polyglot conspiracy

Learned a new word reading yesterday’s NYT, in Edward Tenner’s intriguing column about how search engines foster “information illiteracy” (a claim about which I am dubious but open to suggestion):

Google modestly declares its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But convenience may be part of the problem. In the Web’s early days, the most serious search engine was AltaVista. To use it well, a searcher had to learn how to construct a search statement, like, say, “Engelbert Humperdinck and not Las Vegas” for the opera composer rather than the contemporary singer. It took practice to produce usable results. Now, thanks to brilliant programming, a simple query usually produces a first page that’s at least adequate — “satisficing,” as the economist Herbert Simon called it.

(For an article very relevant to Tenner’s claims, see here.) Dictionary.com gives this definition:

v : decide on and pursue a course of action satisfying the minimum requirements to achieve a goal; “optimization requires processes that are more complex than those needed to merely satisfice”

Wikipedia gives a nice rundown of its usage in several different social science contexts, including Simon’s original economics usage:

In economics, satisficing is a behaviour which attempts to achieve at least some minimum level of a particular variable, but which does not strive to achieve its maximum possible value. The most common application of the concept in economics is in the behavioural theory of the firm, which, unlike traditional accounts, postulates that producers treat profit not as a goal to be maximized, but as a constraint. Under these theories, although at least a critical level of profit must be achieved by firms; thereafter, priority is attached to the attainment of other goals.

The word satisfice was coined by Herbert Simon in 1957. Simon says that people are only ‘rational enough’, and in fact relax their rationality when it is no longer required. This is called bounded rationality.

[note that right now, I am acting out Tenner's vision]

Fine and good. But in a weird twist, the dictionary definitions I found include staisfise listed as a synonym. Not an alternate spelling, but a synonym. But then the definitions given for both of them are exactly the same. What’s that about? Staisfise doesn’t really seem like an English word - but none of these sources gives an etymology, and it definitely seems (first hunch, at least) that Simon coined satisfice as a portmanteau (satisfy + suffice), so I’m not sure where the other spelling would have originated.

Uh, I was having some serious issues with and am still trying to figure out this feed nonsense, but it seems that the feed here (which is RSS, NOT Atom) works for entries. For now maybe change your feed, if you care enough, if that isn’t already the feed URL you were using? Thx. I think this is on the verge of all being better - all the feed URLs on this site should now be working. Ugh, sometimes I hate the interwebs.

Having recently switched to WP 2.0 (finally, you should be saying! shame on me!), I decided it’s time for a theme switch, too. Regular readers will know that I know next to nothing about CSS, PHP, and whatever else the programmers call it these days. So, I’ll be experimenting with a new theme or two in the next few days, and some things might go wrong. I ask your help in identifying such things and alerting me to them (squires at polyglotconspiracy dot net), so I can try to figure out how to fix them, or else post a desperate message on a WP help forum. (And if YOU know how to fix them, well, your help would be duly welcomed!)

What I’m saying is, bear with me. I need a change, but I’m not the most adept at changing things around here.

In an earlier post (Sometimes, vowels are helpful.), I lamented the name of the new Motorola SLVR cell phone. I was irked because I thought the name was a shortening of silver, when really it’s a shortening of sliver. And I wasn’t alone - several commenters, in fact, thought the name was supposed to be slaver; and, we found several other bloggers equally upset about similar vowel-eliminating practices.

Well today, I came across a resource that should be indispensable to any Executive Committee on Nomenclature in the digital age. When the urge to throw away vowels is nearly overwhelming, those responsible for new names ought to pick up Word City: A New Language Tool, which claims to answer that burning question of all burning questions, “How can I look it up if I can’t spell it?” This book, by Marvin Morrison, came out in 1981 (a special year for yours truly), and in later editions became Morrison’s Sound-It-Out Speller (SPLR), according to an old review in Verbatim. In fact, Laurence Urdang, the reviewer, gives a pretty good description of the book:

Morrison’s approach is to strip a word of its vowels (the culprits that cause most of the spelling problems) and to merge the consonant sounds together. Sounds, that is: forget that you know that philosophy begins with a ph-, and “respell” it FLSF; ignore your recollection that psychology likewise begins with a p-, and render it SKLJ. To do this, you must follow Morrison’s phonetic rules (the first g in gauge is G, the second is J). The compressed clusters of consonants are arranged in alphabetical order throughout the book, which means that you do have to know the alphabet.

Now, we begin to see why this is relevant to new technology naming practices. If we look under SLVR, we find all the words one is at liberty to form from just the consonants:

salver (tray)
salivary (spittle)
silver (metal)
silvery
slaver (slobber, drivel)
slaver (person, ship)
slavery (bondage)
sliver (splinter)

See? SEE? Too many possibilities. (OK, not that “salivary” or “silvery” is really a possibility - word-final vowels seem a little off here, somehow). Thank you, Marvin Morrison.

