In thisthread on conservative reaction to the Stones tune “Sympathy for the Devil,” I refer to the term “Silent Majority” in post #2, then China Guy and Diceman come back to the point (see posts 17 through 20). I’m not insisting I’m right (obviously I was very careless in my offhand reference in post 2), but I really don’t recall it being used as a religious referent against the Christians, or as a label for either side in the abortion debate.
Does anyone have any info on the early use and/or evolution of the term? Samclem, I’m lookin’ hopefully (yay! I love being able to use that word right!) at you.
Delivered 3 November 1969. “Sympathy for the Devil” appeared in December 1968, so it preceded the first use of the term (at least, the way Nixon used it).
Early on, “Silent Majority” was definitely used in the context of support for the Vietnam War. Later it was extended to cultural issues. At least at first, it did not have any specific religious connotation.
I don’t recall the term “silent majority” ever being used to refer to one’s religious beliefs. Can anyone give us a citation otherwise (particularly one from the 1960’s)? I think you’re confusing it with the term “moral majority,” which didn’t appear until the late 1970’s or early 1980’s.
I started my search with [url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=silent+majority&searchmode=none]Online Etymology Dictionary{/url]:
Since they don’t provide pre-Nixonian citations, I will:
Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to Google up Victorian cites, unless you have apretty specific source in mind
Incidentally, the phrase would probably have been somewhat obvious to parliamentarians or any regular user of Roberts Rules of Order. Silent majorities aren’t just a theoretical constructs, they are common, visible fact of committees and deliberative groups (though in my experience, application of the silent majority rule often leads a group astray over time, partly because it only encourages more silence and further disregard of rules.)
And while it is of no possible interest to anyone by me, the phrease always reminds me of a term I once had to defend to an editor, who claimed it wouldn’t have been recognizable in 1978 (the year of a novel I was writing). The term “factoid” (peculiarly appropriate ro the SD) wasn’t an invention of CNN or any TV outlet. Norman Mailer used it in the bestseller Marilyn (1973) “Factoids … that is, facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.” TV may have popularized it, but if that’s the new criterion, we may as well concede the entire field of literature to TV, given how few hours the average man spends reading literature vs. watching TV.
A cursory search on newspaperarchive.com shows that Victorian usage does mean “dead people.” An 1888 usage by General Sherman is in that context.
But a 1942 use in the Lima, Ohio, News is closer to the current meaning:
“The talkative man is little to be feared - but be wary of the silent one! He belongs in the Silent Majority, which all history has proved to be the conquering majority.”
Think of it as an earlier version of Stephen Colbert’s right-wing blowhard character. Lily Tomlin used Susie Sorority’s approval of everything the Silent Majority stood for as a way of mocking their mind-set.
The rest of this thread is an excellent example of the differences in the way samclem and I approach word origins. He’s concerned with coinages and the way words first appear in a language on their way to the current range of meanings. I look at them more sociologically and try to spot when they first blossomed into the public consciousness.
Silent Majority is just such a term. There may be dozens of earlier uses over decades, but it is crucial to note that the term reached historic status when used by and associated with the Nixon administration. crowmanyclouds has that meaning defined exactly as how I remember it.
Similarly, I know “factoid” was used originally as a false fact, made seemingly true by repetition. Culturally, however, it became associated with USA Today and the way it once emphasized facts for their own sake in colorful charts and graphs. (Not CNN or TV. Very specifically, USA Today.)
English speakers don’t give a hang (or a hoot, or a whit, or other term for insignificance) about a term’s origin. If a word is hanging in the aether and sounds like it could apply, it’ll be applied. I find that the fascinating aspect of language, though I heartily applaud the origin researchers for their critical work as well.
I think it should be mentioned that there’s another reason that no one in the 1960’s would have used the term “Silent Majority” in relation with anything to do with religion. It’s often not mentioned in the depictions of the 1960’s and early 1970’s anti-war movement that we see these days, but much of this movement came from religious sources. There were a lot of people in the anti-war movement who were very religious and derived their anti-war feelings from their religious beliefs. The notion that religious people were mostly conservative didn’t become the standard idea until at least the late 1970’s.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that religious people are really any more liberal or more conservative these days than they were in the 1960’s or that non-religious people today are really any more liberal or more conservative than they were then. The public face of Christianity is more conservative these days though. Publicly, people back then had plenty of public images of hip, liberal ministers and priests.
Of course, neither did I (and I know the lyrics pretty much by heart). Since the OP specifically referenced the song, I thought it was worth pointing out that the song came out before the term became a political catchphrase.