So, this started with a response to an article comparing the use of the words ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’ in modern culture.

In the article, Berny Belvedere makes some great points about the relative fluidity of the two terms and how they can often be mis-appropriated in modern use and as I read it the thought occurred to compare them in Google Ngram.

This produced the following chart:

Ngram

Now there seems to have been quite a significant reversal in usage over the last two centuries but what I found recently interesting was the sharp decline in ‘fact’ from around the mid-1960s onward. What is happening there? What is going on in the modern era?

The rise of fact

Firstly, up until a peak in 1920, ‘fact’ seems to be doing pretty well. There is a slight dip around the turn of last century but other than that it is only getting stronger and stronger.

While there are no doubt multiple factors driving this rise in ‘fact’, I would argue that a major part of this change in use was tied to the Age of Enlightenment, the birth of rationalism and the Scientific Revolution.

From the mid-1700s onwards the importance of determining ‘fact’ became ever more central to society as scientific method became entwined with everything from industrial innovation to healthcare and by extension drove national wealth and well-being.

Corresponding with this there is a decline in ‘opinion’ which seems to make sense as empirical ‘fact’ starts to overtake mere opinion in the nascent fields of economics, health, science and professional academia.

But then ‘facts’ suddenly fall out of fashion in the 1970s and 1980s. What happened? Is there a link between the decline in ‘fact’ in the graph and shifts in popular culture around that time such as postmodernist thinking?

Post-structuralism

To understand postmodernism and its academic basis in post-structuralism it is necessary to first go back to post-war France, where the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss posits structuralism as a means to understand phenomena through the lens of language as a system, or structure, which defines itself in terms of itself.

Simply put, this theory aims to question the ability to express objective truth in a statement without first considering the structures of language and society in which the statement is expressed. Or in other words meaning is only that which is expressed by the structures of language.

Post-structuralism then developed from this in the 70s and 80s and branched into more of a cultural phenomenon, referred to loosely as postmodernism — permeating books, films, theatre and society at large.

Think films like Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, Memento, TV series like Twin Peaks, the Simpsons, Seinfeld or authors like Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster or Angela Carter.

Post-structuralism starts to question any notion of truth, as everything is constructed, and this leads naturally to meta-realities, the idea that each individual has their own version of the truth.

The idea that everyone can only speak their version of the truth gradually has developed from this, aided in part by the power of advertising firms, eager to promote a view of the world where every product could be positioned to reflect the private fears and desires of the individual consumer.

Individualism is after all a powerful drug, and brings with it numerous benefits when trying to reconcile different perspectives. This is especially true in a highly capitalist society where individuation is prized.

Where it seems to get dangerous is when ‘your truth’ trumps the very concept of objective fact. The ability to turn a highly individualized view of truth into political capital is in many way exemplified by actors like Trump — speaking ‘his truth’ with total conviction, even when it flies in the face of empirical evidence — but is this a blip or part of wider changes that have been taking place over decades?

If we look at another ngram we see an almost mirror correspondence between the fall in ‘fact’ and a rise in ‘perspective’.

The trend to consider every perspective or individual’s truth as equal feels like a modern phenomenon, becoming mainstream only in the last few years, and yet the changes in language appear to have been taking place over a longer period.

The current narrative suggests that it is social media that has allowed companies like Cambridge Analytica to swoop in and prey on innocent victims but it seems there is also a potentially fascinating link between language and the current societal shifts that has been taking place for decades.

What is the link between these changes and the more recent rise in ‘alternative facts’? is this aligned with ‘individual truths’ or is that extrapolating too far from a couple of graphs?

If you are reading this and have any thoughts on this decline in ‘fact’ (or know any more in depth research thats out there on this topic) it would be great to hear any responses below.