Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
So, it is not really up to any of us to determine what is or is not a "sport." The natural progression of culture and the evolution of language will make that decision for us.
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OK, putting on my professional hat for a moment:
Culture doesn't do anything by itself. Language doesn't do anything by itself. They are both created by human beings, and change in response to the decisions made by human beings. Each of us has a vote on usage; some people's votes count more than others. Big-name writers and songwriters, media personalities, and prominent politicians have the power to popularize usages overnight, and the somewhat lesser power to stigmatize usages by ridicule.
The only thing that is constant and certain is that human beings using language have a general incentive to maximize their signal-to-noise ratio. In one of the innumerable boxes of books packed up for my move, I have a copy of the first edition of Fowler's
Modern English Usage. As I recall, it was published in the 1920s. Much has changed in the language since then. But I have often noticed that Fowler was right more often than not in predicting which usages would survive and which would die out. In general, usages survive when they make language clearer and more specific, and die out when they make language vaguer. In particular, usages that are liable to cause confusion tend to die out quickly.
I don't know whether the neologism ‘esports’ will survive or not. If not, then based on Fowler's criteria, I would guess that another specialized word will replace it, and not that it will be folded in under the general word ‘sports’. The distinction between primarily athletic activities and primarily sedentary activities is of great importance in certain contexts, and it improves communication to refer to them by different words. If we need a catchall word to include both kinds of activities, we already have one: ‘games’.
