(ab)Use of words

I once met a person who held the general belief that there is a correct way to use language. They thought: Yes, it is fun to make up words, but shouldn't you use the ones that are already in the dictionary? Grammar is there to help you provide clarity, not aid ambiguity. If nothing else, incorrect spelling is a sign of a disordered mind. And muddling words like Mrs. Malaprop and Rev. Spooner is a clear indication of diminished intelligence.

Another way - an inoffensive way - of putting this would be that, in the eyes of other people, a person is the sum of their words.

The thing is, language is a constantly shifting, shape changing beast, evolving to suit the culture that uses it. Words and structures survive only through pragmatism - a survival of the fittest, if you will. Language is a more utilitarian creature than we like to admit. 

   Is this the nature of something that can be classified as correct or incorrect?

It was with this attitude that I picked up 'Brave New Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the 21st Century'.

The first word that grabs my attention is 'digerati'. It is another recent child of 'literati', who also spawned 'glitterati' and 'chatterati' in the decades just past. Does this mean that we now have a new combining form that means an elite, slightly glam group of people? Bring on the politerati and soccerati!

Another word that caught my attention was 'chugger'. It's a word I first heard myself somewhere around the beginning of University when it was a popular job amongst my friends. I didn't think it was that common a word outside the 'chugger' community. Yet here it is in print. A word will only end up in the dictionary once it has passed the five-times frquency test: found in print five times in five different sources in five years. Newspapers must have caught onto the term.

Like 'bling', a word that stormed across the general collective vocabulary so quickly and so suddenly that it feels like it was always there.

'Bling' was a word that first appeared in 60's America, used now and then as an ideophone. It was picked up by rappers in later decades as a noun for expensive jewelry, supposedly to trivialize the value. Eventually it became so common in mainstream culture that it was able to make the jump across the Atlantic, where it picked up it's own local meaning:

"bling /tt/ cool new aquisition ('Oi, Conner, ya seen me bling cell?)"

        - 'Dijja Wanna Say Sumfing? A Guide to Estuary English.'

  It's much fun to mangle words, and just as enjoyable to watch meanings wear and warp. New words give voice to ideas that otherwise have no name, or have to be described to be comprehended. And loaded with fresh cultural baggage as they are, some of these words carry a sting in use. 'Bling' crossed many social boundaries in derisive or ironic usages. 'Chugger', teddy-bear-ish as it sounds, is often used with a tone of contempt for the way they invade privacy. 

If you recognise these words you probably recognise them from news sources. A surprising number of neologisms are coined by, or enter the word pool through journalists, newspapers and television. 'Stealth tax', 'post-democracy', 'Bushism', and 'sheeple', for example.

The word 'sheeple' opens some interesting philosophical doors. 'Sheeple' are sheep-people, not a botched genetic experiment, but a derogatory appellation for people who take their opinions and actions wholesale from other people. If a person is the sum of their words, what does it mean when their words belong to someone else?

Stephen Poole's book, 'Unspeak: Words Are Weapons', makes an interesting case for neologisms being used to cloak ideas, or slide new ones into the public conscience. Words like 'surgical strike', 'extremism', the difference between 'abuse' and 'torture' (there is none in the context he describes).

One phrase in particular stood out for me exactly because the intentions behind it silently slipped past when I first tried to figure out what it meant. 'Surgical' comes with notions of precision, delicacy, specifically in a medical setting. By association through usage it suggests sterility, whiteness, doctors and surgeons trying to provide life-saving help. Using the adjective to modify a military term shifts all of these associations from the one field to the other. Hey presto! A precise, clean, life-saving military strike.

So, words that have deeply ingrained connotations, combined with sheer saturation, can be used to manipulate perceptions. Is this correct? It is almost certainly ethically incorrect to purposefully mislead.

So, is there a correct way to use language? Sadly, I don't believe the answer is ever going to be black and white, or even just simple. Language is too big and complex, like the creatures that invented it, and it will always be an answer in degrees.