By+Patrick+Fallon

After much discussion， debate， and research， the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth—an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.1

Post-truth in 2016

Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary， now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.2

The term has moved from being relatively new to being widely understood in the course of a year—demonstrating its impact on the national and international consciousness. The concept of post-truth has been simmering for the past decade， but Oxford Dictionaries shows the word spiking in frequency in 2016 in the context of the Brexit referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US， and becoming associated overwhelmingly with a particular noun，3 in the phrase post-truth politics.

A brief history of post-truth

The compound word post-truth exemplifies an expansion in the meaning of the prefix post- that has become increasingly prominent in recent years.4 Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event—as in post-war or post-match—the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like “belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant”.5 This nuance seems to have originated in the mid-20th century， in formations such as post-national （1945） and post-racial（1971）.6

Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright7 Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the IranContra scandal and the Persian Gulf War， Tesich lamented that “we， as a free people，8 have freely decided that we want to live in some posttruth world”. There is evidence of the phrase“post-truth” being used before Tesichs article， but apparently with the transparent meaning“after the truth was known”， and not with the new implication that truth itself has become irrelevant.9

A book， The Post-truth Era， by Ralph Keyes appeared in 2004， and in 2005 American comedian Stephen Colbert popularized an informal word relating to the same concept： truthiness， defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “the quality of seeming or being felt to be true， even if not necessarily true”.10 Post-truth extends that notion from an isolated quality of particular assertions to a general characteristic of our age.11

1. 經(jīng)過(guò)熱烈的討論、爭(zhēng)辯和研究之后，《牛津詞典》定出2016年度詞——后真相。這是一個(gè)形容詞，定義為“關(guān)于訴諸情感與個(gè)人信仰比陳述客觀事實(shí)更能影響民意的種種狀況”。denote：表示，意思是……；appeal to：訴諸，喚起。

2.“后真相”一詞已經(jīng)從一個(gè)籍籍無(wú)名的邊緣術(shù)語(yǔ)變成政治評(píng)論中的重要成員，現(xiàn)在主要出版物在標(biāo)題中使用該詞都無(wú)需添加說(shuō)明或注釋。peripheral： 外圍的，次要的；mainstay： 支柱，中流砥柱。

3. simmer： 慢慢激化，行將爆發(fā)；spike：（數(shù)量或比例）激增；Brexit： British exit or Britain exiting from the EU，即“英國(guó)脫歐”；referendum：（為表決某個(gè)問(wèn)題的）全民投票；overwhelmingly： 壓倒性地。

4. compound word： 復(fù)合詞；exemplify：是……的典型，舉例證明；prefix：〈語(yǔ)〉前綴；prominent： 突出的，杰出的。

5. “post”這個(gè)前綴不再是簡(jiǎn)單地指在一個(gè)特定場(chǎng)景或事件過(guò)后，比如“post-war”（戰(zhàn)后）或“post-match”（賽后），它在“post-truth”一詞中的含義更像是“所述的某個(gè)概念不再重要或不再相關(guān)的”。

6. nuance： 細(xì)微差別；post-national and post-racial： 后民族的和后種族的，即民族或種族的概念變得不再重要的。

7. Serbian-American playwright： 塞爾維亞裔美國(guó)劇作家。

8. Iran-Contra scandal： 伊朗門事件，是指20世紀(jì)80年代中期，美國(guó)向伊朗秘密出售武器一事被揭露，從而造成里根政府嚴(yán)重政治危機(jī)的事件，因國(guó)際新聞界普遍將其與尼克松水門事件相比而得名；Persian Gulf War： 海灣戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)，指1990年8月2日至1991年2月28日期間，以美國(guó)為首的由34個(gè)國(guó)家組成的多國(guó)部隊(duì)和伊拉克之間發(fā)生的一場(chǎng)局部戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)；lament：哀嘆，痛惜。

9. 也有證據(jù)表明在史蒂夫·特西奇之前就有人使用“后真相”這個(gè)詞，但明顯是作為“某個(gè)事件之后”的意思使用，并不帶有現(xiàn)在所暗含的“真相本身變得無(wú)關(guān)緊要”的意思。

10. 2004年，拉爾夫·凱伊斯寫出《后真相時(shí)代》一書(shū)；2015年，美國(guó)喜劇演員斯蒂芬·科爾伯特使得另外一個(gè)具有相同概念的非正式詞流行起來(lái)：truthiness，《牛津詞典》將其定義為“看起來(lái)或感覺(jué)像是事實(shí)的特質(zhì)，即便不一定是真的”。

11.“后真相”的概念從某些主張的特定本質(zhì)擴(kuò)展成為我們這個(gè)時(shí)代的普遍特征。assertion： 主張，聲明。