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January 3, 2005
TT: Four little letters
Gleaned from the wires:DETROIT (AP) -- From wardrobe malfunctions to erectile dysfunction, it's been a tough year all around for the guardians of English--language purists from blue, red and battleground states who long to say "You're fired!" to offensive words and phrases.
More than 2,000 nominations arrived in Michigan's far north, where a committee at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie released its 2005 compilation of language irritants Friday.
Among the 22 expressions on the "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness" are "blog," "sale event," "body wash" and "zero percent APR financing."
"We're über-serious about this list," said committee organizer Tom Pink, referring to the German prefix meaning "over" or "super" that increasingly finds its way into English.
Group members act as "linguistic sounding boards," said John Shibley, co-compiler of the list.
"People talk back to their TVs, radios, computers, etc., when words and phrases make them angry or frustrated," he said. "Diminishing `word-rage' makes the world a more peaceful place."
Now in its 30th year, the banned word list has drawn imitators and critics....
Shibley said the Lake Superior State group compiles the list in the spirit of fun, and going through old lists can be "like coming across a lost script from an Austin Powers movie."
Banishment nominees have included metrosexual (2003), chad (2001), paradigm (1994), baby boomers (1989) and détente (1976).
Count me among the critics, not merely because this group of linguistic Luddites has chosen to ban "blog," but because their list of past nominees for banishment makes embarrassingly clear how undiscriminating these unhappy folk are. I can't imagine that "metrosexual" and "chad" will have much staying power, but "baby boomers"? They wanted to ban that one in 1989? And as for "détente," it has of course passed permanently into the language in the sense intended in 1976 (and long before).
It's true that the word "blog" is--well, ugly. Early in the life of this blog, there was even a brief discussion of whether we ought to come up with a better name for what we do. Naturally it got nowhere, since "blog" was by then already well established in common usage. And why did it put down roots so quickly? Because it was a near-perfect, highly purposeful coinage: a four-letter monosyllable presumably forged not by some glib journalist but by an actual blogger, one which was immediately adopted by all who ran across it because it gave a memorable name to something significant. (Somehow I doubt the world was waiting for "metrosexual.") Such is the organic process by which new words are coined, taken up, and accepted into the language, and to argue against its validity is like trying to repeal the weather.
Needless to say, there will always be fussbudgets eager to tell us that Things Shouldn't Be That Way. I know people who think life would be better without computers, that rock should never have happened, that modernism was a mistake, that the Renaissance was the great wrong turn in Western history. When confronted by yet another specimen of such posturing, I smile--and shrug. It was in response to this mindset that I wrote what have turned out to be the most widely repeated words yet posted on this blog:
Sometimes different is better, and sometimes, maybe most of the time, it's just different. The thing is to try to understand the nature of the difference--and, insofar as possible, to think of ways in which new culture-shaping technologies can be used in the service of old values....I'm old-fashioned--but my attachment is to essences, not embodiments.
That goes for words, too. "Blog" may not be an especially pretty word, but it works--and, like the technology to which it gives a name, it's here to stay, like it or not. Get used to it. Better yet, start one. Make it your New Year's resolution.
UPDATE: See this Denver Post appreciation of the litblogging scene, in which David Milofsky makes enthusiastic mention of several of our illustrious colleagues. The money quote:
I would trade passion for polish any day, and if there's an in-group among bloggers, it's one that seems remarkably inclusive. They're far from perfect, but for those of us who occasionally despair at the lack of a literary audience in this country, the growing emergence of litblogs is reason for celebration.
He gets it.
Posted January 3, 2005 12:03 PM
