polyglot conspiracy

MangledWordMonger’s vacation finds a few funny items.

1. In West Virginia, MWM sighted a McDonald’s sign which read:

YOU WILL DO FILPS
FOR OUR CHICKEN STRIPS

MWM was saddened, because it would have been such a cute rhyme if pulled off sans transposition.

2. At a bar in Missouri, MWM was shocked to find the word Kahlua misspelled on the drink menu. It was all of a sudden a Hawaiian delicacy, Kaluha. MWM understands that this is an honest mistake, since the h is silent in Kahlua and the orthographically present h is often silent in other English words. She was just glad that it was consistently, confidently misspelled, BOTH times it appeared in the menu.

3. At another bar (different town in Missouri), MWM’s group of friends, ready for a night of good clean karaoke, was dismayed when learning that the bar really offered karoake — two nights a week. This spelling made no phonetic sense to MWM whatsoever, but that didn’t stop her from co-performing a mean rendition of Outkast’s “Hey Ya!”

4. At another McDonald’s, this one in Missouri, MWM and her family members wondered at a sign which entreated us to

TRY THE MCRIB
IT IS BACK

“It is back”? Is that really a hot way to sell a McRib? First of all, it should be contracted to “It’s back” for the colloquial flair that really speaks to the public. Maybe they were out of marquee apostrophes. Second of all, Hey, McD’s! Don’t sound TOO excited about that there McRib! Can I get an exclamation mark? A note about how juicy it is? SOMETHING to sell it, other than the fact that it disappeared for a while as part of the natural McRib Cycle?

5. Another marquee faux pas: On a sign for a doctor’s office, “health” was spelled HEAlTH, with a lowercase l. Which MWM appreciates as conjuring some kind of Old English or Scots pronunciation, but how expensive can a new uppercase L really be?

So the FCC wants us fully hooked up on airplanes (from Salon):

“We are pushing the frontiers in order to bring the information age to all corners of the world,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell said Wednesday after a unanimous vote approving the new technology for U.S. airlines. “We want it on the land, in the air, and on the sea.”

He added, “And by ‘it’ I mean ‘a new source of revenue for nearly bankrupt airlines so that we can stop bailing out their asses.’”

Seriously though, imagine the possibilities. But don’t worry, it’s not just internet - the article also mentions in-flight cell phone usage:

The FCC also voted to solicit public comment about ending the ban on in-flight use of cell phones. Among the issues to consider are whether passengers want to be surrounded by cell phone conversations….

Still, airlines must weigh the demand for such service against the desire of other passengers for a quiet cabin, [Doug] Wills [spokesman for Air Transport Association] said. “Some people see a cell-free environment as a good thing,” he said.

“And by ’some people,’” Michael Powell added, “he means fascists.”

I’m just goofing here - dude, it’s finals.

One of the new words added to the OED this month (see full list here) is:

-tainment, comb. form. Forming nouns denoting genres of broadcasting, journalism, etc., in which entertainment is combined with aspects of the genre, etc., indicated by the first element.

Example words in the quotations: utilitainment, journaltainment, casino-tainment, promo-tainment, merchanttainment.

I knew it was bad, but I did not think that things had actually gone this far. The sky is the limit, friends.

Henceforth, this blog shall be referred to as a form of linguatainment. Yup. I said it.

Once again, The Wandering Parakeet has alerted me to a source of immeasurable linguistic joy: an article about an upcoming article in American Speech, by Scott Kiesling of Pitt, about the use of the word dude. From the abstract here:

Indeed, the data presented here confirm that dude is an address term that is used mostly by young men to address other young men; however, its use has expanded so that it is now used as a general address term for a group (same or mixed gender), and by and to women. Dude is developing into a discourse marker that need not identify an addressee, but more generally encodes the speaker’s stance to his or her current addressee(s). The term is used mainly in situations in which a speaker takes a stance of solidarity or camaraderie, but crucially in a nonchalant, not-too-enthusiastic manner…Such a stance is especially valuable for young men as they navigate cultural Discourses of young masculinity, which simultaneously demand masculine solidarity, strict heterosexuality, and non-conformity.

Fascinating stuff which, unfortunately, I won’t have time to investigate in full until after finals (it’s bad enough that I’m actually taking the time to post right now!).

One note, though: in the news article linked to above, the reporter also talked to Mary Bucholtz of UC Santa Barbara, who said that the word is not going away, and is not just for young men:

“I have seen middle-aged men using ‘dude’ with each other,” she said.

For interesting and culturally relevant evidence for this, go see Sideways. One of the reasons the film kept my rapt attention (from a linguistic standpoint) was that these two middle-aged men kept referring to each other as dude. The film does take place in California, a stereotypical hotbed of dudeness, but beyond that I found its use of dude among the middle-aged to be an elsewise underrepresented, yet probably accurate, portrayal.

