From: Chris Taylor (Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 17 Apr 2003 - 11:33:02 GMT
Hi. This is probably old stuff but I'd like to ask for opinions: It
strikes me that (and perhaps I am being arrogant) I will cope with
future language changes, in the sense of new idioms, neologisms both
real and from hybridisation - e.g. fan-bloody-tastic something-a-rama or
something-gate etc. etc. [there's a million and as usual I can't think
of any good ones atm but bear with me] and of course eStuff :) and
acronym-style abbreviations IIRC - better than my forebears because I
_expect_ bits of words to be strapped together, adding bits of meaning
to utterances composed on the fly. I'd expect that the pervasive media
gives some of these constructs a launching platform, but the fact that
almost everyone I know that is (with some exceptions) my age or less
does this stuff completely independently all the time shows up (I think)
a different approach to language these days (although of course we're
still conveying the same content/meaning).
So I guess my question is; has anyone related / discounted (in favour of
a better reason) the change from print to electronic media to the change
from what I can best describe as clonal to hybridising language
evolution, on a timescale which has also changed from ages to realtime
(as you would expect)? I see it as a paradigm thing - I (informally) use
language (through analogy and hybrid words etc) in a different way -
words are no longer the thing but sub-words (stems would be a good one,
suffixes too) and I use them like lego.
I just feel like I'm on the other side of a big change in language use
and I don't think anything will turn up in the future which will baffle
me the way my grandad (and even my mum) look baffled when I speak to
them the way I would in casual peer conversation...
Ok so that wasn't the clearest expression of it but I hope you get the
gist. Tell me this was done and dusted by 1965 then :\
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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