etymology of visual language in action
My Chinese language professor told us that there's a Chinese expression, one she was convinced came from an English expression, that translates as "the carrot or the stick," the basic idea being that one can go about rewarding positive behaviors or punishing negative behaviors. We all started laughing. The only expression we could think of including both a carrot and a stick was more along the lines of "carrot on a stick," that funny cartoon image of a donkey driver egging his donkey along by dangling in front of it a carrot on a stick.
The fact is that my professor was right; there is such an English expression, and the OED has a number of examples of it, including this one:
1954 J. A. C. Brown Social Psychol. of Industry i. 15 The tacit implication that . . .most men . . . are . . . solely motivated by fear or greed (a motive now described as “the carrot or the stick”
But I still found it curious that of all the people in my class, nobody was really familiar with the expression to which she was referring. I find it even more curious that most members of the class were familiar with the "carrot on a stick" image. Where did it come from, and just why do we all know it so much better than the other expression?
I don't have any direct proof that the image of the donkey driver with a carrot on a stick is derived from the "carrot or the stick" expression, but I have a few pieces of information that I've gathered regarding them. First is this article about an old Usenet discussion on alt.usage.english, which debates whether the proper usage is "on" or "or":
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/carrot.html
The important part of this article is not that it gives sources to back up the fact that the proper usage is in fact "or" (which I believe is clearly the case), but that it tries to uncover the origin of the carrot on a stick image:
One person on the Web mentions an old “Little Rascals” short in which an animal was tempted to forward motion by a carrot dangling from a stick. I think the image is much older than that, going back to old magazine cartoons (certainly older than the animated cartoons referred to by correspondents on alt.usage.english)
The second piece of evidence is an informal Google survey I did on my own. I conducted an image search for (carrot, stick). This turned up quite a few images of carrots dangling from sticks, while only a few of the images made reference to the "carrot or the stick." This was no surprise to me, given the reaction of my Chinese class to my professor's claim that there was such an English phrase. So, Google points further the idea that currently, people are generally significantly more familiar with the latter image than the earlier phrase.
If it is the case that this image is the descendant of the phrase, then I see it as an interesting example of the living etymology of language in both verbal and visual terms. Speakers of a given language do not have the breadth of experience communicating within that language in order to see the discrepancies that normal etymological developments create. The etymological development in this case jumped mediums and meanings, making it doubly confusing. A phrase that comments on methods of behavioral modification is transformed into an absurd image that comments on the sisyphean nature of work in a contemporary context of technology and capitalism (ok, that might be taking it a little far, but whoever came up with the image was pretty clever anyway). This example demonstrates the speed and ease with which multiple dimensions of an abstract idea (should I use the word "meme" here?) can transform in the context of visual culture.
(by the way, hello livejournal friends)
The fact is that my professor was right; there is such an English expression, and the OED has a number of examples of it, including this one:
1954 J. A. C. Brown Social Psychol. of Industry i. 15 The tacit implication that . . .most men . . . are . . . solely motivated by fear or greed (a motive now described as “the carrot or the stick”
But I still found it curious that of all the people in my class, nobody was really familiar with the expression to which she was referring. I find it even more curious that most members of the class were familiar with the "carrot on a stick" image. Where did it come from, and just why do we all know it so much better than the other expression?
I don't have any direct proof that the image of the donkey driver with a carrot on a stick is derived from the "carrot or the stick" expression, but I have a few pieces of information that I've gathered regarding them. First is this article about an old Usenet discussion on alt.usage.english, which debates whether the proper usage is "on" or "or":
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/carrot.html
The important part of this article is not that it gives sources to back up the fact that the proper usage is in fact "or" (which I believe is clearly the case), but that it tries to uncover the origin of the carrot on a stick image:
One person on the Web mentions an old “Little Rascals” short in which an animal was tempted to forward motion by a carrot dangling from a stick. I think the image is much older than that, going back to old magazine cartoons (certainly older than the animated cartoons referred to by correspondents on alt.usage.english)
The second piece of evidence is an informal Google survey I did on my own. I conducted an image search for (carrot, stick). This turned up quite a few images of carrots dangling from sticks, while only a few of the images made reference to the "carrot or the stick." This was no surprise to me, given the reaction of my Chinese class to my professor's claim that there was such an English phrase. So, Google points further the idea that currently, people are generally significantly more familiar with the latter image than the earlier phrase.
If it is the case that this image is the descendant of the phrase, then I see it as an interesting example of the living etymology of language in both verbal and visual terms. Speakers of a given language do not have the breadth of experience communicating within that language in order to see the discrepancies that normal etymological developments create. The etymological development in this case jumped mediums and meanings, making it doubly confusing. A phrase that comments on methods of behavioral modification is transformed into an absurd image that comments on the sisyphean nature of work in a contemporary context of technology and capitalism (ok, that might be taking it a little far, but whoever came up with the image was pretty clever anyway). This example demonstrates the speed and ease with which multiple dimensions of an abstract idea (should I use the word "meme" here?) can transform in the context of visual culture.
(by the way, hello livejournal friends)