[If you haven't yet exceeded your threshold for duditude, Language Log has some entertaining posts up about speaking Dude.]

Last week, The Tensor (Tenser, said he) posted a cry for help: What’s it called when you recall information based on what the information looked like when it was presented to you?

Sometimes when I’m recalling or trying to recall a piece of information that I read in a book or magazine, I can remember the position of the information on the page (left of right page, and the location on the page), even if I can’t remember the author or the title of the work. This happens to me all the time, and I know I’ve heard other people mention the same thing happening to them, but as far as I know there’s no name for this phenomenon. Has anyone ever heard of one? It would be nice to be able to refer to it in less than a paragraph.

Agreed. Comments to the post confirm that it’s really common, and while people offered a few explanations for the type of thing it is (source memory, spatial memory, eidetic memory), no one seemed to have one little word for it. Luckily, The Tensor has relieved us from the dregs of speechlessness and created the term topomnesia. As this word at present exists only in these two posts (to my knowledge), whereas I would find it quite useful if it existed in daily life, it seems a fitting term for the first installment of the Null Word Iregiving series (Word Thanksgiving’s evil corollary).

topomnesia, n. Memory and recall of information based on its physical features or configuration.

So blast you, Topomnesia, for giving us no aid in talking in a convenient and effective way about a perceptual phenomena that everyone knows to be fairly common, probably more common than lots of phenomena that do have “real” names.

And thanks to The Tensor for making one up!

[Of course, if anyone knows the REAL name for this phenomena, I'd be grateful. Such knowledge will not invalidate the publicizing of topomnesia's nonexistence, but it will certainly invalidate the reasons for giving it ire.]

A summary of Morning Edition’s final two installments of Digital Generations (for the first three, click here):

Thursday’s piece followed a middle-aged artist (potter, painter, art therapist) who follows the time-honored Luddite tradition of hating computers, and whose daughter verily curses his behind-the-times-ness. He hates that a mouse is called a mouse, bcause the computer part is named after “something real.” He’s “interested in not ascribing to everything the media feeds to me,” and he says computers make creativity “too easy” and “atrophy the imagination.” Can one even make creativity too easy? Is it really creativity at that point? Eh, it doesn’t matter; I have to respect anyone who maintains willpower over The Machines these days. This guy David Henley is really interesting, and I recommend a listen and a think (and a read of Neil Postman’s Technopoly).

In Friday’s piece, we talk to a few senior citizens who are taking the digital plunge. It’s an inspiring segment full of success stories and seniors getting over their fears of “breaking the machines.” This is fascinating; they have seen such amazing changes in their lifetime, and the generational gap here is especially pertinent. Especially interesting: the internet has gone from a “cute topic” to a “high-stakes” topic, according to one Pew researcher, because seniors need to use the internet now for more important things like looking up health information, instead of less grave things like looking at grandchildren’s baby pictures. But not everyone’s biting: we also get the side of the story from those who don’t care to learn about the new picturewordbox. Again, worth a listen. Especially at the end, in which the phrase Silver Tsunami is used to describe the future time when baby boomers retire but maintain their connectivity.

Safire’s column in today’s NYT Mag talks about the overuse (and newish meanings) of the term narrative and the concepts it stands for:

James Carville, a Democrat in vigorous nondenial a few days later on ”Meet the Press,” developed the theme on the hot word: ”They produce a narrative, we produce a litany.” (That’s a list, or enumeration.) ”They say, ‘I’m going to protect you from the terrorists in Tehran and the homos in Hollywood.’ We say, ‘We’re for clean air, better schools, more health care.’ And so there’s a Republican narrative, a story, and there’s a Democratic litany.”

Thus has political science dipped into the latest terminology of literary criticism to explain an election…

He goes on to talk about how narratology took off in the 1960s thanks to Barthes, and that the “political narratology” use of the term basically refers to spin and spin doctoring, with political machinery/media creating the story before the public can create its own version of the story.

Reached by e-mail, Professor [Peter] Brooks [of UVA] replies: ”The use of the word narrative is completely out of hand! . . . While I think the term has been trivialized through overuse, I believe the overuse responds to a recognition that narrative is one of the principal ways in which we organize our experience of the world — a part of our cognitive tool kit that was long neglected by psychologists and philosophers.”

It’s interesting (or maybe just obvious) that this term blows up at the same time as talk about framing is so prevalent in academic-political discourse and analysis of the election. At one point in the column, someone basically says that the Republicans framed Kerry as someone who couldn’t construct a narrative.

