2016年度词是什么？

By+Patrick+Fallon

After much discussion， debate， and research， the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth—an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.1

Post-truth in 2016

Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary， now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.2

The term has moved from being relatively new to being widely understood in the course of a year—demonstrating its impact on the national and international consciousness. The concept of post-truth has been simmering for the past decade， but Oxford Dictionaries shows the word spiking in frequency in 2016 in the context of the Brexit referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US， and becoming associated overwhelmingly with a particular noun，3 in the phrase post-truth politics.

A brief history of post-truth

The compound word post-truth exemplifies an expansion in the meaning of the prefix post- that has become increasingly prominent in recent years.4 Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event—as in post-war or post-match—the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like “belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant”.5 This nuance seems to have originated in the mid-20th century， in formations such as post-national （1945） and post-racial（1971）.6

Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright7 Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the IranContra scandal and the Persian Gulf War， Tesich lamented that “we， as a free people，8 have freely decided that we want to live in some posttruth world”. There is evidence of the phrase“post-truth” being used before Tesichs article， but apparently with the transparent meaning“after the truth was known”， and not with the new implication that truth itself has become irrelevant.9

A book， The Post-truth Era， by Ralph Keyes appeared in 2004， and in 2005 American comedian Stephen Colbert popularized an informal word relating to the same concept： truthiness， defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “the quality of seeming or being felt to be true， even if not necessarily true”.10 Post-truth extends that notion from an isolated quality of particular assertions to a general characteristic of our age.11

1. 经过热烈的讨论、争辩和研究之后，《牛津词典》定出2016年度词——后真相。这是一个形容词，定义为“关于诉诸情感与个人信仰比陈述客观事实更能影响民意的种种状况”。denote：表示，意思是……；appeal to：诉诸，唤起。

2.“后真相”一词已经从一个籍籍无名的边缘术语变成政治评论中的重要成员，现在主要出版物在标题中使用该词都无需添加说明或注释。peripheral： 外围的，次要的；mainstay： 支柱，中流砥柱。

3. simmer： 慢慢激化，行将爆发；spike：（数量或比例）激增；Brexit： British exit or Britain exiting from the EU，即“英国脱欧”；referendum：（为表决某个问题的）全民投票；overwhelmingly： 压倒性地。

4. compound word： 复合词；exemplify：是……的典型，举例证明；prefix：〈语〉前缀；prominent： 突出的，杰出的。

5. “post”这个前缀不再是简单地指在一个特定场景或事件过后，比如“post-war”（战后）或“post-match”（赛后），它在“post-truth”一词中的含义更像是“所述的某个概念不再重要或不再相关的”。

6. nuance： 细微差别；post-national and post-racial： 后民族的和后种族的，即民族或种族的概念变得不再重要的。

7. Serbian-American playwright： 塞尔维亚裔美国剧作家。

8. Iran-Contra scandal： 伊朗門事件，是指20世纪80年代中期，美国向伊朗秘密出售武器一事被揭露，从而造成里根政府严重政治危机的事件，因国际新闻界普遍将其与尼克松水门事件相比而得名；Persian Gulf War： 海湾战争，指1990年8月2日至1991年2月28日期间，以美国为首的由34个国家组成的多国部队和伊拉克之间发生的一场局部战争；lament：哀叹，痛惜。

9. 也有证据表明在史蒂夫·特西奇之前就有人使用“后真相”这个词，但明显是作为“某个事件之后”的意思使用，并不带有现在所暗含的“真相本身变得无关紧要”的意思。

10. 2004年，拉尔夫·凯伊斯写出《后真相时代》一书；2015年，美国喜剧演员斯蒂芬·科尔伯特使得另外一个具有相同概念的非正式词流行起来：truthiness，《牛津词典》将其定义为“看起来或感觉像是事实的特质，即便不一定是真的”。

11.“后真相”的概念从某些主张的特定本质扩展成为我们这个时代的普遍特征。assertion： 主张，声明。