Vocabulary Today

[towndrunk]

However, I believe the argument discussed in the article, and my previous point posted, is that people are either losing vocabulary overall, or not. Or in other words, are people becoming less articulate?



So one might argue we are shifting in language, thereby changing vocabulary, but are you trying to state that with the shift of vocabularly we are, in fact, simplifying our language to the point of fewer words overall?

sorry about the digression, i was pointing my post to your last post along these lines:
"Our society, as a whole – rich and poor – simply no longer values proper grammar in routine daily use."

I am not saying we are moving toward less words at all. in fact, i think we are merely using different words altogether. as much as i dislike using a specific example, i will, in hope that it serves the general idea. take the word "bling". i would be surprised if this word were in any literary text to date, yet it is an interesting word because it's origin has been meticulously recorded and after a number of years in common use it is now officially in the SOED! it a real word now. how many people reading this post, i wonder, use this word. arguably, there may even be some who don't even know what it means. a writer decides to use this word and it, by happenstance and over time, replaces the word ostentatious. a few generations later take a vocabulary test with ostentatious on it. has their vocabulary shrunk?
are they any less articulate if the new word takes on the meaning of the former?

I believe that as new language is formed, those not fluent in the new vocabulary perceive deficiency where there is none. this perception of losing vocabulary words will persist as long as languages continue to produce new words, new meaning for old words, and speakers of the language embracing/rejecting these changes in varying degrees by age, geography, culture, and economy.

 

[Undertow]

Okay, I can see what you mean.

I agree our vocabulary is shifting; however, I believe we are also becoming less articulate.

Although they have evolved at different rates and to different extents, we show that all three genres have undergone a general pattern of 'drift' towards more oral styles-more involved, less elaborated, and less abstract.

The above seems to prove my point. I don’t think we are necessarily turning into numbskulls (although my facetious remarks earlier may have hinted that) I just believe we are dropping the “vestigial” words and taking on few replacements. It’s as if we’re consolidating the language.

Btw, “vestigial” isn’t an obscure word but how many 10th graders would you suppose know it?

 

[carebear]

I do think there is a negative effect to language drift, the loss of precision in meaning.

Particular words have particular meanings, often with important nuances not captured by supposed "synonyms".

Without precision in language and definition, maintained by retaining a deep and varied vocabulary, it becomes more, not less, difficult to succinctly explain ideas. Witness the constant public discussions on American "democracy". There isn't an "American Democracy", there is an American (Constitutional) Republic.

Sure, both words generically mean "the people vote" but they are worlds apart in the actual functioning of the government and the political philosophys behind it, which leads to people misunderstanding their own world. When incorrect words are used as definitions, you are forced to explain what you mean by the words you choose, rather than letting the correct word do the explaining for you.

That's just one example. Precision is important in philosophy, religion, politics and law, the cornerstones of culture.

Utilitarianism is not Objectivism.

Conviction is not Condemnation.

Classical liberalism is neither leftist nor statist.

Homicide is not necessarily "murder".

We laud the Inuit for having dozens of words for snow because it "shows a deeper connection to their world" yet we are willing to discard, willy-nilly, the non-interchangeable and precise meanings of words on the grounds that, in essence, everybody does it and it is "efficient".

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Carebear, that was brilliant. Thank you! :eusa_clap

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[Easy Money]

Again, I am overwhelmed with the level of discussion in the Lounge. As a fortysomething working through college I interact with much younger students and what I see and hear is a generation who would not have made it past the first sentence in Towndrunk's post. I do not think it is a lack of ability, but a lack of drive. I can understand a seventh grader who questions why do I need to understand prepositions, but when a business major questions why they need a communication course I wonder if they have any grasp of life in the real world. I do have to applaude the University I attend. Four communication courses are required so the acedemic institution at the highest level understand how important it is to communicate, but how do you convince the next generation how important it is to be articulate?

 

[jamespowers]

I do think there is a negative effect to language drift, the loss of precision in meaning.

Particular words have particular meanings, often with important nuances not captured by supposed "synonyms".

Without precision in language and definition, maintained by retaining a deep and varied vocabulary, it becomes more, not less, difficult to succinctly explain ideas. Witness the constant public discussions on American "democracy". There isn't an "American Democracy", there is an American (Constitutional) Republic.

Sure, both words generically mean "the people vote" but they are worlds apart in the actual functioning of the government and the political philosophys behind it, which leads to people misunderstanding their own world. When incorrect words are used as definitions, you are forced to explain what you mean by the words you choose, rather than letting the correct word do the explaining for you.

That's just one example. Precision is important in philosophy, religion, politics and law, the cornerstones of culture.

Utilitarianism is not Objectivism.

Conviction is not Condemnation.

