The Question
How influential is technology on the language we use in today’s society?
The Context
For the last year my Masters has been focused on influence and trust of the Internet and how as visual culture highlights, we can essentially influence the meaning of something by the way designers design and present it. As a result comes the understanding that design on the web is to inform and communicate. This has lead me to focus on language for this module and the power it has on the Internet.
Language has evolved enormously and in today’s society it is technology that is governing the way we communicate with more and more submissions in to the Oxford English Dictionary being influenced by technology advancements.
To illustrate this, recent additions to the Oxford Dictionaries Online (2013) show how technology truly is setting the pace in how we communicate in today’s generation with words such as, “…gossip mill, friend zone, tweetable, and social sharing…touchless all included.” (February 2013)
With this in mind I want to see how far and easily people can be influenced and persuaded to use a new word(s) I create by the powers of social media, internet, and influential people etc. In doing this I can see exactly how easy or hard it is to implement something new in to society and if people take to it and how powerful the tools we have to use really are becoming to dictate what we say, where we say it and how we say it.
A Methodology & Resources Required
In society we have control of meanings and interpretation and we can collectively created new signs and meaning by representation
As Hall (1997, p23 – 24) explains, “…we can all ‘agree’ to allow words to carry somewhat different meaning…”
With this in mind I would like to collaborate with professionals in the field of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics to ensure the crafting of the new word(s) are carefully thought out and constructed with theory and understanding of the structure of modern language used today and focusing on the influence of the Internet especially in social media.
Collaborating with such like professionals shall hopefully provide me with some knowledge I would not have considered alone. And in conjunction to this they may provide some information and learnings to how to ensure the success of the use of such new word(s) that I produce from it all.
I intend to integrate my skills in to this project by creating the word(s) existence on the web. In doing this I shall ensure that when the word begins its distribution should the public search for this word on the Internet they shall be presented with its existence and definitions.
In addition I shall select members of society with some powers of influence to assist me in the ‘verbal gardening’ Alex Horne (2010) of the created word(s). These people may include radio broadcasters/producers, bloggers, popular Twitter users (users with a large number of followers), teachers/lecturers, Facebook users, newspaper/magazine editor. Ideally I would like for these people to include the word in their everyday routines to ensure its filtration in to society is as natural as possible as opposed to forcably encouraging people to use the new word(s).
And lastly I would like to produce 1 or 2 actual artefacts with the word featured. At this stage my thoughts would be an object/item, which I can leave behind in places I visit. And also to produce a item that could subjectively inject the word in to peoples mind.
With all this I hope to implement some sort of tracking tag to try and monitor where the word is being picked up from…this may be by providing each source a unique code, or on searching for the word once found requesting the public to submit where they found/saw the word (this area needs more consideration to implement a tagging system).
The Outcome
Although for this module I shall not be able to get the words in to the dictionary I would like to keep that focus in mind, therefore ensuring the routes I go down have the criteria for submissions in mind.
I hope that the circulation of the word will find it appearing in various locations so hopefully going full circle and seeing it appear in articles, being used in social media conversations be it Facebook status updates or Twitter tweeting, being used in sentences within blogs and generally being picked up in conversation and referenced as a day to day term.
With the decided tracking method in place I hope the results shall show the provide an insight in to what is the most influential tool in the birth of new words be that social media or our surroundings within society.
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Bibliography
Recent updates to Oxford Dictionaries. February 2013. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/what-s-new
“The latest update to Oxford Dictionaries Online reflects the continued influence of contemporary culture and social media on the English language, with newly added words in these categories including gossip mill, friend zone, tweetable, and social sharing. The language of technology has also influenced this update, with cruft, dumbphone, touchless, SSD, and FOSS all included.”
Hall (1997) Representation: Cultural representation and signifying processes. Ch 1 Representation, meaning and language. pp 15-29
Alex Horne (2010) Alex Horne – How to invent a word. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/features/alex-horne–how-to-invent-a-word-1900477.html
