Posted on 09/22/2005 4:10:08 PM PDT by Graybeard58
PORTLAND, ORE. - Shortly after Katrina slammed into New Orleans, a radio announcer described the plight of residents "refugeed" to other areas. Apparently one of the lesser known effects of the storm was its impact on the noun "refugee."
Then a recent article about the electoral reform commission that's been studying problems with the 2004 campaign included this sentence about voter registration: "Democratic activists also said intimidatory tactics had been used against ethnic or racial minorities ..."
In his novel "1984" George Orwell depicted a police state that maintained absolute power through a variety of tactics, including the imposition of a tightly controlled version of English called newspeak. I wonder what Orwell would think about current American language habits that seem to be drifting steadily away from any controlling authority.
I call this carefree verbalization "whateverspeak" (say it like a Valley Girl). People who practice it have no reservations about mangling or ignoring grammar rules and routinely use nonexistent words ("intimidatory") and meaningless terms ("pre-planning").
One manifestation that shows up with annoying regularity is government bureaucrats who have decided it sounds more authoritative to use "task" in place of "assign" as in, "That responsibility has been tasked to a new agency."
I'm willing to give teenagers some slack in this area, since they have a tradition of creating their own unique codes and dialects. My daughter and her friends frequently use "ginormous" to indicate size imaginable only by combining "gigantic" and "enormous."
Maybe it's too late to be worried or annoyed. If spoken and written communication is sliding inexorably toward total destandardization, I should consider leading the trend instead of fighting it. After all, my creationary talents as a vocabulationist are well established, which would make me exactly the sort of person to assume the role of master modificator as the national lexiconic tendencies evolve toward new definitional baselines.
Letting go of our dictionarial approach to sounds and syllables would definitely shift the communicatory framework into a more spontaneously oriented paradigm. Whose alphabet is it, anyway? Speech and text might both benefit from a new approach that treats them as integrational components of a unified field of perceptivity rather than separate constructs in a vocal matrix.
However, as I mentalize the scenario of a society that jettisons strict syntax, proper punctuation, and successful sentence structure, there is a gloominous cloud hovering over the entire horizonal encompassment. It is the specter of a culture that has become stupidized by linguistic laziness, the citizens wandering among themselves trying to decipher the mumblings of mass ignorism.
I don't think my worries are resting on foundational instability. The proliferation of whateverspeak can only lead to negative consequential developments. I just hope they aren't too ginormous.
I heard that word once on the Fat Albert cartoon show.
If Jesse Jackson invents the word "acculturated," then anything is fair game.
Jesse not only denies the allegation he denies the alligator.
Acculturate means to change through acculturation:
Main Entry: ac·cul·tur·a·tion
Pronunciation: "a-kul-chu'r-A-shun"
Function: noun
1 : cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture; also : a merging of cultures as a result of prolonged contact
2 : the process by which a human being acquires the culture of a particular society from infancy
- ac·cul·tur·a·tion·al /-shn&l, -sh&-n&l/ adjective
- ac·cul·tur·a·tive /&-'k&l-ch&-"rA-tiv, a-/ adjective
We've been doomed since "snuck" sneaked into acceptance..
I thought for a second there, that my wife, who is also Mrs. A. had "snuck" onto this forum but since you have been here longer than I have, I reckon not.
Any noun may be verbed, made adjectivish, or used adverbially.
He must not have been properly orientated in its usage.
I'm agreeish with you to a certain extent.
The ''professor'', one Peter McHugh, was a raging idiot, effectively an anarchist. Sociology 19a: Deviant Behavior and Social Control. The book in question is (IDEALLY way the hell out of print) ''Defining The Situation'', a total waste of (as I recall) $38.00 at the campus bookstore.
Lemme see you toadstool this!
;^)
Can we start using the word "communize"?
As in, "Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy have communized the Democratic Party."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.