When is a writer a writer? - an essay on terminology

[packbat]

coppervale, yesterday, wrote a bit On Becoming a Writer where he approvingly quotes a rule Harlan Ellison said to him: "You're not a writer until a writer tells you you're a writer."

gregvaneekhout begged to differ, and suggests that "the designation 'writer' can only come from the act of doing it".

The question I am inclined to ask is: whence* comes the divide?

First: I claim that it truly is a divide, not merely a quibble of the sort which may be casually dismissed in a footnote. It tears along the same line dividing elitism and egalitarianism, distinction and description - either the former elevates Writer to a title or the latter reduces it to trivia, depending on which side of the line the reader falls, and there is a real sense of investment in the side. "How dare you claim we are not writers?" one might ask; or, inversely, one might ask, "If you are writers, where are your publications? Where are your awards? Where are your membership cards?"

Second: that's where it comes from. It comes from the split between the prototype of the writer and the etymology of the term - from the difference between definition by similarity and definition by function. Further, it gains its power from the conflict in the definition. To use an elitist frame, because we ascribe merit to the title, we wish to gain it (this drives the meaning towards the more general functional form), but because the merit of the title comes from the prototype, we wish to restrict the title to the deserving (this drives the meaning towards the prototypical). To use an egalitarian frame, because we pay attention to this behavior, we wish to employ our language to match the behavior as logically as possible (this drives the meaning towards the functional), but because we pay attention to this behavior, we want to make sure to be thrifty, to only pay to the truly exemplary examples (this drives the meaning towards the prototypical).

Third: These very tensions make the divide impossible to resolve by any maneuvers. Nevertheless, I have an opinion.

My opinion is thus: the best strategy is to employ the word in the functional sense. This does tarnish the trademark, if you think of "writer" as a trademark, but to try to apply the elitist standard raises too many ridiculous confusions. (Check it out: Is Anne Frank a writer, by the elitist definiton? Samuel Pepys? William Topaz McGonagall?) But on the other hand, we should recognize that adjectives apply - professional versus amateur, good versus bad, original versus derivative - and we should recognize that people may (or may not!) take "Writer" as a part of their identity, and not to deny them their identity or ascribe too much moral or social value to their identity.

The same goes for a lot of other titles - "artist", "dancer", "fisher", "poet". These words are not states of being, they are states of doing. Best to recognize it and go from there.

* Linguistic aside: "from whence" is an equally valid form. I simply prefer the shorter version.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I am reminded by a gripe by C.S. Lewis about people who wanted to use "Christian" as an adjective sliding towards just meaning "reasonably nice", instead of a descriptive term for someone belonging to a particular belief system. His point was that it was better to define someone as a good Christian or bad Christian than let the term stand in as a form of approval of its own.

I feel somewhat the same way about words like "writer" or "art". Just because something is bad art doesn't mean it isn't art. Just because someone is an unpublished writer (or, for that matter, a bad writer) doesn't mean they aren't a writer, if they're writing.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

It's a good distinction. A similar sort of thing turned up in my free will ("Action and Responsibility") class: when polling the general population, philosophers found that people give inconsistent accounts of responsibility when an act is good versus evil. (The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has a famous experimental philosophy department (http://www.unc.edu/~knobe/ExperimentalPhilosophy.html) - the case I'm thinking of is here (http://www.unc.edu/~knobe/side-effects.html).) The thing is, people like to consider these words as automatically loaded - if someone is a "painter", that's a good thing regardless of how terrible the paintings may be.

Of course, the really weird thing is that almost no-one actually comes out and explicitly argues for the emotional interpretation - they just choose to use the words that way. The only real exception I can think of is the Phaedrus-Pirsig of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with respect to Quality.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

And we have so very many perfectly good adjectives (and adverbs) for discussion, heh, quality of a given thing, it seems like a waste to make a more basic descriptive word do double-duty, and so dilute its utility.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Indeed!