Will the health crisis create a vocabulary crisis? The epidemic we are going through has brought about a new lexicon, composed of Anglicisms and Neologisms, the meaning of which may seem unintelligible to many. However, in these times when the response to the disease must be common, it is important to adopt the right word in order to guarantee the good understanding of all.
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A little more than a month ago, the Minister of Culture Franck Riester advocated the use of "home", rejecting the term "cluster". The word tracing is trying to make its way despite the "tracking". Yesterday, during the unveiling of the deconfinement plan, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe preferred to "social distancing" , a copy of the English social distancing , "physical distancing" . Why should we favor this formula?
The association “distancing” and “social” forms an abstract idea. Originally, "distancing" was not spatial. In the theater, she describes the distance that the actor creates between the show and the spectator, we learn in Le Trésor de la langue française. By extension, the word designated "the gap, the refusal of a relationship existing between different social classes" . Which is not more telling. What then to understand with this word attached to the term "social"? Should we get away from society, from friends, from loved ones?
Create a social bond by staying distant
“Social distancing is an unwelcome expression. In English, social has retained its etymological meaning. In French from 1830, it took on political significance , ” explains linguist Bernard Cerquiglini. We talk about "social question" , "social concerns" or even "social movement" . The word, notes the author of Parlez-vous troncée (Larousse), is also found in article 1 of the Constitution: "France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic" .
In fact, the term "physical" is more precise because it designates the body of the individual, when the social body qualifies society. To speak of “physical distancing” is to put the individual back in the flesh. Nothing prevents us from maintaining a bond with the other, a social bond, while remaining physically distant. Moreover, the latest neologisms prove it: the French are now organizing "whatsapero" or even "coronapéro"!
