WORDSPEAK
A civil question
Anand
MEDIA all around the world, including The Hindu, recently carried a news item about Prince Charles marrying Camilla Parker-Bowles in a civil ceremony.
The term more familiar to most Indians for a marriage solemnised by a civil or government official, without any religious ceremony, would perhaps be civil marriage. In countries that recognise marriages between same sex (gay and lesbian) couples, the current preferred term is civil union. One meaning of civil is "polite, obliging, not rude". But the way Charles's first marriage ended, and indeed half of the marriages in the countries of the western world end, the term civil marriage appears to have become something of a misnomer.
A "Wordspeak" column of several years ago was about the widely different meanings and applications of the word "capital". The etymological root of civil, like capital, is in Latin: civilis, from civis, citizen. Therefore, anything concerning, befitting or applying to individuals or to citizens as a whole was termed to be civil. And the adjectival use of civil as "befitting" has been the scourge of many a misnomer, as we shall see.
The Romans distinguished between centres of population. A larger centre was called civitas, city, a smaller one was called urbs, town. Hence suburbs, meaning "parts of town". But even if you lived in urbs, you still were a civis. Civic gradually came to be used as a synonym of urbs. In English language at first city was used for any settlement regardless of the size. The modern distinction between towns and cities developed during the 14th Century.
Over time, civil began to mean not only the affairs of a city, but also behaviour. When referring to our role as citizens, we often speak of our civil (or civic) duties. Anything relating to, or involving the general public, their activities, needs, ways became civic affairs, as distinguished from special (military or religious) affairs. In a city one could not behave like a country bumpkin (spit on the floor or step on people's feet). In other words, one had to learn civility — how to behave in a city.
One who had acquired these skills was said to be civilised. In the same vein, one who had polished manners and obeyed the dictates of town life was said to be urbane. The problem, as we are well aware, is that just as all humans are not necessarily humane, neither are all city-folks civil, nor all town-dwellers urbane.
Victoria Neufeldt, the Canadian lexicographer, said in her A Civil But Untrammeled Tongue (1995) "Neology, far from being a separable linguistic phenomenon that manifests itself periodically or sporadically in response to social stimuli, in fact rises out of ordinary linguistic competence, what might be called the linguistic collective unconscious of the speech community." The Elizabethan was a period of especially notable linguistic activity, when English was bursting with neology. This was the time of when the distinction between city and town and countryside was being noticed, and when Shakespeare was writing:
The rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Come civil night,... with thy black mantle
"Romeo and Juliet"
Civil law is concerned with private rights and matters that are not criminal or political (civil court, civil lawyer). Civil rights are the rights of citizens to social and political freedom and equality. Civil disobedience is the refusal to comply with certain laws or pay taxes, etc. as a peaceful means of political protest. And so on. When civil war came to mean an internal strife, a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country, Francois Fenelon, theologian and writer (1651-1715), commented, "All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born."
The term civil service was originally applied to the part of service of the British East India Company carried on by staff that did not belong to the army or navy. Other countries borrowed the term for the body of government officials who are employed in occupations that are neither political nor military. In many countries the civil servants do not change with the government and are expected to be politically neutral, although in the U.S. and France, political appointments are made to the higher ranks of civil service.
Many of us think the title civil servant as something of a misnomer too. John Danton, in his article "Madrid's new working class: the bureaucrats" in The New York Times, said of the Spanish civil servants, "... They are civil enough. But they rarely serve." During a conversation in India, a friend quipped that Indian civil servants "were neither civil, nor did they serve." To which someone added, "Except themselves."
* * *
A statement given by Narendra Modi after the U.S. government's refusal to give him a visa was sent to me by a reader. Mr. Modi says, "... In U.K., some five-star activists had raised similar issues before my visit to London last year." I would be obliged if readers can throw some light on the meaning of this neologism.
E-mail the author at anand@journalist.com.
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