TEAM
REPORT 1
NEOLOGISMS
‘Inoke
Funaki
INTRODUCTION
Dear
Reader,
The following information that you
are about to read is about Neologisms.
What is a Neologism? To give you a
little bit of background as to what a Neologism is so that you have a better
understanding, in Greek, ‘neo’ means new and ‘logos’ means word. Basically a Neologism is a new word that has
been created in association with new things, new processes, new concepts, or
new ideas that are in need of a new name.
In this class I have gained a better understanding of the importance of
neologisms and the great impact that something as small as a neologism can have
in our society. Recording and keeping track
of Neologisms can help to better understand one’s thought processes at specific
times of their lives. Being able to understand
one’s thought processes will enable us to better understand why people do the
things they do. Being able to better
understand the reasons as to why people do the things they do will assist us in
being able to better understand things such as how successful people become
successful and how an ordinary and average human being can gradually turn into
a criminal who is constantly on the run from the law. So you can see how this snowball effect all
begins with a simple Neologism. Every
action is preceded by a thought, every thought takes place in the brain, and
every Neologism is right there in the brain where it all begins.
NEO
AWARENESS AMONG PEERS by Catherine
Cho
Prior to meeting Dr. Leon James, very few of us have
ever been enlightened by the idea of Neologisms and their role in our everyday
lives. It is a simple concept, yet far
from many people’s grasp, so here we were able to expose a few, lucky, random
individuals with the idea and purpose of neologisms (neo’s).
The first 10 neo’s were produced by Dr. James and
are only a mere fraction of neo’s he has come up with in the last 50 years; the
second set of neo’s are those which we have come up with, confirming their neo
status through Google. We predicted what
our peers would rate both sets of neo’s according to this rating scale:
1=the likelihood that this is a neo is 80 % or
higher (looks like a neo)
2=the likelihood that this is a neo is around 50 %
(hard to tell if it is a neo or not)
3=the likelihood that this is a neo is less than 30%
(doesn’t look like a neo)
Dr. James’ Neologisms from his Master Neochart
Team Predicted Rating Neo Peer Average Rating
|
1 |
Anatomical layers of the human
mind form its consciousness. |
1.33 |
|
3 |
Beauty is the product of love
and wisdom. |
2 |
|
2 |
Both types of loves exist in the
human mind from birth. |
1.67 |
|
1 |
Every evil love has sway over
every human being—until regeneration. |
1 |
|
2 |
Love produces beauty through
wisdom. |
2 |
|
1 |
No love exists that is not
heavenly from the Grand Human or hellish from the Grand Monster. |
1 |
|
2 |
Recognizing the good of that
love appears in the other person. |
2.67 |
|
1 |
The beginning purpose and the
end purpose of all creation is conjugial love. |
1.67 |
|
3 |
We are at war against our self
and within our self. |
2.67 |
|
2 |
We speak according to our
motives and intentions, which come from love. |
2 |
Team Constructed Neologisms
Team Predicted Rating Neo Peer Average Rating
|
2 |
You must love to love in order
to love and be loved. |
2.33 |
|
1 |
Love lives in both the conscious
and unconscious mind. |
2 |
|
3 |
Marriage is work before it is
play. |
3 |
|
2 |
Love is truth and follows you
everywhere. |
1.33 |
|
2 |
Love the fire that keeps you
warm. |
2.67 |
|
3 |
Incessant love that rages on. |
2.67 |
|
2 |
The true test is the true will
to commit. |
1.33 |
|
2 |
Don’t burn in evil love. |
2 |
|
1 |
Strive to love to reach your
heaven. |
2 |
|
3 |
Love does to our minds what food
and water does to our body. |
2.33 |
DATA
DISCUSSION
No love exists that is not heavenly from the Grand
Human or hellish from the Grand Monster.
–“This
just sounds super original…I’ve never heard of a Grand Human or Grand Monster
before…” (Subject gave a 1 rating.)
The beginning purpose and the end purpose of all
creation is conjugial love.
-“It
sounds pretty textbook, or something a lot of people say except for the
conjugial(?) part…is that even a word?
Anyways, I give it a 2 because of that.”
We are at war against our self and within our self.
-“Oh man,
this just sounds so right. Like if I
didn’t hear it from someone, it has to be in a movie or song or
something.” (Subject gave a 3 rating.)
Marriage is work before it is play.
-“Cliché?
Yeah, definitely heard it before.”
(Subject gave a 3 rating.)
Don’t burn in evil love.
-“It’s
weird because one word, I think, makes a difference when I think if it’s a neo
or not. Like for this one, I think love
makes the difference—evil love, oxy moron perhaps? If it just said ‘don’t burn in evil’ I think
I would’ve given it a 3 but yeah…”
(Subject gave a 2 rating.)
The true test is the true will to commit.
