The times they are a-changin'

Recently I've been alerted to the new inclusions in the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary. In keeping with my previous blog entry, appetites for documenting language change are very strong – regardless of whether we're looking at historical linguistics; or looking at the present or the near future to see where we're heading. So what do the new words for June 2013 tell us about the zeitgeist and who we are? 

Well, from the 1200 new or amended words, it's hardly surprising that media reports have tended to focus on terms such as crowdsourcing, flash mob, geekery and terms related to social media – follow and follower, for example. To me, such examples demonstrate media outlets' own intentions to be cutting edge, on trend – or another vacuous term to separate the leaders from the easily led. Other terms not in the spotlight seem to have been in widespread usage for a great deal longer – head space, jolly hockey sticks or live blog. This is because the policy adopted when compiling lists of new words saw fit to only include those words that had already been in use for a certain period of time. That policy has now changed slightly, as revealed by the dictionary's Chief Editor, John Simpson:

"The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on."

To include a term purely because it "[...] seems to be catching on" is rather misguided, in my view. Twitter may prove itself as a durable social media platform. However, as we have seen with other portals and sites; it may yet be superseded by a brighter, better, platform. This process would then have given undue prominence to a piece of ephemera unable to hold its own. Similarly, any dictionary can only document usage retrospectively. If you compile a dictionary this month, it can only be a record of language usage from June 2013 and earlier. At least if a word has flourished for ten years, speakers have assigned it a value and a purpose.

But by concentrating on all that is new, we do not have the full story. If the latest imprint of the second edition of the OED now contains a total of 823,000 entries, who is documenting those words and phrases deemed to have fallen out of common usage altogether? What do we know about these words? Surely it is the relationship between neologisms and these obsolete words and phrases that best illustrates how a language is gradually changing? It will be this information that tells us the most about how certain social and cultural forces dominate others through language, and – since neologisms generally arise from a communicative need not adequately addressed by language to date – even how effective a language is as a means of communication for the people it serves.

A word in your year

With apologies for the slight hiatus, I return with news of the UK Word of the Year for 2012 – as chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary (usually Susie Dent and her colleagues). Now, the first thing to notice about this year's winner, omnishambles, as well as all the others that were in the running – Eurogeddon, Mobot, green-on-blue, Games makers, medal or podium (used as verbs) and second screening – is that the name of the award itself is telling. In most cases, these words will mean precisely nothing outside of a specifically UK context.

Omnishambles in particular appears to have emerged victorious despite its incredibly limited usage. Coined in the script of the British TV satire The Thick Of It, the word is defined as:  

'a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, and is characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations'.

Don't you just love the way the OED doggedly sticks to its -iz spellings, by the way? Anyway, as a British-made show (the US remake was abandoned), users of the word must surely be confined to fans of that show. The term was also used in the UK House of Commons in April 2012 in criticism of the budget, and in a further portmanteau coinage Romneyshambles – betraying one UK perspective on the US presidential election and its now defeated candidate. But in my view, these instances confirm the term's status as a niche word; much more ephemeral than the 12 months that the Word of the Year tag implies.

We should avoid attaching too much significance to what is, by the OED's own admission, a rather subjective epithet. Other neologisms will gradually gain currency and enter the dictionary on account of their widespread usage. The Word of the Year is chosen by a group of lexicographers sat around a table. As such, you could be forgiven for thinking that their choice is an attempt to impose their own interpretation of the zeitgeist on the rest of us. From the point of view of the term's intended meaning, the choice is also a strange one. Was 2012 really so bad?

If so, then surely Eurogeddon should be at the top of the pile, as uncertainty in the UK and Europe continues the longer the EU crisis persists. Choosing a word used to define anything at the extremes of human expression also means that word will quickly become moribund. If a greater catastrophe occurs next week, then we quickly have to find a new term to signify this latest nadir. Omnishambles will no longer be up to the job. This is exactly what happens with slang and youth language – where existing terms quickly lose their function as identity markers or intensity markers and are superseded by new terms. Just think of all the mild profanities that are now commonplace but would, at the very least, have earned you a clip round the ear in decades gone by!