Valerii Polkovsky
The company “East European
Opportunities” (St. Albert,
Canada)
Ostroh Academy
National University
(Ostroh, Ukraine)
В статті представлено огляд сучасних англомовних видань,
присвячених проблемі лексичних змін в сучасній англійській мові у 21-ому
столітті. Звернено увагу на важливість регіональних варіантів та неологічного
буму для викладання цієї мови в Україні.
В статье представлен обзор современных англоязычных
изданий, посвященных проблеме лексических изменений в современном английском
языке 21-го столетия. Внимание уделяется значению региональных вариантов и
неологического бума для преподавания этого языка в Украине.
А brief overview of contemporary English publications devoted to the problem of lexical changes in
Contemporary English of the 21st century has been presented in the article.
Attention has been paid to importance of regional variants of English and
neological growth for teaching this language in Ukraine.
Ключові слова: зміна, лексичне значення, мова політики та
бізнесу, регіональний варіант.
Ключевые слова: изменение, лексическое значение, язык
политики и бизнеса, региональный вариант.
Key words: change, lexical meaning, language of
politics and business, regional variant.
Dynamics of the English Language and the Problem of
Teaching
The English language in the 21st
century can be characterized as extremely dynamic and versatile. The role of
its regional variants has been growing exponеntially.
Polysemy of the words, nuances and shades of meaning of common words
(especially commonly used colloquial words) create a serious problem for
understanding the language. Translators and interpreters of other languages are
faced with dubious meanings, innuendos, uncommon connotations, unusual
acronyms/abbreviations. Linguists in many countries draw attention to this
phenomenon (see, for example, Виссон
Линн. Слова-хамелеоны
и метаморфозы в современном английском языке. Москва: Р. Валент, 2010. – 160
с.). Stylistic nuances of the
meaning of the word (like geek and nerd, Виссон 2010: 52-53,
where geek mostly lost its negative connotation, and nerd still
keeps it) take center stage. The influx
of shortenings or shortened words in English can present a real challenge for
instructor/translator/interpreter (very popular in Canada words like docs, Libs,
Dems, rev). Lynn Visson warns that it is a “dangerous process with
unforeseen consequences” (Виссон
2010: 57). One can mention an interesting article by Kevin
O’Donnell “Lux brands face
tough balancing act”// Marketing News. – 02.15.09: 18.
“There is a fundamental change taking
place in the role of technology in business and society. This profoundly
affects virtually everything – the economy, business, families, and social
existence” – remarks Don Tapscott in his book “Growing Up Digital: The
Rise of the Net Generation” – New
York: McGraw – Hill, 1998. – 339 pp: 17).
“A knowledge-based economy” (Таpscott 1998: 127) has already been created
in the leading English-speaking countries.
The influx of neologisms is amazing.
Jonathon Keats (who writes for Jargon Watch column for Wired magazine)
remarks: ‘For Jargon Watch each month I sort through a vast number of
newspapers, magazines, and blogs, both mass-media and specialized publications,
finding as many as one hundred notable words from which I select the four that
seem most characteristic of the moment or most likely to have a future’ (Keats
Jonathon. Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology.
– Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011. – 177 pp.: vii-ix). We cannot better characterize the society we
live in than Jonathon Keats did: “… the interplay between words and ideas in
our fast-paced tech-driven use-it-or-lose-it society” (Keats 2011: front cover of the book). He adds: “We live
in an age of specialization” (Keats 2011: vii).
In Edmonton newspaper “Metro”’s (April 28/2009: 1) article “Animal health body disputes ‘swine’
flu tag” the author mentions: “The flu virus spreading around the world
should not be called “swine flu” as it also contains avian and human components
and no pig was found ill with the disease so far, the World Animal Health body
said yesterday.
A more logical name for
it would be “North American influenza,” a name based on its geographic origin
just like the Spanish influenza, another human flu pandemic with animal origin
that killed more than 50 million people in 1918-1919.”
The discussion has been going on in North
American Universities again regarding what to teach and how to teach. Commonly
accepted notions and criteria crave for rethinking and reevaluation (see, for
example, the article Полковський В.П., Семенчук Ю. О. Проблеми викладання іноземних мов у
Північній Америці // Наукові записки. Серія ”Філологічна”. Випуск 11. – Острог: Видавництво
Національного університету ”Острозька академія”, 2009. - 684 с., сс. 513-516).
Buzzwords (Catchy words and phrases). The 21st century has been
characterized by many catchy words and phrases. “Whenever I pick up a trade
journal, receive a notice for a seminar or conference, or visit a trade show,
big headlines, banners and blaring videos tell me “out of the box” is critical
for today’s or tomorrow’s success, growth or even survival! It does not seem to
matter whether that “out of the box” is thinking, doing, implementing or
managing. Clearly, to some, it’s the most important thing anyone can be doing
today.
