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avevale_intelligencer ([personal profile] avevale_intelligencer) wrote2007-09-04 03:34 am

Neologismster?

Isaac Asimov wrote a story entitled "Jokester," in which he postulated that every joke ever made had been implanted in our culture by alien scientists to test our reactions. The discovery of this fact in the story, naturally, heisenberged the experiment and all the jokes were removed, with the result that, as one character remarked, no-one on earth would ever laugh again. Unfortunately, with all respect to the Good Doctor, the premise is faulty, since a moment's thought will reveal that most if not all jokes arise from and depend on a thorough understanding of what it means to be human (though, given the upsurge in alleged "comedy" programmes such as The Office, he might have been on to something after all; we do seem to have lost the knack somehow).

The things that puzzle me, on the other hand, that might well have been implanted by someone or something, are the new words or usages that seem to pop out of nowhere. I've remarked before on the inexplicable use of "pants" as a pejorative adjective. And I remember well the Countess remarking on the first time she ever encountered the single word "Bless" used as an expression of affectionate and slightly condescending sympathy, and how scant days later I couldn't open a magazine or take part in a conversation without coming up against it. These neologisms do not seem to spring from any tribal argot, as "hip" (or "hep") and "square," say, sprang from the beatnik movement. They just appear, and seem to spread instantaneously by some kind of osmosis.

Are we the subject of some bizarre experiment by linguistically inclined beings from a higher dimension?

[identity profile] jahura.livejournal.com 2007-09-04 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
If they are, I'd say that the aliens in question are the animals that allow us to 'domesticate' them. I've seen on more than one occasion that they understand humor, and have been known to repeat behaviors that cause humans to laugh. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that a dog, cat, parrot, or reptile of some sort were present when a solitary individual came up with a joke that was just waiting to be tried out on other humans.

Bless...that's a new one on me, though. It hasn't caught on out here and I wouldn't use the term to be condescending as it is. What would be an example?

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2007-09-04 07:43 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, bless! (Or "Aw, bless!") It's used (in my experience) when someone has done something somewhat silly but cute (in the view of the person saying it). An implication is that the blessee is probably of inferior intelligence, or childish (or actually a child) and can't be expected to know any better, they've tried to the limit of their ability. Possibly from "Bless him/her" used about a child who has done something cute.

Much in the same vein was the use of 'special' or 'spesh' a couple of decades ago, certain groups used it condescendingly about people they considered inferior ('special' as in "special needs", I suspect).

[identity profile] jahura.livejournal.com 2007-09-04 09:56 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, okay. Thank you. I guess the version out here is "bless your heart," a by-product of Southern Tact.

Special I have heard, though, and my understanding is that it does indeed stem from the term "special needs." My husband uses that one a lot when referring to his sister. O_o

Interesting now also comes to mind as a result, derived from the old curse that wishes "may he/she live in interesting times" to describe something traumatic or disagreeable.

[identity profile] armb.livejournal.com 2007-09-04 10:54 am (UTC)(link)
Officially "special needs" teaching includes exceptionally bright children as well as slow ones. In reality, unless the bright child is being disruptive or has obvious learning difficulties in spite of being bright, they get left to themselves much more.

[identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com 2007-09-04 07:54 am (UTC)(link)
One which puzzles (and somewhat annoys) me is the tacking "me" onto the end of a phrase. "I'm fine, me." Or on Brainiac: "I can do science, me!" It's something I've only heard (or at least noticed) in the last few years, it doesn't seem to be from any particular dialect that I know.

I like Niven's puppeteer explanation of humour: it is the result of an interrupted defence mechanism. Most jokes set up an expectation of some form (not necessarily defensive, but often so as in Asimov's examples of jokes involving things which are technically 'bad') and then suddenly reverse or contradict the mood, thus triggering the laugh. This also ties in with Heinlein's explanation (in Stranger) that we laugh in order to defuse a bad situation ("If'n I don' laff, I sure am gonna cry!"). The big exception, as Asimov pointed out, is wordplay (puns, spoonerisms and the like) at which one normally groans rather than laughs.

[identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com 2007-09-04 10:35 am (UTC)(link)
I think, as with sf, any one explanation or definition of humour is going to miss more than it hits. Niven's doesn't explain why we laugh just as hard at jokes we already know, and Heinlein's only works for jokes based on suffering, which is by no means all of them.

The "me" tacked on the end is I think Northern in origin, and is similar to the practice in America of sticking it on to the beginning ("Me, I'm going home.") which has an interesting similarity to the Japanese "watashi wa" and the French "Moi, je rentre a la maison." I can see that being a logical way of adding emphasis to the subject of the sentence.

It's the ones for which, or for the sudden popularity of which, I can't see a logical explanation, that puzzle me: I know people have been saying "God bless him" or "bless her" or "bless their hearts" for ages, but where did this suddenly truncated "bless" come from?
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[personal profile] occams_pyramid 2007-09-04 10:44 am (UTC)(link)
I think I've known that use of 'me' for a very long time, and have it flagged as 'Northern' dialect, but I've no idea which particular dialect.
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[personal profile] aunty_marion 2007-09-04 11:02 am (UTC)(link)
I'd have to go and get the books off the shelf to cite an exact reference, but there's something in one of Iona and Peter Opie's books - either The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren or Children's Games in Street and Playground - which discusses the sudden spread of linguistic memes, such as this use of 'bless'. I don't think they came to any definitive conclusion as to how it can happen - it's easy to see it happening on a local scale, of course, but on a national one it's harder to explain, particularly the speed at which it happens! For instance, at the time of the abdication, children began to 'filk' the carol "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" with the second line "Mrs Simpson's pinched our King", almost simultaneously at sites across the nation. Either all children's minds work alike (which is another Midwich Cuckoos type of worry), or there's some other mechanism at work.

It is, of course, apparently linked to the way in which bluetits across the country all learnt simultaneously how to peck open milk bottle tops.

[identity profile] lutos.livejournal.com 2007-09-05 08:56 am (UTC)(link)
A couple of years ago I read an interesting theory of Rupert Sheldrake about 'Morphic (or Morphogenetic) Fields'.

It explains why f.e. great inventions or evolved animal/human behaviour appeared simultanously in a certain period. The blue-tits behaviour was one example of that.

If I can put it into simple words, he states that there are fields in and around morphic beings like there are f.e. radio waves in the air. Any other morphic being can "plug" into that field and therefore join the information found there. Like, picking up a signal...Thus, similar behaviour like using the same neologisms is spreading fast.

Oh, I think I'm making a mess out of his theory; better read for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphic_field#Morphogenetic_field

Notice the different tests he did to prove his theory; I think you may have heard about a couple of them.