Comments on: Is it ok for linguists to hate new words?

By: Isabela Prestes (English undergrad, Federal University of São Paulo)

Isabela Prestes (English undergrad, Federal University of São Paulo) — Sat, 03 May 2025 20:13:57 +0000

The article brings up a few interesting points about the way words can be played with when put into sentences, which also reflects how society’s willing to use language as a type of behavior prop: your vocabulary might make you cool or make you sound quite boring.
Personally, as someone who doesn’t have English as their first language, getting reminded of how the way I speak may sound “unusual” or simply “wrong” from a grammar point of view is always a big deal, because I truly think that there are so many other social topics which should be addressed more often. Also, not forgetting how powerful language can be (specially when it comes to taking advantage of the world’s needs and most of its population’s — who are not in control) is really important. Loved reading this and learning a little more about everything, really enjoyed the given examples as well! I will surely stay tuned and research more about this topic.

By: Carmela Chateau-Smith

Carmela Chateau-Smith — Fri, 02 May 2025 12:20:34 +0000

In reply to Hywel Coleman. I think the meaning of gaslighting comes from the movie/film Gaslight, in which the character played by Charles Boyer tries to drive the character played by Ingrid Bergman mad.

By: Michael Jones

Michael Jones — Thu, 16 May 2024 22:55:55 +0000

In reply to ANDREW GOATLY. I think your observations go beyond the scope of the original post. Euphemisms have been used to hide atrocities since time immemorial. In an often horrific way they exemplify the inventiveness of human language. Dave's post is about an entirely different subject, having to do with the continually changing fashions of everyday discourse and reactions to them. Dave is right to point out that linguistics is a descriptive science, not a prescriptive one (if a science can ever be prescriptive), while at the same time as language lovers we can't help taking offence sometimes about what we perceive as abuse of the object of our affection. What you are talking about Andrew is in many cases a deliberate abuse of language intended to deceive and cover up non-linguistic atrocities. I have been reading "How to Win an Information War: the propagandist who outwitted Hitler" by Peter Pomerantsev, about the master of British WW2 propagandist Delmer Sefton. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the weaponisation (ugh!, another neologism!) of language.

By: ANDREW GOATLY

ANDREW GOATLY — Thu, 16 May 2024 09:06:14 +0000

So this article, interesting though it is, is happy to ignore almost all the work done in Critical Discourse Analysis, to avoid talking about harmful euphemisms like “mowing the lawn” for genocide, or to think deeply about how the empathy hierarchy normalises clauses with human subjects exercising power over passive “environmental” objects, or even how the very word “environment” anthropocentrically marginalises our ecology???

By: Johanita Kirsten

Johanita Kirsten — Thu, 16 May 2024 06:58:54 +0000

So interesting! I’m glad to be made aware of the more nefarious use of reply-initial “so”. My association with reply-initial “so” is the one mentioned first (in the quote), which is usually neutral. I use it when students ask a question which requires an answer with context or something like that, or the more informal getting up to speed with a backstory. It is often preceded by “okay”, as in “okay, so…” which doesn’t change the meaning, I think? Anyway, happy to understand this construction better!

By: Hywel Coleman

Hywel Coleman — Thu, 16 May 2024 03:20:32 +0000

Fascinating, Dave. Many thanks for these observations.

I live in Indonesia and very rarely interact with English speakers. The BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme is my main source of data about current developments in English. There are 2 which I have noticed recently:

1) A speaker (often a politician) beginning an answer to a question (usually from a BBC journalist) with ‘I mean …’ ‘I mean’ used to be the beginning of the speaker’s clarification of something they have already said but which has obviouslky not been fully understood. But in this new usage it obviously has nothing to do with clarifying what has already been said. Perhaps it approximates to ‘As far as I understand it, the situation is like this …’ But this is just a tentative suggestion; I am not convinced by my own proposal!

2) ‘gaslighting’ What is it? I have asked a couple of native speakers in the UK what it means and they both said that they weren’t sure. Something to do with misleading?

By: Brynn

Brynn — Tue, 14 May 2024 23:16:20 +0000

This was a great post! Thoroughly enjoyed learning that half of my (“standard” American English) can be described as using the quotative like . I also didn’t know that the reply-initial so had a name!

By: Michael Jones

Michael Jones — Tue, 14 May 2024 23:14:57 +0000

With reference to early English dictionaries, one of the best sources of Elizabethan (hence Shakespearean) English vocabulary can be found in the first Italian-English dictionary by John Florio, published under the title “A Worlde of Wordes” in 1598 with a 2nd edition in 1611 called “Queen Anna’s New World of Words”. Warning! some very very salty language in both editions.