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Ambiguous choice of words that seriously alters the meaning of the information that is in the source
[edit]"minimize the serious health effects" from "This increased global awareness of the dangers of gaslighting has not been met with enthusiasm by all psychologists, some of whom have issued warnings that overuse of the term could weaken its meaning and minimize the serious health effects of such abuse" under "in psychiatry and psychology" is a very ambiguous choice of words.
The referenced source contains the following.. "However, some psychologists are not encouraged by this increased international awareness of the dangers of gaslighting, warning that overuse of the term could dilute its potency and downplay the serious health consequences – like PTSD and depression – of such abuse."
"minimize" here didn't make sense to me without reading the source, reading it as if "it somehow changes the health effects", whereas the source means "downplaying the health effects", thus trivializing not "minimizing". Ybllaw (talk) 19:27, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
- This is the referenced source.. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2018-shortlist/ Ybllaw (talk) 19:27, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Etymology section.
[edit]There are the following statements in this section with which I have questions:
The gerund form gaslighting was first used in the 1950s, particularly in the episode of The Burns and Allen Show; in The New York Times, it was first used in a 1995 column by Maureen Dowd. According to the American Psychological Association in 2021, gaslighting "once referred to manipulation so extreme as to induce mental illness or to justify commitment of the gaslighted person to a psychiatric institution".[1] Largely an obscure or esoteric term until gaining popularity in the mid-2010s – The New York Times only used it nine times in the following 20 years[9] – it has seeped into the English lexicon...
1) The sentence order is awkward as is the writer's synthesis of the instances of use of the gerund "gaslighting" by the New York Times.
2) The writer's synthesis of the number of instances is wrong.
The main citation (#9) refers to an article dated January 12, 2017 by Ben Yagoda in the Lingua Franca blog, "How Old Is ‘Gaslighting’?" As seen in Wayback, the referred paragraph states:
"The New York Times first used the common gerund form, gaslighting, in 1995, in a Maureen Dowd column. But there were only nine additional uses through May of last year. From June 2016 through the end of the year, the Times used gaslighting 10 times, including a Susan Dominus essay called “The Reverse-Gaslighting of Donald Trump,” which riffed on Hillary Clinton’s line in a September debate: “Donald, I know you live in your own reality.”"
1995 through May 2016 = 9 instances. THEN June 2016 through the end of 2016 = 10 MORE instances. That totals 19 instances between the 1995 Dowd column to the last day of 2016, not 9.
3) The referenced item for this paragraph is a column from _Lingua Franca,_ a blog. I cannot find anywhere on this website if this blog is considered a reliable source on Wikipedia or not. Does anybody know?
Thank you for your attention and your help, Wordreader (talk) 02:41, 20 August 2024 (UTC)