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From: Greg Sandow <GSANDOW@prodigy.net>
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 21:40:04 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 14:47:45 -0500
Subject: Re: 'Fake' and 'Self-Proclaimed'

Vince Johnson wrote:

>      Hi Greg,

>      I think you're automatically ascribing a pejorative meaning to the
>      terms "self claimed" or "self proclaimed" that really isn't justified.

>      An accusation of rape without any substantiating evidence is only an
>      accusation -- not a verdict. To describe the claimant as a "rape
>      victim" in the absence of *any* supporting evidence indicates a prima
>      facie acceptance of the claim and reveals an endorsement of the
>      claimant's tale.

>      Jurisprudence, as well as science, just doesn't work that way.

>      Accepting the fact that inexplicably weird things really do happen to
>      people, we also know that people make stuff up for a variety of
>      reasons. Use of the term "self-proclaimed" is just a qualifier to
>      indicate that the claims have not been verified and/or the absence of
>      any supporting evidence.

>      Regards,

>      Vince

Vince, I understand that the literal meaning of the words isn't
pejorative.

I can only tell you how they're used in magazines and newspapers. In
practice, phrases like "self-claimed" and, even more, "self-proclaimed"
are used to underline the fact that the person involved is making
unsubstantiated claims about him- or herself. For instance, when we talk
about an "abductee," we understand, most of us, that these are people
who think they've been abducted by aliens. We also understand that these
abductions haven't been proved.

If we start talking about "self-claimed," we're underlining the fact
that the abductions haven't been proved. This will usually have a
slightly derisive effect, as if we were saying "these people who claim
to be abducted, but hah! They can't prove it." That's what a political
columnist would mean in referring to the "self-proclaimed Grand Vizier
of the Ku Klux Klan." That translates as "this jerk who invented a phony
title to inflate his position as head of a tiny, hateful band of
idiots." If you read a reference to "Bill Clinton, a self=claimed
moderate," you're probably reading a Republican commentator who still is
harping on the charge that Clinton is really a liberal.

If I was still a senior editor at Entertainment Weekly, I could quickly
survey my colleagues. This was not the kind of thing we ever argued
about, and my guess is that they'd have readily agreed that these terms
are at least mildly critical, and that whenever a writer used one of
them, we had to be careful that the critical or faintly demeaning tone
was justified.

I've just finished a piece on UFOs for a national magazine. If I
referred to "self-claimed abductees," I think I can guarantee (to use a
word from John Powell's phrasebook!) that my editor would query it. He'd
take the phrase as an indication that I thought abductions weren't real,
and ask me why I had to insist on that so strongly.

>From the American Heritage Dictionary, 3d edition:

self-proclaimed: "so called by oneself; self-styled"

self-styled: "as characterized by oneself, often without right or
justification."

>From the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

self-proclaimed: "proclaimed to be so by oneself, without authorization
from another"

from Webster's New World Dictionary:

self-proclaimed: "so proclaimed or announced by oneself" (their example
is the kind of usage I've been talking about: "a self-proclaimed ruler")

The other major dictionaries, the Merriam-Webster and the Random House
Webster's, don't include these words. And yes, I'm a dictionary nut.
I've got to laugh at myself, but I actually have all these (and a few
more!) on my bookshelves...

Greg Sandow