| 词组 | media |
| 释义 | media Edmund Wilson, in one of the essays collected in The Bit Between My Teeth (1965), says that the "habit of thinking in a Latin vocabulary does seem to be disappearing." Wilson's observation is not especially new, but its truth is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the cavalier fashion with which the plurals of Latin (and other foreign) loanwords have been treated by English speakers. Media is one of those, and certainly among the ones that have attracted the most comment. Barnard 1979 observes that the widespread use of media is "so recent that no particular pattern has yet become standardized." In fact, the word seems at present to be developing in two somewhat contrary directions. The older, which is the use of media as a singular count noun, is not very recent; it dates back to the 1920s certainly and perhaps even a bit earlier. Louise Pound in American Speech, October 1927, has two unattrib-uted citations for media as a singular; one, in the form of a plural médias, is clearly from advertising. The OED Supplement has a 1923 citation from a book on advertising using mass media as a singular. It thus appears that media as a singular count noun originated in advertising jargon, and our evidence shows that it has stayed in use in that field ever since, even though representatives of advertising such as Einstein 1985 occasionally object to it. • ... our publication does not appeal to vast numbers as an advertising media —Helen Hurtig, Jour, of the International Netsuke Collectors Society, Summer 1973 It should be noted that singular media and plural media are both used by advertising people. That the habit of thinking in a Latin vocabulary is disappearing in fields other than advertising became noticeable in our files as early as 1939 when media turned up as a singular noun in a medical text for the stuff on which cultures are grown. This sense—not the other singular media used in anatomy and phonology, incidentally—is unconnected with the advertising use, and presumably uncontaminated by it. It is a use that has persisted, although it is obviously nowhere near as common as the "mass media" use. Here are a couple of fairly early examples: • ... producing a suitable media for organic life —Britannica Book of the Year 1946 • ... various salts of penicillin in an aqueous media can not be administered orally —Science, 16 Feb. 1945 A third independent singular media turned up in the field of art in a local museum bulletin in 1937. We have relatively little subsequent evidence of this use, but it too appears from time to time: • ... "Experiments in Design" with Mrs. Varty which will include tissue paper, ink, string, a different media every day —Gladys E. Guilbert, Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.), 30 Jan. 1966 And we have other miscellaneous uses of singular media, some of which we show you here. Note that the two most recent are technical (they both relate to computers): • ... partly as a cultural media —K. L. Little, American Jour, of Sociology, July 1948 • ... necessary to rely on the mails as the contact media —Henry M. Ellis, Stamps for Fun and Profit, 1953 • Films ... will inevitably become more a media of personal expression —Saturday Rev., 28 Dec. 1963 • These expatriate stars have become too large for one company or even one media to handle —Iris M. Fanger, Christian Science Monitor, 14 Sept. 1979 • ... a new ultra-high-density recording media — Annual Report, Eastman Kodak Co., 1983 • ... an optical disc media —Predicasts Technology Update, 5 Jan. 1987 The singular count noun media, then, is fairly well established in a number of different specialized areas as the equivalent of medium. The plural médias is much less common than the singular media, and both are much less common than the plural media at the present time. Development as a singular count noun is thus one direction this plural borrowed from Latin is taking. The other direction is toward use as a collective noun. A collective noun can take either a plural or a singular verb, and when media takes a plural verb no one notices it because the agreement does not differ from that of the traditional plural. When it takes a singular verb, it is distinguishable from the singular count noun in that it takes the rather than a or one or this and does not have a plural médias. The range of application of this media is narrow: it almost always refers to the mass media— television, radio, and the press especially. (It is also now being used as a plural collective to refer to representatives or members of these organizations.) It is a use well established in speech: • Adds Fordham's Father Culkin: "Now the media goes directly to the public " —Paul D. Zimmerman, Newsweek, 13 Nov. 1967 • The media,... it probably could do a better job, but just the time limits you, the way they cut up the news —Huey Newton, quoted in Rolling Stone, 3 Aug. 1972 • You know, the news media gets on to something, and there's a certain herd instinct among writers — Edwin Meese 3d, quoted in N. Y. Times, 25 Sept. 1981 • I understand the media ... and it apparently understands me —Jesse Jackson, quoted in Esquire, December 1979 • There have been many changes in the media since you first came into it, since I first came into it — Marquis Childs, address to National Press Club, 17 Oct. 1975 • The media consumes you when you approach a milestone —Reggie Jackson, quoted in Sports Illustrated, 12 Aug. 1985 • I could care less what the media thinks —Mark Hughes, quoted in Forbes, 25 Feb. 1985 And it occurs in writing too, especially of a journalistic kind: • There are signs that the media is going after him — John Leo, New Times, 31 May 1974 • Media is also concerned —R. R. Walker, The Age (Melbourne), 30 Apr. 1975 • ... the media gives insufficient coverage to what they do and say —William Davis, Punch, 12 Oct. 1976 • Most of the media continues to dwell on that period in their history —Cherie Moore, People, 2 Nov. 1981 • The American news media has its way of directing our attention —John Gilman, UMass Collegian, 12 Oct. 1983 The commentators by and large reject both of these developments; most seem unaware that there is more to the matter than a single phenomenon—one they see as being a plural noun misused as a singular. Among the nay-sayers are Chambers 1985, Trimmer & McCrimmon 1988, Bernstein 1962, Simon 1980, Kilpatrick 1984, Shaw 1975, 1987, and Safire (in his New York Times column of 24 Nov. 1985). Freeman 1983 and Howard 1978, 1984 do not exactly welcome the newer media, but they do locate it within a tradition that has brought singulars like agenda and stamina to respectability and view it without great alarm. Perrin & Ebbitt 1972, while conceding that many find uses like those illustrated above objectionable, point out that they are common in "General" (though not in "Formal") writing. The usage panel of Harper 1975, 1985 reveals an interesting difference in attitude as between the collective singular and the count singular with its plural médias: nearly one-third of the panelists accept the former in writing, but almost none accept the latter. Despite the considerable expressed opposition, the illustrated uses of media are not on the wane. The evidence suggests, rather, that use of media is going to remain unsettled for some time because of these somewhat opposing pulls. But you should remember that media and medium are English words, even if naturalized, and are no longer subject to the rules of Latin. The evidence is that the singular count noun has been with us for more than fifty years, and shows no sign of retreat in spite of the hostility of the pundits. The collective use is more recent and seems to be following the direction of development of data. It too may well survive, although it is not at present as well established as the older mass use of data. And this is also worth remembering: our evidence shows that media is still being construed as a plural more often than it is either as a singular count noun or as a collective noun with a singular verb. For more of these interesting foreign plurals, see the list at Latin plurals. |
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