ago, polarization included the physical mark, which indicated that it was a term restricted to the language of this science, in relation to the poles.
In 1985, an addition was incorporated into that definition, which is not preserved in the current edition, and which gave clues about how this term began to spread beyond physics: «In the language of economics, a process by which in “In certain areas of a territory, most industries are concentrated.” By the 2001 edition, polarize—and, consequently, polarization—had spread to general language after acquiring the meaning of ‘orienting in two opposing directions’, already used in very diverse areas.
This year’s winner has been chosen from twelve candidates, several of them related to technology and the environment or natural disasters: amnesty, ecosilence, euribor, FANI, fediverso, fentanyl, war, humanitarian, macrofire, earthquake and ultrafalse.
This is the eleventh time that the Foundation has chosen its word of the year. The previous winners were escrache (2013), selfie (2014), refugee (2015), populism (2016), aporophobia (2017), microplastic (2018), emojis (2019), confinement (2020), vaccine (2021) and artificial intelligence (2022).
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