Classical liberalism is neither leftist nor statist.

Homicide is not necessarily "murder".

We laud the Inuit for having dozens of words for snow because it "shows a deeper connection to their world" yet we are willing to discard, willy-nilly, the non-interchangeable and precise meanings of words on the grounds that, in essence, everybody does it and it is "efficient".

Hmm....1984 really is happening?
Orwell would be proud of that succinct explanation. :eusa_clap

Regards,

J

 

[Kishtu]

I don't know how much this impacts in the US but certainly here in the UK we have a horrible influx of txtspk as well - the emails I get from some of our senior management team which say things like "c u l8r!"

No, you will not "c" me anywhere, although you might step into my office.... gah!

But if one has to condense thought and ideas into, what is it? 64 characters? then yes, grammar and spelling will go out of the window in favour of brevity. Which may be the soul of wit in certain circumstances.... we'll all end up writing like Molesworth sooner or later (anyone remember Geoffrey Willans' schoolboy character Molesworth? "chiz" for cheese, "he sa" for he says -http://www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk/

Just out of interest, studies in the UK in the field I work in (criminal justice) show a link between basic literacy deficiencies and offending behaviour - tyo such an extent that anyone now who receives a court order is automatically put forwards for a basic skills test, and if assessed below a certain level attends mandatory literacy classes. It really is perfectly horrific how many twenty-something year-old men (and that isn't sexism, that's observation based on court reports) are assessed as "being of a level that would benefit from Basic Skills intervention" - ie functionally illiterate - I ould guesstimate probably a good 60% of our caseload are assessed at that level.

 

[carter]

Brilliant discussion!

I'm surprised that no one has addressed the phenomena of what occurs when, within a society, colloquial usage develops at differing rates and in differing directions. Doesn't this ultimately result in dialects within the base language?

For instance, there are pockets of people living in the Great Smokey Mountains and Appalachain Mountains who still speak a dialect that is more closely identified as Old English than current American English which is certainly not identical to the English language spoken in the UK. While the world around them developed and changed, while colloguial usage of their language changed, they have continued to exist in a virtually unchanged linguistic environment for hundreds of years.

I think what we are witnessing is not necessarily shrinkage. It may be more closely aligned with an evolution of language which results from changes in syntax, the manner in which users of a language form sentences and phrases. Taken to extreme, this results in a change in the fundamental rules, the grammar, that enable an ordered linguistic structure.

Isn't this driven by other factors within a society such as advances in technology? Actually, technological advances constantly give rise to new language as new phenomena need a grammatical framework whereby they can be discussed.

Doesn't this cause us to question the ability of the mould to contain the malleable language within?

I also believe that, as technology evolves at an ever-increasing pace, we struggle to keep up. It's not just the spoken word. Young people today communicate, not only differently but, far more efficiently than those of earlier generations. They are far more capable of utilizing the internet, cellular phones, etc. than their parents and grandparents because they are growing-up with this technology and it's rapid evolutionary changes. To them, it's normal. To most of us, it's something we've had to learn and it hasn't always been easy.

In many ways, I see this as generational. It's not merely a linguistic issue. It's not degradation of the language. It may be simplified. It may be shorthand. It may not work for us. But, it works for a new generation and it works at sophisticated levels. It's evolving.

Just imagine, sometime in the future the world of 2007 may be seen as the golden age of...

 

[griffer]

U guyz sure use alot of purty words!

I gots me a perfect on my verbil, so I knows my vocab is AWESOME-O!

Unlessen of course the ruler stick is flawed....



(There is an actual and salient point in that silliness above. The question I have is by what measure do you judge a 'decreased' vocabulary? If the person can successfully communicate complex ideas with abbreviations and slang, than a linguist might say that the mode of communication is shifting and evolving. Miscommunication between generations may simply be a question of the compatibility of the 'dialects' being used.)

 

[KL15]

Carter while I understand what you're saying, I have to question the idea of using contracted words, acronyms for cell phone and e-mail usage, and general misuse of words as a good thing or simply evolution of the world. I may not have understood you so if I'm misunderstanding, please let me know. For starters, the idea of e-mail and cell phones as a main means of communication is shaky to me at best. I don't mean to sound "Fight Club" on everyone but, what are you going to do when someone pulls the plug? Are you actually going to be speaking to someone and say ROTF, or my BFF? How do you plan to get your idea to a large mass if that is your plan? Are you going to fumble over words in a presentation, and after a few minutes of this say, "Well I'll send all of you a text message?" And as for the spoken word, I understand the idea of the lounge, and I think the idea of not deliberately offending members is great. But let’s get to brass tacks here. One of the biggest changes in the English language is what I heard around the campus while I was in college, Ebonics. This, to me, is a butchering of the English language that is for some reason protected by a civil rights type aura. This was actually considered, for a bit, to be recognized as a second language. A broken form of English recognized as a second language. I know that technology changes, and generations change with it. But when the most basic form of communication, people speaking to each other, breaks down, we're in trouble. I don't like to see the bar lowered ever. We should always be progressing. And this involves raising the bar up.

