Personally, I define the "turn of the century" as the five years on either side of whatever '00 we're discussing. While I also do not like the phrase "turn of the century," I believe you need to specify a century at this point if you are going to use it. I never use the phrase in writing. I only use it when speaking, both in conversation and in lecture. If you are standing in front of a class of 18 year olds, the only "turn of the century" they have experienced is the turn of the 21st century. This generation has fixated on their own lifetimes, often to the point where their parents' and grandparents' lifetimes just don't count in their frame of reference. For their sensibilities, you must specify. At the same time, in 2011, if you say "turn of the century" to a person who is 30 or older who grew up using the phrase to refer to the turn of the 20th century (beginning of the 1900s), there is still confusion because they have also experienced a turn of a century in their own lifetimes. Therefore, either way, you must specify. Regardless, "turn of the century" is always used to refer to the arriving century, not the expiring-- even if this conception is also somehow wrong.
The debate surrounding the actual shift from one century to another centers on the difference between thinking in historical time versus basic mathematics. Basic mathematics would consider the relationship between a decade and a century in terms of human life. We are born and turn 1 after a year of being out of the womb. Therefore, year Zero counts as part of our first decade of life and turning 10 marks the beginning of our second decade. In the basic math mode of thinking, '00 belongs to the new decade or century. In historical time, there is no year Zero. Year 1 AD marks the beginning of the AD timeline. In the historical mode of thinking, '00 belongs to the previous decade or century. As people who operate in both the realms of basic math and historical time, we use both modes of calculating time everyday. We just don't think about it.
Jennifer M. Trunzo, Ph.D.
Asst. Prof. of Archaeology and Anthropology
Dept. of History, Anthropology, and Philosophy
Augusta State University
2500 Walton Way
Augusta, GA 30904
706-667-4562
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