Talk:controversy

Stress difference

Craig Ferguson uses RP and American hostess Joy Behar "corrects" him. If anyone was interested.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nthic1lLoko (3:36)

ALTON .ıl 09:17, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

He certainly doesn't use RP, though. 2.203.201.61 08:23, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

nonstandard pronunciation

This from my NOAD2:

USAGE There are two possible pronunciations of the word controversy: one puts the stress on the con- and the other puts it on the -trov-. The second pronunciation, though common in Britain, is still held to be incorrect in standard American and British English.

--24.12.160.175 21:10, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The second pronunciation (with the stress on the second syllable) was once recommended by the BBC pronunciation unit, and used by BBC announcers and presenters in the UK. The pronunciation department changed their minds (was it in the 1970s?), and nearly everyone in the BBC now puts the stress on the first syllable, with a secondary stress on the third. The earlier pronunciation can hardly be regarded as "wrong" in the UK, but it is beginning to sound dated. Dbfirs 11:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Interesting and quite believable given the increasing influence of American English on British. However, do you have a source for this? Because this says the exact opposite, namely that CON- is older and more traditional, but -TROV- is "now more widespread in British English". Perhaps a trend that was reversed? 2.203.201.61 08:16, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I noticed that which one of these was the older vs newer pronounciation has been changed back and forth over the last year, so I went looking for more sources. Jasper Copping, "The 'conTROversy' over changing pronunciations", The Telegraph, 5 February 2011, reports on then-interim results of a study by the British Library finding the same thing as Lexico says above (and as our entry says as of the current revision), namely that "Britons are also creating a new way of saying controversy which hasn’t traditionally been used in Britain or the US. Three quarters of Britons taking part [in the study] say “conTROversy”, with the emphasis on the middle syllable, rather than the previously conventional “CONtroversy”. Jonnie Robinson, curator of sociolinguistics and education at the British Library, said [...] 'People complain about it, when they hear it on the radio, for instance, and there might be a popular myth that this one is changing as a result of American usage – but there is no evidence that Americans are doing it.'" (The 'new' pronunciation goes back to at least 1987, when I find it mentioned in Verbatim, vol. 14-15, p. 21.) - -sche (discuss) 16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Unanimous hatred vs. division of opinion?

I've seen the word used to refer to things unanimously hated, even though that sense strays from the word's etymology. I've even had a conversation about something that would be unanimously hated where the person talking to me said it would be a controversy, and I replied that a controversy means something with huge division of opinion. He said that the term can also refer to something universally hated, which I think arose from the original sense because of interpreting the term as something that sparks public outrage, whether partial and including debate (the original sense), or universal (this supposed sense). So would the sense of anything that sparks public outrage, regardless of division of opinion on the matter, meet inclusion criteria? ThighFish (talk) 16:35, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

It wouldn't surprise me if such a sense existed. To add it to the entry, we would need to find concrete examples of the word being used that way, and it may be difficult to find examples which couldn't just be interpreted as the usual meaning given that very few things are universally hated and defended by absolutely no-one. I think the media's love of euphemisms has lead media to refer to "controversy over X" or call X "controversial" rather than do (and potentially be criticized for) the work of judging and reporting how widely (or not widely) condemned/disliked/etc X is, which can lead to situations in which very widely condemned things (as well as things only condemned by a few people) are presented as "controversial". That would make it likely that, as you suggest, some people would interpret the word as just indicating that something sparks outrage without regard for whether it is also defended by any significant faction. But again, it may be hard to find examples of controversy being used to refer to something that truly has no defenders / about which there is truly no dissenting opinion. - -sche (discuss) 03:14, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Too bad we can't cite WP for this euphemistic use. Some things referred as controversies there are only controversies in which all or part of an organization is one one side and most of the rest of the expressed views are on the other. It's hard to say what the passive observers think about the matter, so maybe the euphemism is just an attempt to avoid being swept up in or feeding a frenzy. DCDuring (talk) 04:49, 18 March 2021 (UTC)