Politics now seems to be the art of twisting words in such a way that opponents and spectators lay their weary heads in the lap, so that government can continue for a while. For example, the current VVD leader defended his non-resignation as prime minister after a deadly inquiry report on the gas extraction scandal in Groningen, stating that “in recent years, hard work has been done on a paradigm change”. For those who did not immediately understand what he meant by this, he explained that the emphasis used to be on “money for the Netherlands and security of supply” and that we now have a different paradigm to have. Which, however, he left unnamed.
Market share of margarine
Anyone who takes into account earlier statements by this linguistic virtuoso has little difficulty in filling in what the current paradigm should be. In a interview from some time ago after all, he expressed his admiration for the Unilever manager who was able to stop the continuous decline in margarine’s market share and to boost sales again through advertising campaigns. “In marketing terms,” he explained, “this represented a true paradigm shift.”
From loss to profit, in short. In the Groningen case, therefore, the other way around. Other marketing specialists refer to the way in which consumer behavior can be changed with the term paradigm. Perhaps this meaning applies more to the victims of the northern earthquakes: they are supposed to give up their rebellion for compliance.
This meaning of paradigm, however, has hardly any relation to the original one. Paradigm comes from the Greek, where para ‘beside’ means and deiknumi ‘to show.’ Combined, this leads to ‘showing something else next to it’. So a paradigm was first an example, then a model. For those who have had classical languages at school, the paradigm is also the sequence of forms of a word with, for example, all case forms that serves as an example for an entire category. Or like Jacques Brel in his Tango from a gray past sings: “Rosa, rosa, rosam, rosae, rosae, rosa, rosae, rosae, rosa, rosarum, rosis, rosis.”
A paradigm shift is something like a scientific revolution
But as so often in language, the development did not stop there. In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published a controversial book in the philosophy of science in which he redefined the term paradigm and defined the state of affairs in a particular science at a certain point in time. A paradigm change, shift, or switch, or in the original English paradigm shift, then becomes something like a scientific revolution. Hence the talk of Copernican or Einsteinian paradigm shifts. This new meaning is slowly making its way into non-scientific language. For example, one can say that the profession of librarian is undergoing a paradigm shift. From book managers to information experts.
In politics, paradigms were unknown until recently. So too are changes in paradigms. But the change from driver to cheater.