Now taking requests for me to look up consonant combinations in the “dictionary” and see what words are there. Who knows what we’ll find - I just saw that HRB lists “herb,” which doesn’t seem right for most American dialects (to his credit, “herb” is also listed under RB).

It’s pledge drive time again at my local public radio outfit, and as is typical of this special time, I heard a fun linguistic thing the other day. The anchor said:

Thanks to everyone who has called in and internetted in with your pledges.

Though I’m guessing this refers to email (don’t think the station has IMs set up to accept pledges), I can see this becoming a cover verb for “using any internet communication application.” Like, if I want to tell someone to get in touch with me but I don’t know whether to tell them to email me or IM me, I could just tell them to internet me. In fact, it’s out there some already (“What info comes via the post office that could come Internetted?”), but most uses that google turns up seem to mean something more like, “being taken in by the internet” or “being posted on the internet” (“Most. Internetted. Baby. Ever.”; “Internetted and Vonnegutted”).

For those who haven’t seen it, Annie Proulx’s recent “sour grapes” commentary in the Guardian is worth a peek, if for no other reason than to learn how NOT to write a meaningful and/or convincing assessment of the fact that someone else’s movie has beat your own. Warning: the word “heffalump” is used. Twice.

Proulx’s piece contains one little typographical usage that I hope you, dear readers, can shed light on for me. It happens here:

The prize, as expected, went to Philip Seymour Hoff-man for his brilliant portrayal of Capote, but in the months preceding the awards thing, there has been little discussion of acting styles and various approaches to character development by this year’s nominees.

I don’t care about acting methods; I want to know about that unexpected hyphen in Hoffman. I had three possible theories:

1. She is cleverly emphasizing that Hoffman is a man, or was playing a man, in order to point out the Academy’s conservative-fueled disdain for the gay characters/themes that were so prominent this year. But of course Hoffman’s was one of the gay characters. And in real life, I’d guess that most people think that Philip Seymour Hoffman is less macho/manly than Heath Ledger. So, that doesn’t work.

2. This is a(nother) British thing.

3. Typo.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Alek has offered this suggestion:

I think that that’s a hyphen they use to split the word in half between two lines of text in the print edition. It got lost in translation (trans-nation?!) between print and digital forms of the guardian.

I also thought this originally, but then I thought if that were the case, there’d also likely be traces of it elsewhere in the text, like “Broke-back” or “tele-vision.” None of which I saw. Then again, Hoffman is elsewhere in the text sans hyphen, so maybe this is correct after all. But I want it so badly to be significant!

As travels will tend to do, my most recent journey included a couple of really interesting glimpses of language ideologies/language myths in action. Both involve the English language and air travel.

English-only exit rows

On my puddlejumper flight from Dulles back to C’ville, the flight attendant was very new to her job and having some troubles getting the whole cabin in order before takeoff. She was clearly a tyro* because she read the instructions to passengers from the script provided by the airline (i.e., she didn’t yet know them by heart). When it came time to ask the people in the exit rows if they were comfortable sitting in the exit rows, this exchange happened (also note that the flight attendant has rather thick Southern pronunciations):

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Is there any reason that’s not apparent to me as to why you shouldn’t be seated in an exit row?
PASSENGER 1: (long pensive pause) Uh, no, huh-uh.
[flight attendant turns to other side of the aisle]
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Is there any reason that’s not apparent to me as to why you shouldn’t be seated in an exit row?
PASSENGER 2 (Asian man): What?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Is there any reason that’s not apparent to me as to why you shouldn’t be seated in an exit row?
PASSENGER 2: (quizzical stare)
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Is there any reason that’s not apparent to me as to why you shouldn’t be seated in an exit row?
PASSENGER 2: (points to emergency exit door) I know what is. (looks back at flight attendant) I don’t understand.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Is there any reason that’s not apparent to me as to why you shouldn’t be seated in an exit row?
PASSENGER 2: Yes, I know what is. I know how.

This positively *flummoxed* the flight attendant, and she eventually asked him to move back a row. When he asked why, repeating again that he knew what the exit row is and how to maneuver it (albeit in far from perfect English), she told him that to sit in the exit row, he must be able to read English and speak fluent English. As this was happening, another passenger said to the flight attendant, “I even had trouble understanding what you were asking - the way you phrased that was very odd.”

I don’t really know to what extent it was necessary that the passenger be moved back a row. The attendant’s first response was that he needed to be able to read English, and it doesn’t necessarily follow that because someone can’t speak English fluently, they can’t read it (it’s very common, as any foreign language learner knows, for the two skills to match up imprecisely). As far as speaking goes, while it’s true that those charged with emergency assistance should be able to communicate with the crew, it’s unclear to what extent the passenger actually lacked communicative competence in English, versus just not understanding her very obfuscated question. Though the other passenger squarely put the blame on the flight attendant (”the way you phrased it,” she said a few times), this is no doubt a phrase mandated by the airline, because no normal human being would generate it on the spot, nor would they keep repeating it so rigidly, assuming they understood what it meant, unless they thought their job depended on it. I would furthermore be interested to know what airline policy is on language requirements for sitting in an exit row. Just for curiosity’s sake.