“Out of the box” is in,
“in the box” is out.
Seems like authentic,
“out of the box” and innovation are the three magic terms to get us out of
the present economic malaise” – notices Don Schultz in his article “Inside
the box”// Marketing News. – 01.30.09.: 46.
Many Canadian
newspapers and magazines have a special column called Buzzwords.
Digitization, Use of Computers and Internet.
“Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living” –
mentions Nicholas Negroponte in his book “Being Digital” – New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2001. – 244 pp: 6).
The economy the Western world lives in is
considered by many as “digital economy” (see, for example, the book by Don
Tapscott “The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of
Networked Intelligence” - New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1996). People talk about digital
era, digital generation, digital homeless, digital young, full digital
fluency, digital impoverishment, online world vs. offline world, and even techno-peasant
(all examples are from Tapscott 1998. Growing Up Digital…) as well as digital
planet, digital age, digital neighborhoods, digital individual, and even
digital sisters-in-law (all examples are from Negroponte 2001).
As it is obvious from the aforementioned
examples, students can know the meaning of a separate word, but word
combination sounds unusual and quite often unfamiliar. Examples with cyber-
can prove this point as well: cyber home, cyber gurus, cyber sex,
cyber dating, cyber girlfriend [C-girlfriend], cyber rights, cyber arts,
“cyber arts teacher, c-guys or gals, C-dating, C-names, cyberbro,
C-world (all examples are from Tapscott 1998. Growing Up Digital…).
In this respect the book by Herschell Gordon Lewis and Jamie Murphy. Cybertalk
that Sells: The Ultimate Source of Words, Phrases, Banners, and
Buzzwords for Selling Your Products, Services, and Ideas Through the New
Digital and Interactive Media. – Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1998. – 133
pp. is very interesting (see, for
example, E-literates, E-illiterates, e-bots).
Business English. “In the Digital Economy I discussed the issue
of a digital divide. If left purely to the market forces, the digital economy
could foster a two-tiered society, creating a major gulf between information
haves and have-nots – those who can communicate with the world and those who
can’t. As information technology becomes more important for economic success
and societal well-being, the possibility of “information apartheiid’ becomes
increasingly real. Such a ‘digital divide’ may mean that for many children N-Gen
means Not-Generation” – remarks Don Tapscott (1998: 11).
According to Don Tapscott, “Have-nots
become know-nots and do-nots” (1998: 11).
Business English becomes more and
more complicated. Many branches and subdivisions appear that drastically
complicate understanding. Marketing quite often becomes digimarketing, for
example (see, Weber Larry. Marketing
to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business.
Second Edition. – New Jersey: Wiley and Sons, 2009. – 246 pp.; Wertime Kent and Fenwick Ian. DigiMarketing: The Essential Guide to New Media &
Digital Marketing. – Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia), Ltd., 2008. –
406 pp.).
“In the new economy, wealth is
increasingly created by knowledge work – brain rather than brawn. There have
always been people who have worked with their minds rather than their hands. In
the new economy, they are the majority of the work force. Already, almost 60
percent of American workers are knowledge workers and 8 of 10 new jobs are in
information-intensive sections of the economy” – remarks Don Tapscott (1998:
127).
The field of branding is becoming
trickier. (see, for example, Ries Al and Laura Ries. The Origin of Brands:
Discover the Natural Laws of Product Innovation and Business Survival . –
New York: HarperBusiness, 2004. – 308 pp.) Al Ries and Laura Ries remark in the
section “Upgrading Language and Downgrading Meaning”: “We are not in the beer
business,” said Coors’s executive vice president of marketing. “We are in the
social mood amelioration business.”
An impediment to clear
thinking is this constant upgrading of the language. No aspect of life is left
untouched by the upgrade police.
· Doctors are now physicians.
· Lawyers are now attorneys-in-law.
· Policemen and policewomen are now law
enforcement officers.
· Maintenance people are now physical plant
managers.
· Janitors are now custodial engineers.
· Garbage collectors are now sanitary
engineers.
· Business strategies are now business
models.
· Numbers are now metrics.
· Accounting firms are now professional
service firms.
· Purchasing departments are now procurement
departments.
· Personnel departments are now human
relations departments.
· Fireworks are now pyrotechnics.
· Jails are now correctional facilities.
“Anyone setting off pyrotechnics will be
taken into custody by a law enforcement officer and sent to a correctional
facility’ (Ries and Ries 2004:. 213-214).
‘Branding
is tricky business. And half the challenge is trying to break through the
language barrier that can exist between brand owners and branding experts. Sit
in on a strategy meeting and you might feel the need to grab a
jargon-to-English dictionary. The branding field is rife with confusing
terminology, with definitions that seem to vary from company to company – if
not from person to person” – remarks Elisabeth Sullivan in the article “Branding
lexicon: Learn how to talk the talk”// Marketing News. – 01.30.09: 14.
Bruce. Parkinson in “Travel as a Second
Language: A Glossary of Key Terms for Bewildered Travellers”//
Maclean’s. – March 23, 2009.: 68 mentions: “The world of travel is complex.
Unfortunately, so is the lingo. The travel industry playbook is filled with
acronyms, jargon, even the odd exaggerated or completely misleading definition
(see Direct Flight).
The following glossary of key travel terms
is here to help you become a better-informed shopper: advertised price,
lead-in price, lowest available fare, plus taxes, off-peak, direct flight,
non-stop flight, carry-on, airport codes, open jaw, bricks & mortar, rack
rate.”
“The Net is beginning to affect all of us
– the way we create wealth, the enterprise, the nature of commerce and
marketing, the delivery system for entertainment, the role and dynamics of
learning in the economy, the nature of government and governance, our culture,
and arguably the role of the nation-state in the body politic” – remarks Don Tapscott (1998: . 3). “The new formula
will be N-Gen + the Net = electronic commerce. The Net is becoming a new medium
for sales, support, and services of virtually anything, as tens of millions of
Net-savvy purchasers come of age” – continues Don Tapscott (1998: 11).
Language of politics. Language of politics is very complex (see, for
example,
Political Language and Metaphore: Interpreting and
changing the world/
Edited by Terrel Carver and Jernej Pikalo. – London and New York: Routledge,
2008. – 293 pp.; Freeden Michael. Thinking
politically and thinking about politics: language, interpretation, and
ideology// Political Theory : Methods and Approaches/ Edited by David
Leopold and Mac Stears. – New York: Oxford UP, 2008. – pp. 196 – 215). The authors talk about extreme semantic
flexibility. “… a polysemic capacity becomes a tool of immense innovative
force, serving human imagination and
political vision. Consider the ways in which ‘power’ as the positive
‘empowering’ of women has developed in feminist discourse” (Freeden 2008: 202).
Political discourse is tightly connected with
business discourse. Actually business lexicon is quite often dominating in
political discourse recently (see, for example, Godwin Jack. Clintonomics:
How Bill Clinton Reengineered the Reagan Revolution. – New York: AMACOM,
2009. – 290 pp. ) The growing use of nicknames in politics (as well as in
sports, cinema, business and commerce and other fields) is a very peculiar
phenomenon (see an amazing book by Andrew Delahunty. Goldenballs and the
Iron Lady: A Little Book of Nicknames. – Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004. – 254 pp.
Canadian English. Canadian English has been developing fast and
research on it is extensive. We could mention here books like Casselman Bill. Casselmania: More Wacky
Canadian Words and Sayings. – Boston-Toronto-London: Little, Brown and
Company (Canada) Ltd, 1996. – 298 pp.;
Telfer Geordie. Dictionary of Canadianisms: How to Speak
Canadian, eh! – N/a: Folklore Publishing, 2009. – 352 pp.
Do we have to include into teaching
English in Ukraine Canadian things like double-double: at Tim Hortons,
coffee with two creams and two sugars; two-four: a case of beer
containing 24 bottles or cans (back cover of Telfer’s dictionary)?
Text messaging. “Lacking facial expression, body language, tone of
voice, clothing , physical surroundings, and other contextual information, the
N-Gen has had to innovate within the limitations of the ASCI keyboard. As a
result of this, a new script is emerging with new combinations of characters,
new abbreviations, new acronyms, and neologisms to add contextual information,
subtleties, and emotion to communications” – remarks Don Tapscott (1998: 64).
David. Crystal in his article “Txting:
frNd or foe?” // The Linguist. – December 2008 - /January 2009: 8-11 mentions: “The popular belief is that
texting (or SMS, the “short-messaging service”) has evolved as a 21-st century
phenomenon, with a highly individual graphic style full of abbreviations, used
by a young generation that does not care about standards. … These logograms –
or rebuses – go back centuries. … . Some people dislike texting. Some are
bemused by it. Some love it. I am fascinated by it, for it is the latest
manifestation of the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adapt
language to suit the demands of diverse settings. In texting, what we are
seeing in a small way, is language in evolution.” And this language in
evolution has to be taught, and not conservative and quite often immobile or
dead English.
