46. Should we be worried about words changing their meaning? With Robbie Morgan

Words such as 'woke', 'emotional labour' and 'gaslighting' get bandied around a lot, especially in online discourse. And as they get bandied around, their meaning can change over time. Of course, changes in the meaning of words are natural, inevitable and, usually harmless. However, Robbie Morgan, back for his record-setting third appearance on Ethics Untangled, thinks we should be worried about these changes in meaning, at least sometimes. This isn't just pedantry - it's a concern about the way changes in meaning can rob us of the means to express important concepts, and also about the way these moves can serve political motivations in an illegitimate way.

Here's Robbie's paper on the topic:

Morgan, Robert (2025), "Hermeneutical Disarmament", ​The Philosophical Quarterly 75(3): 1071-1093.

Here's Robbie's website.

And here are the other sources we discuss in the episode:

• Beck, Julie (2018), “The Concept Creep of ‘Emotional Labor’”, The Atlantic.
• Bloomfield, Leonard (1983), Introduction to the Study of Language. Amsterdam/Philidelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, p.240.
• Brownmiller, Susan (1990), In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. 1st ed. New York: Dial Press, pp.182, 280-285.
• Déjacque, Joseph, Hartman, Janine C., and Lause, Mark A. (2012), In the Sphere of Humanity: Joseph Déjacque, Slavery, and the Struggle for Freedom. Cincinnati, Ohio: University of Cincinnati Libraries.
• Fricker, Miranda (2007), Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hamilton, Patrick (1939, Gas Light. 1st ed. London: Constable.
• Hochschild, Arlie Russell (2012), The Managed Heart. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. London: University of California Press.
• Lead Belly (2015) “Scottsboro Boys.” In Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, 4:26. 
• MacGuill, Dan (2021), “Did People Refer to Gaslighting During the Era of 'I Love Lucy'?”, Snopes. 
• Norri, Juhani (1998), “Gender-Referential Shifts in English.” English Studies 79 (3): 270–87, p.281.
• Rothbard, Murray N. (2007), The Betrayal of the American Right. Edited by Thomas E. Woods Jr. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, p.83.

Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.

Bluesky: @ethicsuntangled.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideacetl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idea-ethics-centre/