 

[griffer]

I am fluent in several forms of white trash.

It's just as 'broken' as ebonics, but they all have rules of usage and conjugation, just not the same a standard (American) English.

You don't have to like it, but it's a dialect like Welsh, Cockney, Kiwi, etc. etc....

 

[Marc Chevalier]

This might be a case of the chicken or the egg, but I think that corporations, governmental entities, and even the military must also share the blame. The National Biscuit Company became Nabisco, whatever that means. The American Telephone & Telegraph Company became
AT & T. Standard Oil became Esso ("S.O.") and Exxon. The Federal National Mortgage Association is Fannie Mae; Guantanamo is Gitmo; communications satellites are comsats, or satcoms; mutually assured destruction is MAD; the North American Aerospace Defense Command is simply NORAD to most people. Acronyms and initials 'streamline' our speech, but fail to really convey the sense of the words they represent.


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[dhermann1]

The Nabisco's and AT&T's etc., of this world first happened when the stock ticker was invented by Edison around 1881. They needed convenient abbreviations for company names. I find it ironic that shortened names like this still seem "modern" to our ears. What I hate is when companies invent new names for themselves that have no meaning whatsoever other than sounding pretty. What the heck is a Verizon? Does Keyspan sell bridges?
Regarding new modes of communication, e.g. texting, I sometimes imagine that arguments the Celts used to have around the first or second century BC, when other civilizations had started relying on writing, but they stuck to the spoken word. Sure, their great orators were probably highly articulate, but when they needed to send a hastily scribbled note hastily (that was for the Beatles fans out there) to another tribe, telling them they were beseiged by 2 Roman legions, they had a problem.
I judge changes in language by the simple criterion of: does it enhance understanding or does it confuse it? I don't use textese, but I'm sure a linguist could discern relaible rules that either enhance or obfuscate understanding even in this new form of heiroglyphics. My mother had a set of crotchets about language that drove her crazy, some of which were valid and some of which weren't. She hated "proceed ahead" and "return back". Redundant. But clumsy as they are they don't damage meaning.
"Presently" has just about lost its original meaning of "very soon", rather than "now". Unfortunate, but even tho it bugs me, I've declared it a losing battle.
One of English's problems is that it's a relatively young language, and it's had lots of infusions of very different languages slammed into it. German syntax with English words will produce "Throw your sister down the stairs her sweater", a classic linguistics example.
I think the factors I mentioned before, the lack of exposure to speech, the isolation of individuals, is damaging our ability to communicate in general, but I'm pretty tolerant of change in the language. It's inevitable and necessary.

 

[KL15]

I am fluent in several forms of white trash.

It's just as 'broken' as ebonics, but they all have rules of usage and conjugation, just not the same a standard (American) English.

You don't have to like it, but it's a dialect like Welsh, Cockney, Kiwi, etc. etc....

See this is what I'm talking about. I understand that "white trash" is just as broken as ebonics. They're both just as bad, but I never heard of a movement to make white trash an official second language. The only point I was attempting to make is, I don't like lowering the bar. I always like rasing it.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

The only point I was attempting to make is, I don't like lowering the bar. I always like rasing it.

I think you just razed your point, instead of raising it.

.

 

[KL15]

Funny. You got me there.:eusa_clap

 

[towndrunk]

carebear said:
"I do think there is a negative effect to language drift, the loss of precision in meaning."

those are two different things in my opinion. drift doesn't always equal a lack of precision. sometimes words are used imprecisely such as what you provided as example, but even these words didn't exist at one time. people created these words when they needed them and it is possible they replaced other words the same or similar concepts.

take homicide, one of the words in your example concerning imprecision and cornerstones of culture. hom means man cide means kill, right? so murder is more precise we would agree because it specifies a particular kind of homicide right? would it surprise you to learn that originally murder didn't just mean to kill someone intentionally or criminally, but it meant specifically slaying a man by night or when asleep. the meaning has changed to a more general meaning than the original yet we think of it as precise when compared to homicide. why don't we have a word that means specifically to kill a man at night or when asleep? we used to...
this is common in language, all language.

