Tailor-making language to fit what’s trending socially and politically:
A language is a structured system of communication. Language, in a broader sense, is the method of communication that involves the use of – particularly human – languages. The scientific study of language is called linguistics
Written and spoken language is used for many different reasons. The primary uses of language are informative, expressive, and directive in nature. Language is used to reason, to express ideas, argue a point, provide directions, and much more.
Language, as the old saying goes, is the dress of thought. And like sartorial attire, verbal vestment is subject to the dictates of fashion in political and social parlance. So it should come as no surprise that as its `Word of the Year’ Collins Dictionary has chosen `climate strike’, a term which refers to the teenaged environmental activist Greta Thunberg’s FridaysForFuture movement which motivated thousands of schoolchildren all over the world to go on strike by skipping classes.
A related trope is `Boomer’, connoting an older person who downplays or dismisses the concerns, ecological and other, of the millennial generation, and refers to those born during the `baby boom’ following World War II.
The long-drawn drama of Brexit has also generated a booming `Brexicon’ of words relating to the UK’s on-again, off-again divorce deal with the EU. Prominent among these is `milkshake’, which is defined as throwing such a drink at a public personage with whom one thinks udderwise, an experience to which outspoken Brexiter Nigel Farage was notably subjected.
In a case of a `backronym’, or backwardly formed acronym, President Donald Trump’s mysterious `covfefe’ which appeared in an incomplete tweet has been turned by a political opponent into `Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically For Engagement’, the title of a bill tabled in the US Congress. A worthy example of a mot juste. Or a mot jest.
DISCLAIMER : This article is intended to bring a smile to your face. Any connection to events and characters in real life is coincidental.
Creative Comma Positive Turns 