2023-12-27 12:53:20
Polarization is the word of the year 2023 for the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Urgent Spanish Foundation (Fundéu). They have selected this term that rhymes with tension, confrontation or division “because of its wide presence in the media and because of the evolution that its meaning has experienced.” It is a voice that has its origins in science and physics and that today defines the tense political situation in which we live, once the two-party system seems a thing of the past and in a tense, divided and polarized Parliament more outbursts are heard than proposals. It also defines social tension, which is experienced in public opinion and on social networks.
The winning word has prevailed over the other eleven candidates, among whom were other voices very attached to political reality, such as amnesty; to the war crises suffered in Gaza or Ukraine, as war and humanitarian; to environmental catastrophes and natural phenomena, such as macrofires or earthquakes, as well as fentanyl or ultra-false.
In recent years, the use of the word polarization, collected 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.
Fundéu and the RAE recall that “it is common to find in the media examples that allude to various forms of polarization, worldwide: the polarization of society, politics, public opinion or positions on social networks.”
It is imposed on words such as amnesty, war, humanitarian, macrofire, fentanyl earthquake or ultrafalse
They also highlight that “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 (DLE), polarizing is, among other things, “orienting in two opposing directions”, and the following example is offered in the Essential Dictionary: “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.” A proliferation of its use “applied to politics and the ideological field, to the sports world, to debate on digital platforms and, in general, to any scenario in which disagreement is common, the voice polarization has spread throughout 2023».
Scientific origin
Polarization appears in the academic dictionary since the 1884 edition with the same definition it currently has: “action and effect of polarizing or becoming polarized.” 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 added to 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 some Certain areas of a territory are where the majority of 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 – business concealment of its lack of environmental commitment -, Euribor, FANI – the new acronym for the possible UFOs-, fediverso -social networks federated into one-, fentanyl -a powerful opiate that causes addiction and death-, war, humanitarian, macrofire, earthquake and ultrafalse -voice alluding to invented and fraudulent videos, photos or audios, but of real appearance elaborated and disseminated thanks to manipulation through artificial intelligence.
This has been the eleventh time that the Fundéu and the RAE choose their 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), the first time that an expression with two words was chosen after the coronavirus pandemic marked the news of the previous two years.
FundéuRAE chooses the terms contending for word of the year due to their special presence in the media and in social debate during the last twelve months. Those chosen are words that are of interest from a linguistic point of view, either because of the way in which they have been formed, because of their meaning or, simply, because they have generated doubts among speakers.
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