Black Friday and Other Words Made Things

The holiday season has begun, and with the holidays come the made-up days, which got me to thinking (of course) about language.

By the way, in this week's column, I refer to cave paintings.  If you would like to read more on this fascinating art form, have a look at a column I wrote last year about some prehistoric paintings I saw in the Niaux cave in France. (Click here!)

What does it take for a thing to become a thing?

Let's consider the role of language.

Think back to the last week or so: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday. (Did you know some people have also tried to start "Buy Nothing Day," "Cyber Safety Sunday," and even "National Package Protection Day" (on Wednesday, December 3)?

Here in the United States, we have become so accustomed to such things — well, Black Friday, yes, but "National Package Protection Day" not so much — that we just take them for granted. For years, Americans have flocked to the stores on Black Friday. Then some shoppers began honoring Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, and many people have answered the call on Giving Tuesday and contributed to philanthropic organizations.

Unlike, say, Independence Day (July 4) or the winter solstice (December 21 this year), however, these days are not tied to a historical event or natural phenomenon. They don't "have to be," so to speak. Rather, they are inventions, and their success has a lot to do with language.

What's in a Name?

You may recognize this question from a famous speech in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  Perhaps you even remember the words that follow it: "That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet."  Shakespeare was referring to something linguists call "semantics," the study of meaning in language.  Words, after all, are merely representations of things, not the things themselves.  That may seem like an obvious statement, akin to saying an image of a house is not an actual house, but we often use words assuming that they can be taken at face value when, in reality, words are slippery — inexact, subjective, ambiguous.

They are also inventions.  Most of the time, we don't know who invented them or even when they came into being.  At some point in the very distant past, people began using sound to refer to a form of shelter, and now, thousands of years later, English speakers have the word house (although our notion of a house looks very different from their notion — evidence of the inexact nature of language).  The sounds changed over time — a core principle of historical linguistics — but the words are indeed linked.  (I hope to take up this fascinating topic in a future column.)

Naming Things into Being

This phenomenon, which has occurred many millions of times in different languages over the course of history, seems perfectly natural to us. We need to communicate about houses — and trees and rocks and protons and mitochondria — because they are real things.

Imagine having just seen a weasel and wanting to tell your friends about it, but having no word for it. You could guide them back to the cave and point to a painting of it on the wall, but that process might take more time than your friends care to spend on your story. You could get on all fours and crawl around like a weasel, but, unless you are a master pantomime, they might think you are referring to a horse or a bison or just a deranged human trying to tell a story about a weasel.

Let's face it: it's just faster and easier to make a sound with your mouth and move on to the rest of the story, which is sure to be, you know, really interesting, right? Right? ("Listen, Og, I've seen a weasel, so unless this one was being chased by a monkey, I got a thing I need to go to.")

Virtually everything known to human beings has a name. The musician Prince tried to escape his name and go by a symbol (which, in one sense, is a kind of name, since it is an abstract representation of a real thing), but soon people who wanted to refer to him simply called him "the artist formerly known as Prince." That phrase became a kind of new name for him. For some reason — probably my obsession with language — this story cracks me up. When it comes to language, you can run, but you can't hide. The whole thing reminds me of a fable called "An Appointment in Samarra," but, again, that's a subject for another column.

In short, because things have names, having a name confers credibility, even on what is not really a thing, at least not yet.

The thinking, unconscious mainly, goes like this, I believe: "It has a name. It must be a thing."

Black Friday — Now a Thing

This is what has happened with Black Friday, I think. Sure, people have been shopping on the day after Thanksgiving for decades; since Thanksgiving always falls on a Thursday and many people have the following day off work, many would go shopping for the upcoming Christmas holiday on that day.

It's one thing to know that people are out shopping.  It's quite another to give the day a name: Black Friday.  Now it's a . . . well . . . what is it?  It's not a holiday or an anniversary or day of recognition.  It's . . . it's. . . a thing!

Of course, a name isn't enough. Just ask the committee — and we know it had to be a committee — that gave us (or tried to give us) "National Package Safety Day." The thing itself also has to take off, as Black Friday certainly has, and success depends on a number of factors, but the name plays a crucial role.

Caveat Lector

This equivalence of language and credibility is more than a delightful little detail for us language lovers. When you are making your selections on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, you probably are consciously or unconsciously acting on the warning in the old Latin phrase "caveat emptor," or "Buyer, beware." The same phrase applies to communication. Before you "buy" the reality of something simply because it has a name, remember that names are inventions, and anyone can invent something.

What's in a name? An implicit imprimatur, we might say, but, in the end, a name is just a name — unless you are referring to Word Wednesday because that, I can assure you, is a real thing.