Calcutta

On my trip out, I was stuck in Dulles for about 5 hours, and made some friends who were in the same situation who’d been on my flight from C’ville. I was lamenting the lack of anything entertaining to do in Terminal C, and my new friends said that it was nothing compared to the horror that is Terminal G. Can’t say that I disagree - one blogger has called it a Hot Tarmac Warehouse, one has quipped that the G stands for God-awful, and another has said:

I’m sitting in the hellhole that is terminal G at Dulles Airport. Now I have a vague idea what immigrants at Ellis Island felt like, especially because some of the PA announcements I’m hearing must be in a foreign language.

This gets to the heart of the matter: my new friends nicknamed Terminal G Calcutta, also mentioning that “no one who works there speaks English.” I wasn’t sure if this refers mainly to the fact that it’s crowded and hot, or that many employees seem to be from India. I suppose it’s both. The part about people not speaking English isn’t true: they speak English, but a lot of them do speak it with heavy accents. So much so that I actually could not understand the fellow making the announcement for boarding to Allentown. Now, I understand how this is perceived as problematic from a practical standpoint, but I don’t think there is a higher percentage of people with heavy accents in this terminal than in any other terminal. But because Terminal G is so damned small (it’s where all the puddlejumper/commuter flights [e.g. United Express, American Eagle] take off from), it seems that English L2 speakers are concentrated, and you also are exposed to ALL of the flight announcements being made, rather than just the ones at your particular gate (or whatever gate you happen to be passing by on your way to Starbucks or Panda Express). What I’m mostly getting, though, is that this situation is probably indicative of people who speak English less well being more likely to be employed at lower rungs of airline employment (like on Express flights, in the shitty terminal) than at higher rungs.

We could debate whether this situation is undesirable or appropriate, discriminatory or functionally necessary. I just thought it was interesting that so many people seem to have the same sort of reaction to Terminal G: no English spoken, feels like a small country in a hot climate, cramped, decidedly not American, foreign. On top of it all, it’s ironic that most of the flights departing from Terminal G are going to what are some of the most provincial, least cosmopolitan places in the country: Allentown, White Plains, Cleveland, Charlottesville, Harrisburg…

FWIW, I also found another blogger comparing the terminal to Calcutta, complete with actually a pretty accurate description of the place (Terminal G, that is - I’ve never been to Calcutta/Kolkata):

If you’ve never had the pleasure of departing out of Terminal G at Dulles, don’t. G stands for Greyhound, and calling it a bus terminal is actually a compliment. If Dulles itself is an African zoo, then Terminal G must be the free food stand in Kolkata. Talk about a mob scene. The whole open air concept of the terminal gates would’ve been fun and festive in Hawai’i, but in DC? Um, not so cute. The rolling screaming boarding calls by the gate agents? I almost wanted to herd and moo. Nowhere to sit (no lounge in G!! sacre bleu..), barely anything to eat or drink, nothing to buy, lines for everything, overflowing toilets, suffocating air, screaming children and airline employees everywhere…

Also, as an aside: we sure are spoiled.

*always looking for excuses to use this word

This is too good to keep to myself. Observed in a bathroom somewhere (I honestly don’t even remember where) on my recent travels:

There’s really nothing to say about it, except that it’s…awesome. And trademarked, so don’t get any ideas…

As is typical when I’m in a hotel room, I became a temporary Cable Whore the other night in my hotel room here in unnamed potential new home city. My poison? The Gauntlet 2. I love, LOVE, watching washed-up reality TV stars fight other washed-up reality TV stars. It’s also interesting when they have to use closed-captioning because the candid cameras can’t pick everything up.

But when Alton told Jodi not to be a wierdo, and Jodi promised that she would not be a wierdo, I felt weird. Spelling it wierdo looks automatically WRONG to me; whereas I know for a lot of people it’s the opposite. Maybe just because I am good at spelling and so I internalized its e before i a long time ago. Anyway, twice in a row it was misspelled, and I was irked. I have nothing more intelligent to say on this topic, except that no one should trust MTV’s captioners with tough-to-spell words.

A while ago I saw this text as an ad on my gmail:

Memletics is a new & up to date learning system, not from the 1970s

This is an ad for Memletics which is some kind of strategic memory-enhancing learning method. Odd portmanteau aside, what a strange way to advertise yourself as new. Forget about the 1800s, or the 1950s, or 1995. And why negate something that no one is even thinking in the first place? No one considers a new product and thinks, “Well, it better not be from the 1970s,” unless they’re talking about carpeting or drapery in a condo, in which case it’s not new. Weird.