English Language Facts and Fascinations: Othering

Back in July 2016, so about 18 months ago, I wrote this about a 'new-to-me' use of the word 'other', as a verb:

I was fascinated recently to learn that 'other' is now being used—by sociologists, psychologists and so on—as a verb, and we also now have the word 'otherness'. 'Othering', it turns out, is a really useful verb. It describes how we tend to talk about, and actively relate to, anyone who we feel is 'not in our group'. It doesn't only have to include (for example) 'foreigners'—it's absolutely anyone who we feel is 'different' from ourselves.

Well I was just as fascinated today, 15th January 2018, to hear it being used on a BBC Radio 4 discussion programme, 'Start the Week' by an author, Afua Hirsch, talking, amongst other things, about her book BRIT (ish). On Race, Identity and Belonging. She spoke of how, as a mixed heritage girl (mother from Ghana, and father a white British man with Jewish heritage) growing up in white Caucasian Wimbledon, she was always perceived as different, as other. Her school friends would tell her how they didn't view her as any different from them, how they thought of her as white... They othered her, even while they felt they were showing how much they liked and accepted her.

So the word 'other', used as a verb, is clearly well and truly out of the confines of sociology and anthropology – it has escaped from academe and is flying free in the wide world of everyday English.

I had read about othering once or twice prior to hearing it this morning, but this is the first time I've heard it used with ease and conviction, and with a clear and strong effect, with no need to explain or define it.

I see, however, that Microsoft Word still marks it with the wiggly red line of a spelling mistake, so it’s obviously not yet in the Microsoft dictionary.

But it is definitely out there, in the spoken, everyday world.

Good. It's a very helpful coinage. It’s a terrible shame we need such a word, but well done, sociologists, for this neologistic usage!

‘Start the Week’ 15.01.2018 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09lw30p with presenter Tom Sutcliffe, discussing three books with their authors: