Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our
Speaker 1: discussion of invented words. So in the last episode we
Speaker 1: were talking about neologisms that were deliberately invented and continuing
Speaker 1: that today, I wanted to start out with a distinction
Speaker 1: that we might find useful, and that's the difference between
Speaker 1: neologisms and something we might call protologisms. So a neologism
Speaker 1: is a newly coined term that's like still in the
Speaker 1: process of coming into common use. You might use the
Speaker 1: term because you're an early adopter of it, but it
Speaker 1: might be the kind of word that people still need
Speaker 1: to look up a good bit. You might need to
Speaker 1: explain what it means if you use it in an article. Right,
Speaker 1: it could be very much be one of those words
Speaker 1: that you get the feeling that's that people in in
Speaker 1: the culture are trying to make happen, like they're trying
Speaker 1: to establish it, uh and and get it into it
Speaker 1: just the the everyday lexicon. Right, that that would be
Speaker 1: what happens if it's successful, it just becomes a regular word.
Speaker 1: You no longer need to explain it. You don't need
Speaker 1: to look it up. Most people just know what it means. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are a few examples of neologisms like I
Speaker 1: could think of that have just become regular words in
Speaker 1: recent years. One great example, I think is selfie. You
Speaker 1: know how this was once a cute new word, and
Speaker 1: people would remark on the fact that it was a
Speaker 1: cute new word, like the fact that it was a
Speaker 1: neologism was one of the main things you know about it.
Speaker 1: And now it's just sort of a word, and it's
Speaker 1: it's weird, like selfie as a term has this kind
Speaker 1: of like viral presence and movement in our in our culture,
Speaker 1: but but also the act associated with it seemed to
Speaker 1: spread with it. And I wonder to what extent are
Speaker 1: you seeing the the act the practice of taking selfie.
Speaker 1: Is that pulling the term with it through our culture
Speaker 1: or is it the reverse or is it some combination
Speaker 1: of the two. I think that certainly the first part
Speaker 1: that you're talking. I think there are definitely technological pressures
Speaker 1: that made room for this word to intercommon usage. So
Speaker 1: the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in
Speaker 1: but the word has a kind of interesting history Before that,
Speaker 1: I was looking up, but what what was the earliest
Speaker 1: use of selfie? Because obviously the act of taking a
Speaker 1: photograph of yourself goes way back. People have been doing
Speaker 1: that for more than a hundred years, with various contraptions,
Speaker 1: even just like timers on cameras and stuff. Um. But
Speaker 1: the first documented use of the word selfie appears to
Speaker 1: come from the year two thousand two, when an Australian
Speaker 1: man posted the following message on an Internet forum on
Speaker 1: a news website. Specifically, this was a thread from September
Speaker 1: two two by a user named Hopie h O p
Speaker 1: e Y, and the statement goes like this, UM drunk
Speaker 1: at a mates twenty one, I tripped over and landed
Speaker 1: lip first with front teeth coming a close second on
Speaker 1: a set of steps. I had a hole about one
Speaker 1: centimeter long right through my bottom lip and sorry about
Speaker 1: the focus. It was a selfie. He attaches a photo
Speaker 1: of his busted lip for people to look at. The
Speaker 1: purpose of the thread was Hopie wondering whether licking his
Speaker 1: lips would make his stitches dissolved too early, and he's
Speaker 1: of course apologizing for the the the quality of the
Speaker 1: photographs saying I have taken it myself. It is a selfie, right,
Speaker 1: so this is before selfie sticks. This is even before
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of high quality camera phone. This
Speaker 1: probably would have been taken I guess with just like
Speaker 1: a handheld digital camera pointed back at his face. But
Speaker 1: he probably wouldn't have the ability to see the screen
Speaker 1: while he's taking the picture, right, so he just has
Speaker 1: to guess yeah, yeah, so yeah. Been the early days
Speaker 1: of selfies when they were, they're even a far more chatic.
Speaker 1: Though it's not clear that the author of this post
Speaker 1: actually intended to invent a word, or even that he
Speaker 1: invented a word at all. It might have been a
Speaker 1: slang word in oral circulation before ever being written out
Speaker 1: in this context, and it does follow a standard way
Speaker 1: of inventing slang words in Australian English, which is adding
Speaker 1: a hyphen i e suffix to a noun, So like
Speaker 1: a barbecue becomes a barbie, you know, put another shrimp
Speaker 1: on the barbie, or a can of beer becomes a
Speaker 1: tinny from tin can. I haven't heard that one in use,
Speaker 1: but it makes sense and by the same lexical logic,
Speaker 1: a photograph of the self becomes a selfie, you know,
Speaker 1: put another duck lips on the selfie. But if this
Speaker 1: was a term in oral slang in Australian English before
Speaker 1: it appeared in print, I would say it probably wasn't
Speaker 1: being used a lot, because if it was used a lot,
Speaker 1: you'd expect to find it written down at this point. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the obvious question about this is like, why
Speaker 1: does it then get picked up, Why does selfie become
Speaker 1: a tern, how does it create How does this journey
Speaker 1: even begin into widespread usage. Yeah, so after two thousand
Speaker 1: two it pop up here and there, but it didn't
Speaker 1: come anywhere near common usage until around two thousand twelve
Speaker 1: when it's suddenly got very popular. And this probably had
Speaker 1: to do with simultaneous techno cultural trends. You had new
Speaker 1: generations of camera phones and of social media a way
Speaker 1: to take selfies and then also a place to post them.
Speaker 1: And this I think the technology made a pre existing
Speaker 1: word suddenly very useful. And it may also, I think
Speaker 1: have played an important psycho social role, like does having
Speaker 1: a word like selfie help defuse potential doubts or worries
Speaker 1: people have that they are engaging in narcissistic behavior does
Speaker 1: the word take an act that you might worry is
Speaker 1: unsavory and make it cute? Like that? There? I was
Speaker 1: reading something where the editorial director of the Oxford Dictionaries
Speaker 1: in said, specifically of the word, the use of the
Speaker 1: diminutive I e. Suffix is notable as it helps to
Speaker 1: turn and essentially narcissistic enterprise into something rather more endearing.
Speaker 1: But then again, maybe that's overly harsh. You could look
Speaker 1: at it the other way, like, does having a word
Speaker 1: like selfie make it easier to disparage an activity that
Speaker 1: most people do? You know, it's not like you have
Speaker 1: to be some raging narcissists to take a selfie? Does
Speaker 1: it just like make it easier to mock people like this? Well? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can certainly see both sides of the coin there.
Speaker 1: And now, another thing about the about adding I e
Speaker 1: to to something is it comes from the the the
Speaker 1: parental sphere of things and uh and observing how children
Speaker 1: will frequently add that to a word to say, name
Speaker 1: is stuffed animal. So if it's a bear, you might
Speaker 1: just make it it's Barry Buries the name of the bear. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a cute. See addition to any
Speaker 1: word uh. And then that lines up with this idea
Speaker 1: that it makes something that could be viewed as being
Speaker 1: you know, egotistical or not narcissistic, as being something that
Speaker 1: is ultimately cute and harmless. Well, if you say, ah ha,
Speaker 1: I took a selfie, it almost is self deprecating in
Speaker 1: a way that defuses the potential for someone to criticize
Speaker 1: you as narcissistic for doing it right, because it is
Speaker 1: it has this feeling of being silly as well as
Speaker 1: you know, silly, harmless, but also maybe a little bit narcissistic.
Speaker 1: But but but but it is acknowledging the inherent narcissism
Speaker 1: of the act, you know, and and dismissing it with
Speaker 1: this air of silliness to it. Like if we instead
Speaker 1: of having picking up the words selfie, if we'd gone
Speaker 1: with ego bonk, you know, like that would probably be
Speaker 1: that's a little bit silly too. But I can see
Speaker 1: where people would be a little less inclined to use
Speaker 1: that terminology if they were like, well, i'm early for
Speaker 1: my meeting. Here's a quick ego bonk. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: quick selfie works a lot better, and it's a little
Speaker 1: a little catchier. Yeah, or if we'd called it like
Speaker 1: self porn or something. Not going to take that back, Sorry,
Speaker 1: you know I just said, and then try to take
Speaker 1: it back, But you convince me we should go down
Speaker 1: this road. I was saying, another alternative, what would you
Speaker 1: call it? You call it something like mirror porn or
Speaker 1: something like. That's you know, self porn, because this is
Speaker 1: now a common suffix. Actually, absolutely, you hear people talking
Speaker 1: about what food porn or food porn? I think was
Speaker 1: the big one that caught hold the idea that of
Speaker 1: of saying that generally photography of food and a picture
Speaker 1: of some sort of a very delicious looking dish or
Speaker 1: or a beverage or something, uh is therefore therefore should
Speaker 1: be compared to pornography, which is a weird pairing because
Speaker 1: pornography is incredibly divisive in in culture. There it is
Speaker 1: it is, you know, no matter what your personal take
Speaker 1: on it. There's a lot of problematic area to consider
Speaker 1: when thinking about pornography. Why do we drag it then
Speaker 1: in to our consideration of say a very inviting looking lasagna, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be just what we're talking about with this
Speaker 1: possibility for selfie that it's like self deprecating and ironic
Speaker 1: in a way that diffuses other people's ability to criticize
Speaker 1: you for engaging in it, because it's like you're already
Speaker 1: sort of criticizing yourself, right, and I guess you're also
Speaker 1: leaning into the idea that into the the excess of
Speaker 1: pornography and and therefore diffusing this like food styling, uh
Speaker 1: you know, high art photography, food photography interpretations that might
Speaker 1: otherwise be uh applied to it. So like if you
Speaker 1: were to say, hey, I'm trying to out some food photography,
Speaker 1: then people would have it would be able to say, well, actually,
Speaker 1: i've seen professional food photography, and you know that the
Speaker 1: lighting looks weird here. Um, you know, the the phizz
Speaker 1: isn't right. It's said right. You know, we've all I
Speaker 1: think picked up on some of the various tips, tricks
Speaker 1: and and uh and illusions that are involved in that.
Speaker 1: But if you just say, oh, it's just food porn,
Speaker 1: that kind of implies that that it's it's less about
Speaker 1: the art and more about invoking a visceral bonds to
Speaker 1: the stimuli. Yeah, I think I think you're right there.
Speaker 1: So obviously words like this are are great examples of
Speaker 1: powerful lexical success stories like a selfie, of course is
Speaker 1: though probably a much greater number of newly coined words
Speaker 1: just fall by the wayside, right, you know, Instead, they
Speaker 1: become little blips in literary history that you can find
Speaker 1: in articles from a certain time period, but they just
Speaker 1: don't catch on. They don't become common, right Like I'm imagining, um,
Speaker 1: drunk injured Australian dudes say a lot of interesting things,
Speaker 1: but they don't all become parts of the global lexicon, right.
Speaker 1: And I think with these examples, the things that fall
Speaker 1: by the wayside, it might be useful to think of
Speaker 1: them as sort of failed protologisms or protologism. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going back and forth on whether that
Speaker 1: that g is hard or soft. We'll we'll just plow
Speaker 1: right through um. But the idea of a protologism is
Speaker 1: a term introduced by the Russian American UH literary theorist
Speaker 1: Mikhail in Epstein, who I believe is still a professor
Speaker 1: at Emory University here in Atlanta. Quick question, is the
Speaker 1: word protologism a protologism or a neologism? I would say
Speaker 1: at this point it is a neologism. It was originally
Speaker 1: a protology well, I guess I have to define them.
Speaker 1: So a protologism in Mikhail Epstein's definition is that it's
Speaker 1: a word that is freshly coined and hasn't yet been
Speaker 1: accepted by many speakers at all. And the evidence of
Speaker 1: this would be that it has not yet been published
Speaker 1: by anyone other than the person or group that coined it.
Speaker 1: And I imagine they're using the term published here in
Speaker 1: the broader sense, so not merely the printed word, but
Speaker 1: any kind of media publication in the same way, in
Speaker 1: the same way you might treat publishing in publication and
Speaker 1: say both libel and slander law. Right, So if you
Speaker 1: are trying to make fetch happen but nobody else is
Speaker 1: saying fetch, then it's still a protologism for you. Maybe
Speaker 1: if you get a few other people saying fetch, you're
Speaker 1: starting to make fetch happen, then it's becoming a neologism.
Speaker 1: And if it keeps going and then everybody starts using it,
Speaker 1: then it's common use. Not to say it's immortal, not
Speaker 1: to say it cannot then die, fall out of fashion,
Speaker 1: and die again, but it has at least gained a foothold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So by these standards, I would say protologism was once
Speaker 1: a protologism, but it is no longer a protologism, given
Speaker 1: that you can find articles out there that are not
Speaker 1: written by Michael Epstein himself that are using this term
Speaker 1: and talking about it, so it has probably legitimately graduated
Speaker 1: to being a fledgling neologism. It's, you know, still sort
Speaker 1: of a young word, a word that not everybody knows,
Speaker 1: but it has use outside the the original you know,
Speaker 1: like the room where it was created or the person
Speaker 1: who tried to coin it. So under this model, the
Speaker 1: progression goes like that you've a person or a group
Speaker 1: coins a new term or usage this is a protologism,
Speaker 1: and then an expanded subset of the population sort of
Speaker 1: tries out the new term for a period of time,
Speaker 1: but it still often needs to be defined or look
Speaker 1: to up. At this point you would say it's probably
Speaker 1: a neologism. And then eventually the term just becomes a
Speaker 1: word of common use. It doesn't need to be looked
Speaker 1: up or defined in the context in which it is
Speaker 1: normally used. I mean, people still have to look up
Speaker 1: all kinds of words, but like there there at least
Speaker 1: will be contexts in which the word is regularly used,
Speaker 1: and and the people within those contexts all know what
Speaker 1: it means. I'd say a good indicator here is when
Speaker 1: people mostly stop googling the word for a definition. Imagine
Speaker 1: there's a new word. Let's say it is schmirf plex,
Speaker 1: like in the first time you hear it as someone says, Hey,
Speaker 1: come to my house at eight and bring your smurf
Speaker 1: smirt plex. Well, I don't know what a smirt plex is,
Speaker 1: and that sentence gives me no context. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what I'm supposed to bring. All I know is
Speaker 1: that smirt plex can be brought. But smirt plex could
Speaker 1: be it could be an attitude, it could be it
Speaker 1: could it could be a physical thing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Or someone might say pizza cutter, Yeah, there's no way
Speaker 1: to tell. Someone might say, Gosh, I really like Dylan,
Speaker 1: I just wish he wasn't so smirt plexy. Again, no idea.
Speaker 1: That's depending on how it said. You might be able
Speaker 1: to lean into positive or negative interpretations, but beyond that
Speaker 1: hard to say. Now, if someone says I can't wait
Speaker 1: to smirt plex that slice of pizza, or do do
Speaker 1: you smirt plex that slice of pizza? In one goal.
Speaker 1: Both of these examples give you far more context for
Speaker 1: not only how it is being used, but then how
Speaker 1: it can be reused appropriately yea, or at least semi appropriately,
Speaker 1: And then with some course correction, you can wind up
Speaker 1: in a place where you were finally using this new
Speaker 1: term correctly and passing it viraly onto those around you. Well,
Speaker 1: this example brings up a great question, which is why
Speaker 1: would you bother inventing a new word for something? The
Speaker 1: side of course, to illustrate a point in a podcast, right, yes,
Speaker 1: now it's clear why you do it there, But what
Speaker 1: like what if you were actually trying to make smirt
Speaker 1: plex happen? Is there a reason you would be doing this?
Speaker 1: Maybe we should take a break and then when we
Speaker 1: come back we can talk about that. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: all right. We were asking the question of why protologisms
Speaker 1: are coined. When somebody comes up with a new word
Speaker 1: for something on purpose, Why does that happen? One pretty
Speaker 1: important reason for coining into a new term, obviously, I
Speaker 1: think it comes about often in science, and that's discovering
Speaker 1: a new process or proposing a new theory. You're essentially
Speaker 1: saying we have new new content in the world. Now,
Speaker 1: and we need a word to describe it. It's not
Speaker 1: something that you're already familiar with that we just wanted
Speaker 1: a different word for right. So I found a short
Speaker 1: article from two thousand eleven by Andrew Moore, who's the
Speaker 1: editor in chief of a journal called bio Essays, and
Speaker 1: in this article he talks about the importance of neologisms
Speaker 1: and the sciences, and he writes the following. Neologisms or
Speaker 1: protologisms quote may be considered seductive in two senses. Firstly,
Speaker 1: because their creators are seduced by the ability need to
Speaker 1: express a potentially new scientific concept in language, a creative
Speaker 1: act that might stake their claim as the first to
Speaker 1: discover something. Secondly, because they often find favor in the
Speaker 1: rest of the scientific community for their conciseness. So here
Speaker 1: more argues that in the science is protologisms play multiple roles.
Speaker 1: The first, of course, is the straightforward utility, being that
Speaker 1: they are concise. So like once Charles Barnes invented the
Speaker 1: word photosynthesis, it was much more convenient to just say
Speaker 1: photosynthesis than to say the process by which autotrophic organisms
Speaker 1: like plants use energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: and water into sugars, rolls off the tongue much better,
Speaker 1: right You. You don't want to have to explain that
Speaker 1: process every time you talk about it. You can just
Speaker 1: use the one new word now. And new terms appear
Speaker 1: in the sciences all the time because they're indisputably useful.
Speaker 1: They save time, they save space, and now now you
Speaker 1: all have the same word you can refer to when
Speaker 1: you're talking about something, so you know you're talking about
Speaker 1: the same thing. In addition to that, though that this
Speaker 1: thing more is drawing attention to, is that they may
Speaker 1: play a psychological and social role within their use in
Speaker 1: the sciences because the neologism number one, it helps its
Speaker 1: coiner secure credit for having identified or proposed the thing
Speaker 1: or the hypothesis in question. And I think this is
Speaker 1: really truly the case. I think how often on this
Speaker 1: very show, historical priority for discoveries and inventions is in
Speaker 1: fact a disputed, but we generally end up trying to
Speaker 1: give recognition to the first person to use the same
Speaker 1: word that everybody still uses for the thing. Right. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: when when someone is calling the particular invention by a
Speaker 1: different term, it's sort of implied that they didn't have
Speaker 1: it figured out all the way, right even maybe even
Speaker 1: if that person was more important in the in the
Speaker 1: technological discoveries that led to the to the invention, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because ultimately, yeah, that the spread of the name is
Speaker 1: tied with the spread of the idea. I feel like
Speaker 1: we have repeatedly run into this in invention history, where
Speaker 1: you know, somebody else's work was more pivotal, but ultimately
Speaker 1: credit goes to the person who came up with the word.
Speaker 1: But then, the other point is that the new word
Speaker 1: also makes other scientists more likely to remember and discuss
Speaker 1: your hypothesis or discovery, because it's easier to talk about
Speaker 1: when it has a name, especially if it has a
Speaker 1: catchy name. Uh So more rights. He gives an example quote.
Speaker 1: It is said that kur at All, in their landmark
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two paper, coined the term apoptosis, and of
Speaker 1: course that means um, you know, programmed cell death within
Speaker 1: the body uh from the Greek apo meaning from and
Speaker 1: potosis meaning falling uh to sound similar to necrosis, it's
Speaker 1: biological counterpart. Though at the time more than a few
Speaker 1: scientists doubted that the new word was anything more than
Speaker 1: an impostor disguising a specific case of necrosis. It's certainly
Speaker 1: helped to catapult the concept into new realms of attention
Speaker 1: and hence testability. So this is interesting. It's like if
Speaker 1: you're a scientist, you've got a new phenomenon you you
Speaker 1: think you've discovered, or a hypothesis you want more people
Speaker 1: to investigate. If you come up with a good word
Speaker 1: for it, other scientists are more likely to pay attention
Speaker 1: and start putting your idea to the test. In a
Speaker 1: weird way. To come back to the invention parallels, it's
Speaker 1: very much like branding and marketing. Yeah, I think evolution
Speaker 1: is another great example of this. You know, like the
Speaker 1: term uh so nicely sums up what is otherwise a
Speaker 1: fairly complicated process that might not roll off the tongue
Speaker 1: as easily. Oh and this was huge at the time,
Speaker 1: with you know, Darwin agonizing over what was the best
Speaker 1: terminology to use to explain in a simple way his
Speaker 1: complex ideas, Like there was the competition within the theory
Speaker 1: for you know, was it better to call it natural
Speaker 1: selection or survival of the fittest. We have an episode
Speaker 1: of stuff to blow your mind where we talk about
Speaker 1: just like the fight back and forth between those two
Speaker 1: terms which sort of described the same thing, but they
Speaker 1: have different marketing appeals. Now, the other side of the
Speaker 1: coin and all of this is is that why while
Speaker 1: the use of words like this can certainly make it
Speaker 1: easier to communicate about topics within the sciences, there's there
Speaker 1: is evidence to indicate that it can in some cases
Speaker 1: make it harder for those outside the field to understand
Speaker 1: what's being discussed. Uh. And then this can often result
Speaker 1: in a in a lack of interest in science or
Speaker 1: politics is another example that's brought up or a feeling
Speaker 1: that one is not good at science or politics, you
Speaker 1: know and so so not not an idea that you
Speaker 1: don't understand it and maybe you can't understand it. Um.
Speaker 1: This according to a fairly recent study from Hilary Shulman,
Speaker 1: Assistant Professor of Communication at the Ohio State University. UM,
Speaker 1: you just came out in a patst couple of months. Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea is that the the specialized terms they're looking at,
Speaker 1: we're proving to be a stumbling block to interest. And
Speaker 1: this of course just drives home the importance of science
Speaker 1: communication and journalism in the fields of science and politics,
Speaker 1: because obviously you need those specialized terms within science, within
Speaker 1: the sciences, within like you know, academic discussion of politics, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But then if you were going to convey those ideas
Speaker 1: to the to the world outside of that in group,
Speaker 1: you have to have more generalized terminology. You have to
Speaker 1: find to have a way of reaching him, at least
Speaker 1: until those terms become so widely used that you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about it, right, I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there are different considerations in play in these different
Speaker 1: types of communication. I mean in scientific publications. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: would waste a lot of space if you couldn't use
Speaker 1: technical jargon. It just like allows you to say a
Speaker 1: lot more in a lot less words, right, And a
Speaker 1: lot of this also comes down to intended audience as well, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the average person on the street is not
Speaker 1: the intended reader for an academic neuroscience paper. Likewise, I
Speaker 1: am not the the intended listener for a you know,
Speaker 1: a very specific nineties dance hall uh reggae tune. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: I have to come to it as an outsider. And
Speaker 1: now it's possible that you know, years or decades down
Speaker 1: the road, some of those terminal terms become part of
Speaker 1: the general lexicon in either example. But it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to be the case. Now there are examples, clearly,
Speaker 1: I think where what you're talking about, though, where technical
Speaker 1: language is just purely counterproductive, or at least counterproductive given
Speaker 1: what somebody might state their their aims are, maybe not
Speaker 1: to what their actual aims are. Joe, are you saying
Speaker 1: that it's time to synergize backwards overflow? I think it's
Speaker 1: time to talk a little bit about corporate speak. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so, of course one of my favorite sources of
Speaker 1: everyday comedy and shame is corporate speak, this vast, shallow
Speaker 1: cool of business neologisms that I sometimes imagine us just
Speaker 1: sort of spending our days ladling over one another, like
Speaker 1: so much stagnant pond water. We have to swim through
Speaker 1: it from time to time. Yeah, And there was recently
Speaker 1: a really excellent article I thought on corporate speak in
Speaker 1: New York Magazine. It was from February of this year,
Speaker 1: so by Molly Young called garbage language. Why do corporations
Speaker 1: speak the way they do? Uh? In my opinion, this
Speaker 1: was a very funny and insightful article on on the
Speaker 1: phenomena of business buzzwords, which she calls garbage language, taking
Speaker 1: the term from a novelist, and by that you might
Speaker 1: guess where she stands on the subject. And of course
Speaker 1: this kind of language is easy to hate, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't make her wrong. She begins with an example of
Speaker 1: a corporate word that she encountered at a startup where
Speaker 1: she recently worked. Quote. The term was parallel path. And
Speaker 1: I first heard it in this sentence, we're waiting on
Speaker 1: specs from the San Francisco installation. Can you pari well
Speaker 1: path two versions? Translated, this means we're waiting on specs
Speaker 1: from the San Francisco installation? Can you make two versions?
Speaker 1: So she summarizes, in other words, to parallel path is
Speaker 1: to do two things at once. That's all. But it
Speaker 1: gives it this kind of It almost has like a
Speaker 1: Buddhist air to it. Right, there's a middle path, parallel paths.
Speaker 1: It sounds far more peaceful than can you do twice
Speaker 1: as much work as we originally talked about. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know you've probably heard me complain about this on
Speaker 1: one of our shows before. This kind of thing is
Speaker 1: so annoying to me, and I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: I understand the creation of new technical terms in business
Speaker 1: when they function the way that words normally do, right
Speaker 1: by putting a concise name to something that would otherwise
Speaker 1: require more explanation. And I think there are plenty of
Speaker 1: perfectly legitimate business terms that are actually useful, and they
Speaker 1: could be compared to specific technical jargon, and like medicine
Speaker 1: or the science is one example. Here might be the
Speaker 1: original use of disruption or disruptive. Like originally this referred
Speaker 1: to a specific thing. It wasn't a new word, but
Speaker 1: it was a word that gained a new usage in
Speaker 1: a business context. And uh, this was coined by a
Speaker 1: guy named Clayton Christensen in the nineties, and it referred
Speaker 1: to like an innovation that creates a new market and
Speaker 1: a new type of value, displacing old markets and old values.
Speaker 1: So an example might be the mass production of automobiles
Speaker 1: with the Model T, which isn't just a new competitor
Speaker 1: and entering a market, but it completely kind of disrupts
Speaker 1: the transportation market. It, you know, upsets the old like
Speaker 1: traditional horse and buggy market. Uh. But even with this word,
Speaker 1: which originally I think has a specific meaning and is useful,
Speaker 1: I think there's a kind of semantic creep, right, whereover
Speaker 1: time its meaning becomes less specific and people start using
Speaker 1: the word disruption or disruptive to just refer to any
Speaker 1: business innovation or maneuver that they want to be seen
Speaker 1: as new and dynamic. It's like it's like using the
Speaker 1: word like powerful or strong. You see people describing business
Speaker 1: things as disruptive that are in no way really changing markets,
Speaker 1: are creating new markets. They're just like they're just saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna be big, We're gonna spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money on this and enter the market. So
Speaker 1: some words really have a meaning, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: a lot of corporate speak just feels like replacing one
Speaker 1: number of normal, understandable words with an equal number or
Speaker 1: more of confusing, buzzy technical words. There's no efficiency advantage
Speaker 1: in the communication. The communication becomes understandable by a smaller
Speaker 1: number of people. Why does this happen well? With regard
Speaker 1: to the idea of a parallel path, Young continues quote,
Speaker 1: I thought there was something gorgeously and inadvertently candid about
Speaker 1: the phrases assumption that a person would ever not be
Speaker 1: doing more than one thing at a time in an office.
Speaker 1: It's denial that the whole point of having an office
Speaker 1: job is to multitask in effectively instead of single tasking effectively.
Speaker 1: Why invent a term for what people were already forced
Speaker 1: to do? It was, and it's fakery and puffery and
Speaker 1: lack of a reason to exist. The perfect corporate neologism
Speaker 1: now hold on. One can multitask and effectively at home
Speaker 1: as well as in the office. That's quite true. I
Speaker 1: think we can all attest to that. But but no,
Speaker 1: I get their point here. As she discusses a bunch
Speaker 1: more examples, I think I'd say the article is very
Speaker 1: worth reading. And of course she's fairly merciless and hypothesizing
Speaker 1: the reasons these terms are often used. For example, she
Speaker 1: says that you know, some corporate speak simply reflects a
Speaker 1: desire to reimagine exactly what type of work it is
Speaker 1: you're doing and what that work means. She says, quote,
Speaker 1: our attraction to certain words surely reflects an inner yearning.
Speaker 1: Computer metaphors appeal to us because they imply futurism and
Speaker 1: hyper efficiency, while the language of self empowerment hides a
Speaker 1: deeper anxiety about our relationship to work, a sense that
Speaker 1: what we're doing may actually be trivial, that the reward
Speaker 1: of free snacks for cultural fealty is not an exchange
Speaker 1: that benefits us, that none of this was worth going
Speaker 1: into student debt for, and that we could be fired
Speaker 1: instantly for complaining on Slack about it. And she ends
Speaker 1: this uh string of thoughts by saying, empowerment language is
Speaker 1: a self marketing asset as much as anything else, a
Speaker 1: way of selling our jobs back to ourselves. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of truth to that. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: a lot of times it does seem very you know,
Speaker 1: intentionally euphemistic, you know, to try to having to explain
Speaker 1: describe something in terms that are less damaging or more positive.
Speaker 1: Like one example that comes to mind is is something
Speaker 1: that's used a lot in business speaking, that's pivoting, you know,
Speaker 1: pivoting to video, for example, which sounds a lot better
Speaker 1: than you know, drastically or recklessly changing course or being
Speaker 1: thrown in the throne off course by you know, the
Speaker 1: slightest change and the winds of of of public demand
Speaker 1: and business. That sort of thing, Uh, pivot sounds like
Speaker 1: very geometric, you know, it sounds very precise and premeditated.
Speaker 1: It's what your office chair does when you turn to
Speaker 1: look at your other monitor, an obvious one about obvious.
Speaker 1: One of these euphemisms is just trying to cover up
Speaker 1: hard truths. Is like when I don't know all of
Speaker 1: the buzzy corporate words for basically firing people. Oh yeah, like,
Speaker 1: are you gonna fire people? Are you going to terminate people?
Speaker 1: Are you going to engage in a strategic head count reduction?
Speaker 1: Or a new one? This was one that only came
Speaker 1: out recently to my knowledge, employment dislocation, which when I
Speaker 1: first read it, I had no idea what it meant.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I guess they moved their jobs
Speaker 1: to another city, like there's there's a geographic change, and
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't that bad. And I think, now what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is just people being terminated. I mean,
Speaker 1: but but then again, you know, look at it from
Speaker 1: a business's standpoint and like, no, what business is going
Speaker 1: to you know, send out a corporate email and begin
Speaker 1: by saying, who, we just really had a blood bath. Everybody.
Speaker 1: If you're reading this, you're all right, but you know, no, no,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna engage in that kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: intercommunication about what has happened or out of communication you're
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna want to put a positive spin on
Speaker 1: it and leave the negative interpretations to other folks to do.
Speaker 1: What do you know? One of the worst things about
Speaker 1: this type of language is as much as I hate it,
Speaker 1: I sometimes find myself unconsciously using it in work emails
Speaker 1: and stuff I don't mean to, but it infects you.
Speaker 1: Here's the Well, here's one that we've I've seen used
Speaker 1: to hear at work from time to time. What happens
Speaker 1: when a new podcast or even an older podcast UH
Speaker 1: is not living up to expectations? Well, do you just
Speaker 1: cancel it? Do you terminate it? Or do you son
Speaker 1: set it? That's one of those great examples. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that Young talks about a lot
Speaker 1: in the article is the recent explosion of new ag
Speaker 1: language in UH in business, you know, corporate speak, Like
Speaker 1: there are these phases where corporate speak in the eighties
Speaker 1: was infected with all these Wall Street style terms, and
Speaker 1: in the nineties there was a lot of there was
Speaker 1: a lot of like war and battle type language in
Speaker 1: corporate speak. And for some reason, now we're in an
Speaker 1: age of new age kind of mystical corporate speak. Are
Speaker 1: they saying things like, alright, it's time to really open
Speaker 1: up the chakras on this new ad campaign. I think
Speaker 1: there are some things like that. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it probably comes from the tech world actually, where
Speaker 1: they're you know, there are a ton of people in
Speaker 1: the tech world who are also plugged into like Eastern
Speaker 1: religion and stuff, so so I guess you could say
Speaker 1: a lot of it is is tied to in these
Speaker 1: cases to putting a new spin on something that is familiar. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like taking something that may seem even exotic and using
Speaker 1: that is a way to recast something that is for
Speaker 1: far more ordinary. Yeah, I think there there are several
Speaker 1: reasons we can come away with here why we often
Speaker 1: see the introduction of neologisms in the corporate world. One
Speaker 1: is to sort of reimagine or put a new psychological
Speaker 1: spin on what it is you're doing that you know,
Speaker 1: makes it feel maybe more spiritual, or makes it feel
Speaker 1: more combative or something whatever it is that gets you
Speaker 1: amped up. Another is to be euphemistic, to like to
Speaker 1: take hard truths and make them sound like something different
Speaker 1: than they are. And then I would say there is
Speaker 1: another one, which is just a desire to sound professional,
Speaker 1: like there's this idea that okay, where are people definitely
Speaker 1: doing real work. One place you know that they're doing
Speaker 1: that is like in the sciences and in engineering and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they have lots of technical jargon, you know. But
Speaker 1: in the sciences and engineering you probably need a lot
Speaker 1: of technical jargon that is not actually there's nothing equivalent
Speaker 1: to it that's necessary in a normal office. But you
Speaker 1: have this desire to feel like you are accomplishing things
Speaker 1: at the same level as the sciences are in engineering.
Speaker 1: And then of course to come back to politics, and
Speaker 1: politics is very much an example of of of of
Speaker 1: a situation where you're needing to continually spin things, uh,
Speaker 1: either in one direction or the other and uh, and
Speaker 1: in doing so you come up with different different terminologies
Speaker 1: to different descriptions of of what of things that are
Speaker 1: essentially the same. Yes, I think that fits more in
Speaker 1: with the the one about you know, wanting to reimagine
Speaker 1: your job or sell your job back to yourself with
Speaker 1: you know, new uh corporate neologisms because they help you
Speaker 1: feel a certain way. You know, in politics, obviously you're
Speaker 1: trying to make other people feel a certain way about
Speaker 1: a concept by using pushy terminology about it all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna get into a little bit of
Speaker 1: science fiction e territory here as we look at a
Speaker 1: couple of examples of of new words that came up
Speaker 1: on us and and some of their their their fictional origins,
Speaker 1: but also some of the fictional engines that help them
Speaker 1: reach their place in our lexicon. Alright, we're back, So
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a couple more interesting examples
Speaker 1: of invented words and what they tell us about the
Speaker 1: you know, the the process by which words are coined.
Speaker 1: The next one I think is interesting because it's common
Speaker 1: usage is so uh intention with the spirit of its coinage.
Speaker 1: And that word is robot, right and boy, And this
Speaker 1: is one that is um. Robot is so broadly used
Speaker 1: these days to things that are perhaps not technically robots
Speaker 1: get called robots um, and the things that sometimes things
Speaker 1: that are for all intents and purposes robots don't get
Speaker 1: called robot. It's uh, it's it's a weird one. So
Speaker 1: will be a wonderful journey. So you could be forgiven
Speaker 1: for assuming that the word robot was coined by an inventor, right,
Speaker 1: somebody who maybe somebody who made automata or somebody who
Speaker 1: created an early autonomous machine. But no, not at all.
Speaker 1: This invented word, like so many others we have discussed,
Speaker 1: actually comes from a work of fiction. That work was
Speaker 1: a play called are You Are, which stood for Rossom's
Speaker 1: Universal Robots. And this was a play written by the
Speaker 1: check writer and intellectual Karl Choppeck. It premiered in nineteen one,
Speaker 1: and it's basic plot was that an inventor named Rossum
Speaker 1: creates a series of artificial humans to serve as slaves
Speaker 1: for regular humans. But these slaves ultimately revolt against their
Speaker 1: human creators and they basically kill all the humans and
Speaker 1: they take over, and then they find out, oh no,
Speaker 1: we don't know how to make more of ourselves. But
Speaker 1: these slaves in the play are known as robots. And
Speaker 1: this word is not invented out of whole cloth. It's
Speaker 1: adapted from a check word. I think that comes from
Speaker 1: an old Slavonic term. Uh. The word is robot to
Speaker 1: r O b O t a, which means forced labor
Speaker 1: or servitude. It is the kind of labor that would
Speaker 1: have been done by surfs under feudalism. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: this idea of a robot is somewhat different from what
Speaker 1: it usually means today. Today, a robot is generally some
Speaker 1: kind of machine that operates with some degree of independence
Speaker 1: and moves with some degree of freedom, mimicking human or
Speaker 1: animal movement. You can tell from what I just said,
Speaker 1: of course, that the concept is actually a little bit hazy,
Speaker 1: even though it is so widely used. But the robots
Speaker 1: in Shopics Play, while they are manufactured products, are not
Speaker 1: depicted as being mechanical machines made out of metal. They're closer,
Speaker 1: I think, to the replicants of Blade Runner. They are
Speaker 1: sort of like basically humans in every respect, except they
Speaker 1: are manufactured instead born, And the comparison to Blade Runner
Speaker 1: is very close when you look at some of the
Speaker 1: texts in the play. For example, there's this part where
Speaker 1: there's a triumphal speech given by a robot named Radius
Speaker 1: after he and the other robot rebels sees power from
Speaker 1: the humans. Roddy As says, quote, the power of man
Speaker 1: has fallen. By gaining possession of the factory, we have
Speaker 1: become masters of everything. The period of mankind has passed away.
Speaker 1: A new world has arisen. Mankind is no more mankind
Speaker 1: gave us two little life. We wanted more life. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's Roy Batty, right, yeah, you can just you can
Speaker 1: envision him giving that speech. And so it makes me
Speaker 1: think that Are you Are must have directly inspired Blade Runner. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly really Scott's adaptation of the original Philip K. Dick,
Speaker 1: Uh do Android's stream of Electric Sheep. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that line is in the Philip K. Dick. I don't.
Speaker 1: It's when a long time, so they're reddit, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that as being parted. Like I remember
Speaker 1: picking up that is. I think that was the first
Speaker 1: phil K Dick book I read, and my experience was
Speaker 1: probably like a lot of people would pick it up
Speaker 1: expecting Blade Runner at the film and it's you get
Speaker 1: something different. Is there are a lot of differences between
Speaker 1: the novel and the book is great, but oh it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: It's very different. It's very different. The book is wonderful
Speaker 1: for the kind of state of unreality that it conjures
Speaker 1: because of like the moments where the main character starts
Speaker 1: to wonder if he is real or not. It's very
Speaker 1: Philip K. Dick I was. I would remember being so
Speaker 1: excited to read Blade Runner that I even read another
Speaker 1: another novel that was called Blade Runner. There was like
Speaker 1: a futuristic sci fi world about. It had to do
Speaker 1: with like a medical um, a medical black market, like
Speaker 1: generally somebody who's running like surgical blades. Did this come
Speaker 1: out after the movie? This was like, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: when it came out. I just remember finding a what
Speaker 1: felt like an old book in my school library and
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, it's close enough, I'll read
Speaker 1: the whole thing. So I remember being entertaining, but it
Speaker 1: also not Late Runner. Well, anyway, I was reading a
Speaker 1: good article about this in the m I. T Press
Speaker 1: by a Penn State professor named John im Jordan's uh.
Speaker 1: And Jordan lays out some interesting context for are you
Speaker 1: are uh? He writes of Choppe quote. Like many of
Speaker 1: his peers, he was appalled by the carnage wrought by
Speaker 1: the mechanical and chemical weapons that marked World War One
Speaker 1: as a departure from previous combat. He was also deeply
Speaker 1: skeptical of the utopian notions of science and technology. And
Speaker 1: you should remember that this was a time of great
Speaker 1: technological utopianism. You know, remember our episodes on the invention
Speaker 1: of the supposed death ray in this period, which despite
Speaker 1: the name, was actually pitched as something beautiful and humane.
Speaker 1: It was a technology that would end all possibility of war,
Speaker 1: It would bring about an era of peace and harmony.
Speaker 1: And the death ray was by far, you know, not
Speaker 1: the only example. This was the time of you know,
Speaker 1: Tesla and Marconi in so many others fielding the idea
Speaker 1: that coming technologies would eliminate war and disease and want.
Speaker 1: But of course there were many others like Chopek who
Speaker 1: reacted to the technological horrors of World War One with
Speaker 1: skepticism about the promises of of new science and technology.
Speaker 1: Uh and so, yeah, he's criticizing this idea of of
Speaker 1: science that is that is not concerned with big questions,
Speaker 1: or with ethics, or or even the the ultimate purpose
Speaker 1: of its own endeavor, That is just concerned with like
Speaker 1: what sort of leverage it can have over the physical world,
Speaker 1: what can you produce? But Jordan's characterizes chop x opinion
Speaker 1: on mechanization by saying, quote, when mechanization overtakes basic human traits,
Speaker 1: people lose the ability to reproduce, as robots increase in capability, vitality,
Speaker 1: and self awareness, humans become more like their machines. Humans
Speaker 1: and robots, in chop x critique are essentially one and
Speaker 1: the same. The measure of worth industrial productivity is one
Speaker 1: by the robots that can do the work of two
Speaker 1: and half men. Such a contest implicitly critiques the efficiency
Speaker 1: movement that emerged just before World War One, which ignored
Speaker 1: many essential human traits. Of course, this makes me think
Speaker 1: about Dune, right, the implications of the past but lerry
Speaker 1: a jihad, that's right, hey, when which humans rise up
Speaker 1: against the rule of machines. But it's implied, it's certainly
Speaker 1: in the original books that it's not just a it's
Speaker 1: not simply a matter of rising up against machine overlords
Speaker 1: in the physical totalitarian sense, but in a philosophical sense,
Speaker 1: the idea that the machine way of life, the machine
Speaker 1: way of thinking, has corrupted what it is to be
Speaker 1: human exactly. Yes, it's not just that they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: enemies that are trying to rule us. They've changed our
Speaker 1: nature and we don't want that. Yeah. But anyway, given
Speaker 1: the views of the play, there's just some intense irony
Speaker 1: that this is actually the terminology that was adopted by
Speaker 1: people who would end up wanting to make autonomous machines
Speaker 1: for a living, like you know. And of course I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to go into robotics.
