Can You Relate?
So I’ve been grading papers yesterday and today for my first-year writing class at BYU, and I’ve noticed virtually every paper seems to have the adjective “relatable” in it, as in “She’s relatable,” or “Rockwell’s art is relatable.” This is not the first time I’ve noticed the word, of course. It began appearing in student papers a few years ago, best I can remember. This time, however, I decided to do some research on the word.
I went first to the Corpus of Contemporary American English or COCA and did a search on the word, a search that returned only 168 instances of the use of the word in published writing, going all the way back to 1990. For the uninitiated, that’s a small number. The adjective “repulsive,” for example was used 791 times over the same period.
One use of relatable returned by COCA caught my eye. It was in National Review magazine in a piece by Jay Nordlinger about presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. Nordlinger wrote, “Fiorina is ‘relatable,’ to use a ghastly new word: People relate to her, and she relates to them.” I found myself nodding in agreement.
I then Googled the word and found two articles on the origins of the word, one in the online magazine Slate, the other in The New York Times. Please read the pieces and tell me what you think.
I may post here on other instances of usage I find interesting. You may too. To me, the subject is fascinating.