{"id":79,"date":"2008-12-02T14:34:44","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T19:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=79"},"modified":"2008-12-02T14:34:44","modified_gmt":"2008-12-02T19:34:44","slug":"semantic-inflation-in-campus-building-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2008\/12\/02\/semantic-inflation-in-campus-building-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Semantic inflation in campus building names"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the University of Connecticut last week, in Storrs, I observed semantic growth of morbid proportions.<\/p>\n<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-79 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2008\/12\/02\/semantic-inflation-in-campus-building-names\/infirmary\/'><img width=\"111\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/infirmary.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2008\/12\/02\/semantic-inflation-in-campus-building-names\/studenthealthservices\/'><img width=\"150\" height=\"113\" src=\"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/studenthealthservices.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As you can see for yourself, what was formerly the Infirmary is now the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shs.uconn.edu\/location.html\">Hilda May Williams Student Health Services<\/a>.&#8221; Six words where one used to do. Of particular semiotic interest:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The name of the <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">donor<\/span> building&#8217;s namesake is very prominent, though Hilda May, alas, didn&#8217;t merit having her name engraved in stone over the doorway. I guess &#8220;Infirmary&#8221; was already there and this new six-word moniker wouldn&#8217;t have fit anyway. [Update: I initially assumed that Williams was a donor, since who else gets to name campus buildings, these days? UConn does have a number of recent buildings and even schools named for donors &#8211; such as the Neag School of Education, the Katter Theatre, and the gargantuan Burton Family Football Complex &#8211; but I&#8217;m informed by a correspondent that Williams was a long-time nurse at the infirmary. Kudos to UConn for not selling every campus building name to the highest bidder.]<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Infirmary&#8221; is a rather obsolete term, and perhaps it was gotten rid of purely because it seemed obsolescent. But it strikes me, too, that while &#8220;infirmary&#8221; means a place where ill people lie about, &#8220;student <em>health<\/em> services&#8221; shifts the semantic frame from sickness to healthiness, replaces a negative sign with a positive one, insinuates that rather than repairing harm or disease they&#8217;re going to maintain health at good, normal levels.<\/li>\n<li>The term &#8220;services&#8221; suggests that the students at the infirmary are going to be defined as customers seeking service, not as patients getting treatment. &#8220;We are committed to providing quality services to students at a reasonable cost,&#8221; as they say on their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shs.uconn.edu\/services_general.html\">information page<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Health services&#8221; may be meant to suggest a broader range of activities than an infirmary would have had, in an earlier era. Can&#8217;t imagine that nutrition advice or the morning-after pill were part of the historical program in this building, and it is certainly the general trend to provide more and more campus services for college students.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Can&#8217;t see what&#8217;s so bad about &#8220;infirmary&#8221; myself&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the University of Connecticut last week, in Storrs, I observed semantic growth of morbid proportions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[485],"tags":[512,621],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}