-“It just sounds kinda
awkward.” (Subject gave a 1 rating.)
Above are
a few samples of the reasons provided by our peer individuals as to why they gave
certain neo’s the ratings that they did.
I found it interesting to see that most often times, when a subject gave
a 3 rating, they gave it rather quickly, not thinking too much about the neo or
repeating it to themselves. A lot of
their reasons were because they said that the neo sounded familiar or like a
universal idea that’s been shared before.
Some even based their ratings on whether or not they agreed with the neo
or not.
When a
subject gave a 1 rating, they usually took longer to respond, repeating the neo
to themselves, usually focusing on a particular word or fragment of the
neo. For the neo’s that received all 1’s
from each subject, it was interesting to see facial expressions change as if
the neo introduced a new idea to them.
In conclusion,
the ratings given to us by our subjects seemed to be based on their ability to
relate to the neo and their familiarity with what the neo is trying to say.
NEOLOGISMS by Inoke
Funaki
Just as I
was about to begin reading the introduction to the Master Neochart, there were
many thoughts and questions running through my mind as to why Dr. Leon James
spoke of Neologisms so much in class? What is the big deal about Neologisms
that I don’t understand? What is he planning
on doing with the thousands upon thousands of Neo’s that he is collecting? What exactly is a Neologism? And can I somehow make money from collecting
Neo’s the same way I could make money from collecting cans and bottles? “Neo’s are just words and phrases. I don’t see any point in recording them and
trying to learn about them,” says my close friend Lilika when asked what she
thought about Neologisms following a brief neo-explanation, “they are just
words.” Just about every single one of
my friends that I spoke to about Neologisms had a reaction similar to that of
Lilika because they could not see the big picture. All they saw were mere words and
phrases. “It just seems like something
too simple and actually kind of silly to have any kind of impact on our society
and affect my life,” my cousin Siale commented after being asked if he thought
that Neologisms could have some kind of impact on our society and his personal
life. I myself like Lilika and Siale did
not fully understand the importance of Neologisms when I was first learning about
it in class. In fact, like the others, I
too had not even heard the word Neologism before coming into this class.
A
Neologism is a word or phrase that describes a concept for the first time. Every and any person can produce a Neologism
through speaking, writing, or even thinking.
They can be short or they can be long.
I learned from this article that the practice of gathering these
Neologisms can definitely become an important and useful tool in studying the
human mind. In the beginning of the article
I learned that everyone can benefit from the practice of collecting their own
Neo’s because it can serve as a form of “biographical record keeping.” I see it as being kind of like a journal or
diary that you can go back to read and keep track of one’s self, one’s
perceptions, and experiences.
Neologistic records are one’s inner consciousness. It really made sense to me when I read in the
article that “expressions people type out, or think and say, is not a random
event that just happens without a specific cause making it happen. Every event we can observe must have a
cause.” So before someone types
something out, writes something down, or says something vocally, he/she must
first think about it. And by studying
these collected Neologisms, one will be able to learn much and gain a much
better understanding about human thought processes. This definitely can have an impact and play a
role in society because as we study Neologisms and gain a better understanding
of the human mind, we will be able to apply that knowledge into our society to
make it better, which is the bigger picture that I could not see beyond the
mere words and phrases in Neologisms when I was first learning of
Neologisms. “I can see now how keeping a
record of Neologisms can serve as personal records of my consciousness allowing
me to reflect on my life,” said Siale later into our discussion about
Neologisms. I too have gained a broader
understanding of Neologisms and how such a small thing that is seen by most as
being very insignificant, can have such a big impact on me and have a rippling
effect on our society if we apply it into our lives.
UNDERSTANDING TRENDY
NEOLOGISMS by Adrienne Lehrer by Simon Na
Lehrer's
article focuses on the blending of words and how neologisms are formed of them.
He notes that this blending is originally not words blended together to
increase efficiency, as in “Acronyms like scuba and ID, clippings like lab
(< laboratory, labrador) and vet (< veterinarian, veteran), and some
blends like fortran (<formula + translation) and transceiver (<
transmitter + receiver)” but are instead harder to understand, at least at
their first introduction. He then continues by saying that this difficulty in
understanding is not meant for rudeness or confusion, but is used by the
speaker with the assumption that the hearer can understand what the blend is
supposed to mean. The words are used to “catch the hearer's attention.” “Many
of the neologisms are witty; they involve word play, such as puns and
allusions, as well as the puzzle of novelty. Therefore, when the hearer figures
out the intended meaning, he or she is amused and perhaps feels clever for
having 'gotten' the point.”
Seeing
this, Lehrer experimented by giving various word blends that they defined for
the participants in order to find if the participants could identify the two
words used. After assorted experiments with these word blends, several
hypotheses are put forward, but the most significant is that their testing
method may have been slightly flawed. They attempted to test reaction time and
believed that blends had progressed to the point where, rather than being new
words, they would be understood by the participants as quickly as complex and
compound words. Finding this to be false, a new hypothesis was made.