Social media. “Social media spans Internet and mobile devices.
Blogs, video sharing
sites, social networking sites, consumer opinion and review sites and
discussion forums all form parts of the array of tools used by those engaging
in social media” – remarks Simon Salt in his article “Track your success:
Emerging applications make it easier to compute your results in social
media marketing”// Marketing News. – 02.15.09.: 20.
Blogs. Blogs are becoming really an explosive phenomenon in numbers and in
quality. “Monthly blog readers grew from 25% to 37% of online consumers last
year. Social network visitors went from 24% to 34%” - states Josh Bernoff in the article “Blogs,
marketing and trust”/ Marketing News. -
02.15.09: 17.
Susan Purcell in the article “Blog
standard”// The Linguist. – February/March 2009: 20-21 presentss a short glossary of blogosphere: blogroll,
post (verb and noun), spam, spammer. She provides the impressive
statistical data: “More than 130 million blogs have been started on the web and
around a million blog posts are written every day. Some bloggers like sharing
their knowledge, if they’ve spent ages over a particular word or know of a good
teaching activity, they may blog about it with the aim of helping other
translators or teachers. Teachers often blog to ensure pupils know what the
homework is, or to help students to catch up when they miss a class.” She
presents the list of top language blogs (among them you can find www.lexicophiles.com:
multilingual blog with links to the “Top 100 Language Blogs”, www.
david-crystal.blogspot.com; professor David Crystal’s blog, etc. (see Purcell
2009: 21).Susan Purcell’s blog is at www.virtuallinguist.typepad.com
The recent literature on blogs is extensive (see, for example, Perlmutter David D. Blogwars. – New York: Oxford UP,
2008. – 246 pp.; Warren Michelle. Blogger
Knows Best// Marketing. – April 6, 2009.: 23, 26-27; A lot of people are
talking about Facebook. But who’s Facebook talking about? / Marketing. –
April 6, 2009.: 24-25. (“When we started 8 years ago, there was a lot of what
we like to call “hoopla” but others might have called “raised eyebrows” (2009:
24)); Skew media: How to deal with
blogosphere backlash // Marketing. – April 6, 2009.: 30.
“And according to a survey by Compass
Partners in the U.S., 40% of women consider blogs a reliable source of advice
and information; 50 % say blogs influence their purchasing decision and 24 %
say they watch less TV because of blogs” – states Michelle Warren (2009: 23).
Language has been constantly updating its expressive means and devices.
Slang, jargon. Do Ukrainian students have to know the meaning of raves
– “huge warehouse and field parties featuring enormous numbers of people
dancing to technopop and accompanying laser light shows” (Tapscott 1998: 205).
Any North American student knows precisely the meaning of this word.
“Many N-Geners have seen their parents lose jobs through reengineering,
downsizing, rightsizing, smartsizing (as business strategist Gary Hamel says,
“smart” and “right” always seem to be down”
- states Don. Tapscott (1998: 285).
“People were held within the walls of a given department – in management
jargon, “organizational stove pipes” (Tapscott 1998: 290).
Among the recent dictionaries on
contemporary slang one can mention Ayto
John and Simpson John. Stone the Crows: Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang.
Second Edition. – New York: Oxford UP, 2008. – 408 pp.
An example from Jonathon. Gatehouse’s short article “ You, Sir, are
nothing but a banker: In politics and in pop culture, money men are the
new pariahs”// Maclean’s. – March 23, 2009.: 44 is provided: “At soccer
games in Ireland, crowds are reacting to bad calls by labeling the ref “a
banker”, instead of the rhyming w-word.
Booing – or better still, laughing – at the plutocrats who have left
investments and retirement savings scraping bottom might be the only relief
consumers get” (Gatehouse 2009: 44).
Vulgar words. The article “Roberts drops the f-bomb on
Hanks”//Edmonton newspaper “24 hours”, April 29/2009: 8 is brilliant: “Julia
Roberts got everyone’s attention Monday night when she dropped a colourful
curse word, according to people.com.
The night was billed as
a salute to Tom Hanks, but it was she who stole the show.
Keeping her tribute as
brief as possible, Roberts told Hanks, “So, everybody f-ing likes you”.
Short and sweet?”
Role of an Instructor/Teacher.
“The very concept of education is also changing as we move from the
paradigm of teacher as transmitter of information to students learning through
discovery and through new media. The teacher’s role is still critical, but
changing – to structure the learning experience, motivate, provide context, and
integrate disciplines” – remarks Don Tapscott (1998: 290).
While teaching English in Ukraine
instructors have to pay crucial attention to a) neological growth (boom) in the
21st century, b) regional variants of English.
