Yawn, so thus starts the usual end of year reviews within the blogosphere, what happened in 2006 (quite interesting), what’s going to happen in 2007 (interesting but pointless – essentially a gamble that you can’t ever cash in) and of course the obligatory list of defining words/phrases for the last year or so.
Good one here: http://www.gawker.com/news/blogs/bad-lingo-blogmedia-clichs-222162.php detailing well used phrases such as Evar, OMG, made my [sensory organ] bleed etc.
I am often a little uneasy about articles of this nature, i.e. ‘we feel that [x] is overused and plebs are using them now so we must kill those words and make up new ones the plebs don’t use, thus guaranteeing our superiority’
For me language is not something to be owned by one group, it is agile and organic with groups choosing a selection of the lexicon to define and enhance themselves. This is admittedly what Gawker are attempting to do here, they feel that said definition is too wide so must distance themselves away and redefine. So although its the nature of groups to wish to redefine they’re own selection of the lexicon I guess I just feel that this excludes a lot of people and makes much text and discourse inaccessible to a wider set of users.
And as Gawker admit, they are just as guilty, as I am sure I am in earlier posts, yet if we want to communicate across divides, then understanding that inclusive use of the language becomes increasingly important in an evar increasingly fragmented world (and cyberspace). Ofcourse for those that are and want to stay within a community then the constant re-invention of language is quite necessary for definition and indeed survival.