Rather
than a neologism being something that is easily understood, “If the goal is to
capture someone's attention with a clever or puzzling new word, a slowed-down
response is desirable; it suggests that the hearer/reader is paying attention
to the form of the stimulus.” He does note at the end, however, that “the
results of these experiments should be viewed as positive from neologism
creator’s viewpoint. Hearers and readers must figure out what the neologism
means, and in the case of blends, what the contributing words are. But in
addition, the creator wants the neologism to be appreciated linguistically and
remembered. And this process takes a little bit of time.”
NEOLOGISMS OF INTERNET
ENGLISH: SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT by Goda Rumsiene
Rumsienë speaks of neologism creation in the
realm of the Internet, a primarily non-auditory, written language which has
some differences from normal spoken English. Rather than e-mails, instant
messaging, or online journals, he studies Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in his
study of neologisms. Rumsienë notes that Internet English is highly free in
terms of its acceptance of individuality as many of the rules of Internet
English are unwritten and can therefore be ignored, allowing for far more
variety. Rather than creating neologisms for semantic reasons due to changing
rules, he states that “whole alterations are largely introduced for the sake of
alterations themselves, just as an act of economy and amusement.”
The types of neologism formation that he looks
over are Conversion, changing the meaning of existing words and using them in
novel ways (Google going from a noun to a verb 'Have you googled it?'),
Affixation, altering words by merely adding some type of affix (archive's
opposite being simple unarchive), and also compounding words, one method of
which is “punning based on phonetic similarity or identity of the juncture
sounds, e.g. japanimation (Japanese + animation).”
The Internet thus seems like a rich locale for
new neologisms, although even then, many of those neologisms follow fairly set
rules.
ON THE THEORY OF NEOLOGISMS
AND NONCE-FORMATIONS by Pavol Stekauer
Much more heavy going than the other reports,
Stekauer differentiates between Nonces, words that are freshly coined, and
words that are actually accepted and in use. The article attempts to solidly
seperate the two from each other, instead of the mishmash of vague opinions
that various others who have studied this have put together.
Due to the heavy nature of this paper, I
haven't been able to get a full understanding of the technical aspects of what
he's saying, however, I can state that there are quite a few interesting points
in this article.
CONCLUSIONS
To say that the topic of neologisms has been
neglected is not something I can agree with. Whether the research is something
is something that is viewed with the level of importance it actually should
have is also debatable. However, I must state that Stekauer's idea of a
differentiation between Nonces and Neologisms is quite significant. New words,
phrases, or otherwise are always being brought into being, however not all of
them actually bring about change in language that neologisms seem to bring
about. Some are, in fact, pointless coinings of words that will not even live
long enough to be words. One could argue that a random, nonsensical
string of letters, could be a neologism despite the fact that it has no basis
in language in the least.
The study of
neologisms should then be limited first to figuring out exactly what is a
neologism, or at least which words out there are actual neologisms. Popular
culture seems to play a primary role in the coining and prorogation of
neologisms, not only because television, music, movies, and other media are
widespread, but also because those who write much of this are witty and clever,
understanding what will cause people to laugh and start using the words that
they created.
Neologisms are
important. With language being a living, growing thing, the new parts of it
should be noted and understood where they come from because words and phrases
that become popular are oftentimes a good indicator of what the people of that
time and that place believe to be important.
ADVICE FOR YOUNGER GENERATIONS
For all the younger generations that
are reading this report, my first and most important words of advice that I
would like to share with you not only applies to you when you do your report
for this class but also for everything else in your lives: Don’t Procrastinate! Unless you enjoy rushing things and enjoy
staying up late, get your work done AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and you will be able to
enjoy the rest of your time doing other things or you can go back and revise
your work. Also take advantage of the
reading presentations and group discussions in class because they are great in
many ways. You learn better and more
when you are teaching a concept that you have learned about and you can add in
your own thoughts and ideas from your perspective, others that participate in
the discussion will also add their own ideas and thoughts from their perspective
that you possibly didn’t see, and together all are enlightened. It will also help to improve your vocational
skills and speaking in front of groups.
Other advice I would like to share is: show up to class every day, stay
on top of the readings, participate in class, look both ways before crossing
the street, brush and floss your teeth daily, and do a good turn daily. Good Luck! J
REFERENCES
Half a Century of Science
in Psychology: Scientific Neologisms Coined by Leon James
Understanding
Trendy Neologisms by Adrienne Lehrer
Neologisms
of Internet English: Sociolinguistic Aspects of Development by Goda Rumsiene
On
The Theory of Neologisms and Nonce-Formations by
Pavol Stekauer