recently, i was having a conversation with a friend at the coffee shop i loiter around from time to time. she asked me if there was a word, a single specific word, that was the opposite of of the word "racist". assuming there is no word that means exactly the opposite (i have searched and so far i haven't found a single candidate), one could infer the reason no such word exists is because no such state exists among English speaking peoples. is it possible that the concept of such a state is still new enough that, culturally speaking, no one has gotten around to it due to a lack of mass awareness of the concept or is society simply unwilling to accept this as a state of being altogether at this present time?
****
"we are willing to discard, willy-nilly, the non-interchangeable and precise meanings of words on the grounds that, in essence, everybody does it and it is "efficient"."
****
the point is, there are a variety of reasons language becomes more or less precise over time and i submit that there are far more powerful, yet subtle agents acting upon our language than the indiscriminate manner as proposed in the quote above.


one further point from an earlier post by undertow:
quote from the journal article abstract:
"'drift' towards more oral styles-more involved, less elaborated, and less abstract."
quote from undertow in response to said quote:
"I agree our vocabulary is shifting; however, I believe we are also becoming less articulate."
it's interesting that over the four hundred year period writing samples were taken from, literacy rates increased dramatically among English speaking nations yet the language became more "oral".
i would point out also that i do not think "less elaborated, and less abstract" point to less accuracy. less elaborate could possibly mean less ornate or 'frilly'. less abstract is by definition more concrete, hardly less articulate.

more on ebonics presently! ha!

 

[griffer]

ROTSKY!

Oh, wait, reverse ROTSKY.

Oh wait, wrong forum.

 

[carebear]

take homicide, one of the words in your example concerning imprecision and cornerstones of culture. hom means man cide means kill, right? so murder is more precise we would agree because it specifies a particular kind of homicide right? would it surprise you to learn that originally murder didn't just mean to kill someone intentionally or criminally, but it meant specifically slaying a man by night or when asleep. the meaning has changed to a more general meaning than the original yet we think of it as precise when compared to homicide. why don't we have a word that means specifically to kill a man at night or when asleep? we used to...
this is common in language, all language.

Actually, as a crim. justice major I'm well aware that there is, in fact, a single, precise, legal meaning under the common law for the word "murder". I'm also aware that murder is further defined in various statutes, and, if anyone in a particular appropriate jurisdiction cares to question that meaning, they can check the appropriate statute for the authoritative definition.

The fact that journalists and other ignorant people choose to use a word incorrectly has nothing to do with its actual definition. Simply put, they are WRONG, should be corrected, and need to learn to go look up the proper term to use in a particular context rather than picking one that happens to be convenient for them.

Error in vocabulary can be understood, and explained by inadvertant or deliberate ignorance, but it should neither be tolerated nor encouraged.

As for "racist", the rules and customs for written and spoken English quite clearly state that, lacking an antonym, the correct way to express a negative state is to precede the term with "not". For example... Are you racist? No, I am not racist.

That is both precise and efficient. One of the beauties of English is the fact that we don't need 48 words for snow. We simply use the word "snow" with an appropriate adjective, sure it's two words, but it is also very adaptable to new concepts without require excessive new word creation.

As for the reasons for "drift" being, in my view "willy-nilly", I stand by them. Since standard written and spoken English contains sufficient vocabulary for all but the most recent technological innovations and, further, contains usage rules to allow for the adoption of those new or foreign terms into its structure without over simplification; the only "justification" seems to fall into the category of "laziness" on the part of current English speakers.

In my view, laziness does not deserve a word more respectful of those people than "willy-nilly".

 

[towndrunk]

Actually, as a crim. justice major I'm well aware that there is, in fact, a single, precise, legal meaning under the common law for the word "murder". I'm also aware that murder is further defined in various statutes, and, if anyone in a particular appropriate jurisdiction cares to question that meaning, they can check the appropriate statute for the authoritative definition.

are you saying here that the precise definition of murder can change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction? if there is a single common law definition, why would various other jurisdictions need to define it further? do they all define it the same? exactly? which one is more correct? how can they all be accurate if they are all slightly different? how do english speakers in Australia, Great Britain, or Canada define murder? is it exactly how the United States and it's various jurisdictions within defines it?

i looked cursorily at several legal definitions of murder and found that some include infants where others don't, in one case the definition of murder in England only included persons killed who were subjects of the realm. this of course has been changed, but was this change due to some lazy royal appointee or was it due to other social forces?

while many legal definitions of murder contain similar elements, they do differ slightly over time and distance from authority to authority. legal definitions are rife with disparities across the western english speaking world. look up the legal definition of disability in alberta, canada and compare it to one found in mississippi. you'll find a remarkable difference.
which one is more correct? neither I say. it is only one of the many forces that transform language incrementally over time.

are people lazy as you insist? sure they are. it too causes change over time, but as i said before, the evolution of language is affected by a number forces. dismiss them if you will. language and vocabulary will continue to evolve with or without our consent and children four or five hundred years from now will be reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea in a more 'modern' translation so they can understand it.