Musings

Meaning What You Say Online…

A firm (see below) has attempted to register its copyright in a new grapheme - the ‘Sarcmark’. The aim of this new symbol is to enable us to show the irony often meant but seldom realised in online chatter.

This raises some interesting questions for students of social contexts and language. It is genuinely difficult to work out the tone (or tenor) of a declarative in an email or in an instant message etc. While exclamatives do suggest emotion, it is still tricky to establish clearly whether that sentence is intended to be taken literally - or not. Unlike face-to-face communication, the paralanguage, intonation and some context is often missing, so we may be forgiven for missing the clues without a new form of punctuation.

The Sarcmark (despite being unlikely to succeed) also raises the issue that graphemes - symbols - come and go just like bits of syntax, pronunciations and words themselves. Who remembers the Old English symbols of ash, eth and thorn? Who now uses the Long S?

Likewise, new symbols have come about through use - the so-called Commercial A or ‘At-sign’ @ is necessitated by email addressed and yet has proved already to have made itself useful in a range of orthographic contexts. So too, from the perhaps transient world of Leetspeak we have use of number-homophones as in M8 etc.

These and other examples go as ever to show how language never stands still. Great.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6995354/Sarcasm-punctuation-mark-aims-to-put-an-end-to-email-confusion.html

AQA B Syllabus Link

While avoiding punctuation as an issue in the exams (as there is often little to say, other than in A2), you need to be aware that conventions change over time and that this is all part of language being subject to constantly changing contextual influences. The above information may be useful in discussing the limitations (as well as benefits) that the influence of technology has had on language.

PS - I am much obliged to Sam Lillywhite for bringing the SarcMark to my notice. All ideas for language discussion are always welcome at this blog.

Web 2.0 - Said to be the Millionth Word

An Internet research firm claims that last year (2009) saw the coining of the one millionth word in the English Language. And just as soon as this had been done, there was a fizzle of counter-claims as lexicographers doubted or disagreed.

The point of note for us in this blog is the origin, the semantic field from which, it is claimed, the one millionth word is derived. Technology. The suggested lexeme ‘Web 2.0′ (which means the ‘new generation’ of Internet capabilities…) in a way symbolises the vast explosion of lexical development that has come about from this latest revolution in Humankind’s lives.

It is, of course, almost impossible ever to know how many lexemes exist in any lexicon at any given time. Not only does this raise the logical problem of when a word becomes a word (interjections, fillers, slang, mis-spellings etc?) but also raises the methodological issue: do you include obsolete words? Do you include narrow jargon which few understand, or use? When does a borrowing become a ‘native’ word in the target lexicon etc etc…

But critics - read the short report below - say that as this research organisation is an Internet-based institution, it is inevitable they looked to the web for the millionth word. One might easily instead have looked to the latest urban slang, to borrowings emerging from international food or fashion industries or even to the name of the latest child’s toy. The web is certainly one - but only one - of the sources for contemporary lexical change.

For more on this see the source article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8092549.stm 

AQA English Language B Syllabus Link:

Language and Technology is an optional piece of data in ENGB1B ‘Social Contexts’ exam but it may also crop up as a ’synoptic’ point in A2 ENGB3 exam. In either case, you need to be prepared to discuss the implication which technology has had on vocabulary (lexis), on meanings (semantics), on grammar, structure, pragmatics etc. Specific examples are always helpful.

M-Blog DISCUSSION:

What word have you heard recently which you think might be a reasonable alternative runner for the millionth word? It would need to be a neologism of some sort and perhaps sum up something about the era in which we live… something like OMAG! What do you think - over to you… [click below]