As 2022 comes to a close, it’s “word of the year” season overall. Oxford has stated “goblin mode” as its word of the year while the Collins Dictionary said it is “permacrisis”. Merriem-Webster announced “gaslighting” as its word of the year while Cambridge declared it as “homer”.
Oxford classifies “goblin mode” as slang, which describes “a type of behavior that is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, careless, or greedy, usually in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.” “Gaslighting,” according to Merriem-Webster, “is the act or practice of seriously misleading someone, especially for their own benefit.”
Two of this year’s four words, gaslight and goblin mode, describe emotions we felt but presumably didn’t have a “word” to describe them.
.@Merriam Webster managing editor Peter Sokolowski discusses the Word of the Year for 2022: “gaslighting.” pic.twitter.com/Ar8CVBPiqU
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) November 28, 2022
Does having a word for what one feels make things better?
According to a 2007 study from the University of California, Los Angeles, involving brain imaging by psychologists, verbalizing feelings reduces the intensity of sadness, anger, and grief. Putting feelings into words, therefore, can have a therapeutic effect.
Acknowledging emotions, or labeling them, as psychologists say, is the crucial first step in managing emotions. But it is more difficult than it seems. Many people find it difficult to identify their emotions, and often the most obvious description is not the truest.
Giving a word to how one feels helps with “emotional agility,” which is the practice of using one’s feelings as input to help and guide them rather than trying to change or control emotions. It starts with the correct identification of the underlying feeling and emotion.
I learned a new phrase today: Goblin goblin.
I intend to use it at every opportunity.— Stephen King (@StephenKing) December 6, 2022
At the same time, the “labelling culture” has generated some backlash. “You are not ‘in elf mode’, you have clinical depression,” wrote one Twitter user.
This statement emphasizes the risk of trivializing psychological problems by humorously offending those who suffer from depression and find it difficult to socialize and leave the house. It also highlights the risk of creating a fun and memorable name for a certain state of mind that ends up justifying and normalizing its symptoms, preventing their treatment and resolution.
The emergence of the “goblin mode” highlights two phenomena through which the discourse of social networks is articulated today: first, the need to invent increasingly bizarre names to explain phenomena that have existed for years. The second is the increasingly polarized or exaggerated view of mental health through the lens of social media.
The first phenomenon is a direct derivation of the tag system that rewards the short and instantly recognizable. This has grown in recent years in response to the proliferation of search engine optimization, or SEO, techniques and the aesthetics of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
These terms typify people’s ways of being, summarizing mental states or intricate evocative worlds in a single word.
John Steinbeck may have known a thing or two about “Goblin mode”. #oxfordWOTY 2022, when he wrote: “Only in laziness can one reach a state of contemplation that is a balance of values, a weight of oneself against the world and of the world against itself.” pic.twitter.com/ntzQMfCIYg
— Library of America (@LibraryAmerica) December 5, 2022
Although not inherently wrong, this tends to change and rewrite how things are understood. For example, the use of clinical words for disorders such as anxiety or depression to describe typical emotional states can lead people to claim that they are depressed when in reality they may only be upset or sad.
A term like “social anxiety” has gone from describing a psychological problem to being used for any unpleasant situation. As a result, the same psychologist’s office sees individuals who are going through an unpleasant situation but who do not have a chronic disorder, as well as those severely affected by agoraphobia or hikokomori syndrome, two possible scientific aliases for goblin mode.
According to the national health serviceAgoraphobia is a complication of panic disorder. It makes a person afraid of being in situations where it is difficult to escape or where things can go wrong. Hikokomori syndrome refers to an extreme form of social withdrawal or seclusion.
Much of the online literature on “goblin mode” doesn’t take depression or other persistent mental illnesses seriously. Depression, despite resembling “goblin mode,” is fundamentally different and more dangerous.
However, the silver lining is that mental health discourse and awareness is much stronger today than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic. Changes in society and the way we think are also reflected in the “word of the year”.
Oxford’s Word of the Year for 2021 was VAX, while for 2020, its list of “Breakthrough Words of a Year” included “lockdown,” “shelter-in-place,” “circuit breaker” among others, while the The world endured the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
His word for 2019 was “climate emergency”, for 2018 it was “toxic” and for 2017 it was “youth earthquake”. By 2016, it was “post-truth”, after the United States presidential elections won by Donald Trump, and the United Kingdom referendum on leaving the European Union: “Brexit”.
The word of the year 2015 was simply the emoji 😂 – “face with tears of joy” – a clear indication, if anything, that it’s great to talk about our feelings and emotions now more than ever.
A decade of Oxford’s ‘word of the year’:
2014 vaping
2013 selfie
2012 Omnishambles (UK) and GIF (US)
2011 half squeezed
2010 Great Society (UK) and Refudiate (US)
2009 Simples (UK) and unfriend (US)
2008 Credit crunch (UK) and hypermiling (US)
2007 Carbon footprint (UK) and locavore (US)
2006 Bovvered (UK) and Carbon Neutral (US)
2005 Sudoku (UK) and podcast (US)
2004 Chav
Zulekha Shakoor Rajani is a counselor and educator in Bangalore. She can be contacted at [email protected]. His Twitter account is @ZulekhaRajani.
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