For wordhounds: Safire also uses the term Internetties somewhere in the column, as a noun to describe people on a listserv for a magazine. Have people heard this word? It seems like Internetty should be an adjective (”She’s so Internetty.”), not a noun, and Google came up with a little over a thousand hits, at least the first 20 of which all appear to be as adjectives. Wouldn’t “internetites” or “internetsters” or “cyberpals” or “webheads” have done? Why, Safire, WHY? Also he should be careful: this formation gets dangerously close to entering Dirty Punland, as there are apparently a few quite unsavory meanings of netty in other English-speaking countries. Add the double entendre of inter with…well, you get the point. I certainly wouldn’t want to be called an Internetty, that’s for sure.

This marks the first in a series of posts dedicated to words that we’re thankful exist, in the parlance of at least a few people.

In some cases, as with this inaugural entry, they’re bound to be neologisms. This one comes via my friend The Wandering Parakeet, who is passionately taken by the word fundit, which he saw in this McSweeney’s piece by the comedian Michael Ian Black:

Because, at the end of the day, I believe telling topical jokes and interviewing C-level celebrities is a higher calling. If this were the Middle Ages, talk-show hosts would be the priests, their guests the penitents. Or not. I don’t know. Regardless, it’s a hell of a lot better than what I’m currently doing, which is expounding on the cultural significance of The A-Team for VH1. (When they asked me for my occupation on my income tax return this year, I wrote down “Fundit,” and almost collapsed from depression.)

Thank you, Fundit, for giving us a blanket term for all those people on Best Week Ever.

Email me with words YOU are thankful for (squires at polyglotconspiracy dot net) so we can give good words their due!

[Note: This series will be counterbalanced with a series called "Null Word Iregiving," hopefully launching in a few days, wherein we scorn words that don't exist for not existing.]

Morning Edition is running a series called Digital Generations this week (thanks to Linguistic Life for the link), with some interesting foci for its segments.

Part I talks about getting broadband to rural, older internet users and reports, with help from Pew, that the older you are, the less likely you are to be online; and that it’s technically hard to equip rural areas with broadband, but that it’s a worthwhile investment:

RICK KARR [reporter]: Caruso says the borough of Kutztown [PA] spent $5 million to bring residents cable TV, telephone and Internet service because the town’s telephone and cable franchises weren’t interested in wiring the borough for broadband. The municipal system meets or beats the private firms’ prices. Dorothy Fox, for instance, pays $15 a month for a connection that’s at least as fast as cable connections that cost twice as much. Borough manager James Vettraino says Kutztown is one of almost 70 mostly small rural towns that have decided to bridge the digital divide on their own.

Mr. JAMES VETTRAINO (Borough Manager): There’s real motivation for some of these municipalities that see broadband as a necessity in this next century, just as important as water, sewer and electric when a business or a resident is looking to relocate or locate somewhere.

And after all, rural dwellers are the ones who can really benefit from the “bigger world” factor of the internet:

LEE RAINIE [of Pew]: The people who do have Internet access in rural communities are among the most enthusiastic Internet users. They are the ones who fulfill the promise of the Internet by going to places that are very hard to reach otherwise. The same thing is true of older Americans, so once someone has taken the plunge, they become very interested in taking advantage of almost all of the joys and pleasures that are available online.

Part II covers the youth demographic, and we learn that print newspapers are “too gray” and “not colorful enough” (what about USA Today?!?!); videogames help kids “feel in peace” and forget about the bad stuff that happens at school; and talking to girls is easier for teen boys online than offline:

LYNNE NEARY [reporter]: Does it make it easier to talk to girls by IMing?
MICHAEL LEISURE [13-yr-old boy]: Definitely. It’s–I’d rather get rejected online than in person, so it seems less damaging to your heart.

And Part III, to my mind the most interesting so far, talks about the Disconnected: Life Without the Internet study co-funded by Yahoo! that deprived internet users of the internet for 28 days, and the withdrawal symptoms resulting:

ANNE SCHORR [Conifer Research]: There’s a large part of conversations and communications in their social circle and their family circle that they were quite simply missing out on. So they were experiencing a sense of loss and having to relearn how to accomplish routine activities.
…
Ms. GLEESA HOOD (Study Participant): It affects you internally–you know, mentally and maybe even physically. It’s like withdrawal. I hate that word `addiction,’ but I kind of maybe think I am. (Laughs)

I can just see Internet Rehab facilities popping up now. (I’ll not even try to claim that I’m not addicted!) Though other participants said it was okay being disconnected because they read more, bought newspapers and read them in full, and perhaps even made phone calls. Ob-la-di, ob-la da…

The series has two more installments, tomorrow and Friday. Summaries posted here!

[Punctuation sidenote: I am trying my darnedest not to capitalize internet, but my left pinky really keeps wanting to hit SHIFT. I do not know what this means.]