Comments on: Societal?

By: DFF

DFF — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 14:29:35 +0000

Although I find Sharon’s suggestion very attractive, dictionaries and real usage don’t seem to bear it out–both the New Oxford American Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English define ‘societal’ as ‘relating to society or social relations’ and the illustrative quotations in the OED show this as well. So with respect to Ralph, those who use the term as a synonym for social aren’t using it wrongly (though I wish that I could tell them they were). Poking around in the OED quotations also suggests that perhaps ‘societal’ arose out of a short-lived attempt to retitle sociology as ‘societology’ which would at least explain the extra syllables in ‘societal’.

As to socius, unless the stuff that fran is working with is classics/Roman history, I’d guess that what is meant is “the individual person, considered as the unit of human society, the social self” as the OED has it.

By: fran

fran — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 04:02:14 +0000

ah, i’m glad it sounds and smells suspicious. i half expected to return here and find (yet another) critical perspective on society that I had missed!

By: kieran

kieran — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 03:55:10 +0000

â€œproblems in the sociusâ€

Oh for Godius sake.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:45:19 +0000

Problems in “the socius”? That sounds more like a medical text. “Doctor, I have a problem in my socius”. It has the smell of a crit-theory neologism about it. I’ve seen it once or twice in such texts; the vague sense I get of what is meant is a sort of “apparatus” or constellation of institutions, constituencies, professions, etc. within civil society.

By: fran

fran — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:19:23 +0000

what about “the socius”? i’ve been reading an article about social conflict and the author periodically talks about “problems in the socius”. it’s the first i’ve come across the word and am not sure if it means something specific.

By: Minivet

Minivet — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:14:46 +0000

Imagine a ‘/i’ after “academic” above. Why no preview?

By: Minivet

Minivet — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:13:55 +0000

I think (if you Socratized them) people would say they use it because they feel “social” has a broader range of meanings, associated more with peer groups and in-groups (social pressure, social climb) and political causes (social work), and see “societal” as demarcating the academic meaning of “social” specifically — the structural, total meaning.

It’s not necessary, but it’s not new either. “Familial” was invented to mean “relating to the family” after “familiar” became too broad.

By: Chris Clarke

Chris Clarke — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:44:39 +0000

Alan beat me to my joke.

By: Henry Swift

Henry Swift — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:11:24 +0000

The use of “social” may connote some sort of relationship to lefty sorts of things. You might use “societal” to avoid suggesting such a link. For example, you know exactly what “socially responsibly investment” means, it’s less clear what “societally responsible investment” would mean.

By: BLB

BLB — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:42:31 +0000

For ‘societal,’ the OED helpfully lists the defns ” Societary; social” (and then the defn of ‘societary’ they list is: ‘Of, pertaining to, concerned or dealing with, society or social conditions; social.”)

In my own personal use, I always think of ‘social’ as pertaining to social networks and ‘societal’ as pertaining to the relationship between groups and some kind of a dominant ‘society.’ So, something like “the social groupings of tuscan merchants were shaped by societal restrictions on marriage patterns and male-bonding in 14th century italy.”

And can anyone explain the difference between -ic and istic? Viz. satanic, satanistic?