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Stephen H. Provost is an author of paranormal adventures and historical non-fiction. “Memortality” is his debut novel on Pace Press, set for release Feb. 1, 2017.
An editor and columnist with more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, he has written on subjects as diverse as history, religion, politics and language and has served as an editor for fiction and non-fiction projects. His book “Fresno Growing Up,” a history of Fresno, California, during the postwar years, is available on Craven Street Books. His next non-fiction work, “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street,” is scheduled for release in June.
For the past two years, the editor has served as managing editor for an award-winning weekly, The Cambrian, and is also a columnist for The Tribune in San Luis Obispo.
He lives on the California coast with his wife, stepson and cats Tyrion Fluffybutt and Allie Twinkletail.
Filtering by Tag: language
To me, it all comes down to one thing: Respect. What do YOU want to be called? Within very broad parameters, I’ll respect your wishes and call you THAT. That’s the prime directive, in my book. Whether it’s inconvenient or makes sense to me is irrelevant. Whether it treats YOU with respect is what matters.
Read More“Why are people talking like that?”
I ask that question a lot, especially when I see some new linguistic trend go viral … the way the term “go viral” went viral, for instance.
The answer I get most often is: “Get over it. Language is always evolving.”
Perhaps. But the process has accelerated since the advent of social media, which introduces new mutations to the literary gene pool at a frightening rate.
Buzzwords and catchphrases used to be appear every so often, then fade gradually from our consciousness over the ensuing decades. One generation might say “keen,” another “groovy,” and another “cool” or “awesome.” We’ve always been prone to putting our own stamp on things by creating synonyms, but these days, new words appear, wear out their welcome and vanish at a dizzying pace.
Media in general, and social media in particular, have given us all immediate access to a national (or global) conversation. And this conversation has introduced us to words and phrases that, in the past, might have spread slowly or never caught on at all. Some remained confined to one region or another: Many words and phrases that “go viral” in the 21st century would have been subject to a natural geographic quarantine a few decades ago. “Y’all” has become more than a Southern affectation; and “dude” is no longer confined to the SoCal surfing culture.
Maybe that old-fashioned quarantine was a good thing. Widespread access to the internet —and social media in particular — has removed a filter that kept the language relatively stable. Now, it careens all over the place like a pinball. Buzzwords can go rolling down the black hole at the bottom of the table without warning. Or they can get stuck between two bumpers in a frenzy of repetition that tries the patience of the most dedicated arcade aficionado.
It’s not evolution so much as mutation mania. Words and phrases become so pervasive that they can go from innovation to aggravation in a matter of months — or even weeks. That’s one thing about a virus: You get sick of it damn fast.
Are you already sick of hearing words like these: woke, snowflake, (blank)splaining, mindful, bae, GOAT, cuck? I know I am. How about phrases such as “fake news”? Some words seem to have been made up out of whole cloth; others are borrowed from the existing lexicon and reformatted with new or narrower definitions. “Privilege: comes to mind.
New and redefined words appear out of nowhere and leave us scratching our heads, asking ourselves, “What the hell does that mean?” That question soon gives way to a plaintive plea as we’re bombarded with these buzzwords time and again: “Please, make it stop!”
Further frustrations stem from the fact that some of these words don’t add anything to the language. We already have words for them. You can find them in any good dictionary. But we’ve put down our dictionaries because we’re too busy creating new entries for our own personal thesaurus. We’ve become redundant pundits.
Woke? Mindful? What’s wrong with just being aware? (“Woke” is particularly galling because it appears to be a bastardization of the perfectly good adjective “awake.”) And you don’t need to talk about ’splaining when you know the meaning of condescension. Are four syllables too many for you? (Yes, I know that last remark was condescending. I’m making a point.) Once upon a time, we called fake news propaganda … or bullshit.
Then there’s "privilege," which has become pervasive in the lexicon as a pejorative term against a person’s status. Once upon a time, we denounced people’s actions and attitudes — bigotry, racism, chauvinism, etc. Now, instead of condemning them for what they do, we berate them for who they are. They’re “privileged.” But isn’t this, ironically, just another form of bigotry? Because the target’s different, it’s supposed to be OK.
Really?
Adapting words like "Nazi" and "retarded" — a la "feminazi," "Grammar Nazi" and "libtard," for example — is distasteful, to say the least.
“His jargon conceals, from him, but not from us, the deep, empty hole in his mind. ”
“Snowflake” implies that it’s bad to be different. I don’t buy that: Conformity for the sake of conformity is downright dangerous. “Cuck” is just rude, and “bae” is … well, I don’t know what it is.
GOAT is a funny one. As an acronym, it’s short for “Greatest Of All Time,” and it’s become pervasive in sports commentary. But once upon a time, it meant virtually the opposite: A goat was someone who made a mistake that cost his team the game. Talk about confusing!
How many of these terms and definitions will still be in use fifty, twenty or even ten years from now? My hunch is that most of them will wear out their welcome and become fading footnotes in the evolution of the English language. That’s how evolution works, if you think about it: The vast majority of mutations aren’t helpful; they’re damaging or, at best, irrelevant.
Keep that in mind the next time someone defends the latest new buzzword on the grounds that “language is always evolving.”
Most mutations backfire. And most of these buzzwords are better off going extinct.
Effects or affects? Which is the noun and which the verb?
To find the answer, just think of the phrase special effects: The second word starts with the sound ef. You'd never think of saying (or writing), "special affects," as a noun, would you? Since effects functions as a noun in this instance, just remember that it works that way in most other instances, as well - except when it means to cause. In that case, it's a verb: One effects (or causes) change.
Similarly, affect can act as a noun occasionally: Someone's affect refers to that person's observed emotional state.
Those are exceptions to the rule, but try not to get hung up on them. They're not the true source of the confusion. The real problem is that we think they sound alike, so we forget which one goes where. And when we speak quickly, they do sound alike. They both come out as uh-fect, just as February tends to come out sounding like Feb-yu-wa-ry and often winds up as aw-fun.
It takes careful enunciation to reveal that effects (think FX, as in the FX Channel) doesn't really sound like affects (uh-fects) at all. If you remember that much, it might affect how well you remember overall rule. When in doubt, just consult your TV listings.
It's not a special effect, it's just proper usage.
