Neologismster?

[avevale_intelligencer]

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?

Comments

[jahura.livejournal.com]

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?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

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.

[aunty_marion]

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.

[lutos.livejournal.com]

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.