I'm a language person, so I appreciate the clever turn of phrase, the new usage, the particularly apt or evocative metaphor, or the richly meaningful simile. I think language is flexible and mutable and glorious for its ability to adapt. I have a deep adoration for the multiple meanings encapsulated in single words, for the ambiguity and even contradiction inherent in certain terms. And, like a good English instructor, I detest cliche, that poor excuse for communication that obscures fresh, original language in favor of tired, dull, virtually pointless stock phrases. See sports commentators. Yet, all that being said, my most aggravating pet linguistic peeves are useless, redundant neologisms, the sort often bandied about by, to put it bluntly, MBAs and obscure, obfuscating jargon, the sort often bandied about by academics (but not those like me or whom I like, of course!). In both cases, I favor using already existing words clearly instead of creating new ones or adding "ize" or "ation" or "tic" to the ends of or inelegantly smashing together perfectly serviceable words we already know and love.
Sadly for me, offenders in these categories have appeared in my television watching over the past few weeks, and I am quite put out. For example, do we really need to call the participants of on Top Chef "cheftestants?" Hardly. And does GE think they are fooling me into thinking that "cleaner coal" is A, a new idea or B, possible or C, even a good idea at all when they throw the term "ecomagination" at me? Apparently so. Along those same lines, does Honda think that talking about "environmentology" is going to make me more likely to buy one of their cars? How wrong they are.
And it gets worse. Two of my least favorite examples of this kind of newspeak are "infotainment" and "edutainment," both of which are, in a word, incomprehensible. And while I was willing to grant that "rockumentary" and "mockumentary" are clever coinages that do have a place in an ever-changing lexicon, the latest version, "shockumentary" seems to be sending us down a very slippery slope. Likewise, "dramedy" captured a certain zeitgeist about generic fusion in television during the days of Ally McBeal and company, but "dramality?" Again, what does that even mean? Drama with elements of reality? Umm, isn't that drama? Or reality with elements of drama? Umm, isn't that just good reality tv?
And finally, the web hybrids that currently aggravate me are "webisode" and the highly egregious "webinar." Clunky, unnecessary, overly popularized, about as deft as an elephant, these two clearly represent the evils being done to language. Long, long, hopeless sigh.
1 comment:
just to defend elephants, and to give you another rich simile and/or metaphor (depending on your usage of it of course): in Sanskrit poetry and derivatives of it, a beautiful woman's gait is often compared to that of an elephant's, in the sense that elephants, when they walk, do so incredibly gracefully. (rarely they stampede, which obviously is less graceful, but is also the exception.) It's astounding, actually, to see this huge bulk almost glide through the world.
Totally with you on the joint words (dramality acutally sounds more like drama + banality, which is perhaps more fitting in some cases...).
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