Speaker 1: I think robots canna have a lot of wonderful uses. Yes, certainly.
Speaker 1: But the term you're using is saying like I want
Speaker 1: to go into robotics, is like literally like I want
Speaker 1: to go into creating slaves that will destroy our spirit
Speaker 1: and render us useless. Yeah, that's fascinating. One last thing
Speaker 1: about the word robot. It's pronunciation also appears to have
Speaker 1: changed over time. At various times it might have been
Speaker 1: pronounced more like a robot robot? Is it ever bot?
Speaker 1: Was it ever pronounced robot like Zoidberg does its futurama?
Speaker 1: I think maybe at some point it was there. There
Speaker 1: have been multiple different ways of saying now speaking of
Speaker 1: technological fear and apprehension. Um, the next word we're going
Speaker 1: to consider here is is a perfect extension of this
Speaker 1: and ties into some of these same themes, and that
Speaker 1: is of course clone. So clone was apparently first recorded,
Speaker 1: uh to have been used somewhere between nineteen and nineteen
Speaker 1: o five, and it's from the Greek word clone, a
Speaker 1: slip a twig with clear botanical roots. Here. Plant physiologist
Speaker 1: Herbert J. Webber coined the term in reference to the
Speaker 1: technique for propagating new plants UH through the use of cuttings, bulbs,
Speaker 1: and buds. And I was reading about this, UH in
Speaker 1: an interview that Science Friday in their Science Diction series
Speaker 1: UH conducted with Harold Marco, professor of History of Medicine
Speaker 1: at the University of Michigan, and Ann Arbor UH. And
Speaker 1: one thing that Marco pointed out is that Webber was
Speaker 1: kind of trying to decide what term to use, Like
Speaker 1: you didn't just fire from the hip here and think,
Speaker 1: all right, what is the what? What? What words should
Speaker 1: I use? Maybe with some of those considerations we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier exactly. Yeah. So one of the other, like
Speaker 1: major contender that he came up with is actually pretty great. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is the word strength, a combination of strain and wraith. Wow.
Speaker 1: But he, you know, decided it was too clumsy. But
Speaker 1: that being said, I want there's got to be a
Speaker 1: sci fi treatment out there, UM, somewhere where someone has
Speaker 1: decided to abandon the word clone and just talk about streiths. UH.
Speaker 1: Like that that just changes the whole situation. Imagine, if
Speaker 1: you will, if throughout the Star Wars universe, instead of
Speaker 1: saying clone, they said straight yeah, like that would have
Speaker 1: had it would have made it feel it would have
Speaker 1: been rooted in the actual origin of our usage of clone,
Speaker 1: but it would have given it this slightly different feel
Speaker 1: and indeed strength with its Wraith connotation. It feels a
Speaker 1: little weird or like it's more in line with well,
Speaker 1: it's good to come back to Herbert. The use of
Speaker 1: the golas in Dune, you know where you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't call them clones, It call you know,
Speaker 1: calls them goulas, creates this new word that drags in
Speaker 1: other um, other you know, feelings, other words, other connotations.
Speaker 1: So um and anyway, Marco, you know, as this concept
Speaker 1: steadily took off, you saw it u a lot in
Speaker 1: the agricultural world world because that's of course where it
Speaker 1: was originally utilized. But then it bleeds over into science fiction. However,
Speaker 1: there are cases where you could have seen someone use
Speaker 1: clone a lot more of where they did. In for instance,
Speaker 1: Huxley in Brave New World doesn't refer to it as cloning,
Speaker 1: refers to instead as the Bakonovsky process. But uh, but
Speaker 1: Market points to two specific uses of clone in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies that really helped to push it into the
Speaker 1: popular lexicon, the first of which is Alvin and Heidi
Speaker 1: Toffler's best seller Future Shock from the year nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: I know you like this and the Weird Orson Welles documentary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the weird the weird Horson Weil documentary, which I recommend
Speaker 1: looking up on YouTube, is great and a little bit cheesy.
Speaker 1: The work of the Tofflers throughout their career, they wrote
Speaker 1: various texts of futurism, texts where they're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: trends and how we how we um anticipate and receive
Speaker 1: new technologies, and generally the idea of future shock is
Speaker 1: the idea that the world is changing so rapidly, there's
Speaker 1: all these new technologies coming online that it overwhelms us
Speaker 1: and we feel the sense of future shock. Uh And
Speaker 1: and even today it's a you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: work that is to a certain extent dated by their
Speaker 1: later works. You know that they spent their their lives,
Speaker 1: they spent their careers covering this, uh, this area of
Speaker 1: consideration but it's still a very readable text, and I
Speaker 1: recommend it that this is a This is a line
Speaker 1: from Future This is a paragraph from Future Shock, where
Speaker 1: the Tofflers discuss this quote. One of the more fascinating
Speaker 1: possibilities is that man will be able to make biological
Speaker 1: carbon copies of himself through a process known as cloning.
Speaker 1: It will be possible to grow from the nucleus of
Speaker 1: an adult sell a new organism that has the same
Speaker 1: genetic characteristics of the person contributing the cell nucleus. The
Speaker 1: resultant human copy would start life with a genetic endowment
Speaker 1: identical to that of the donor, although cultural differences might
Speaker 1: thereafter alter personality or physical development of the clone. And
Speaker 1: uh Interestingly enough, in that Science Friday interview, Howard Marcle
Speaker 1: pointed to another work from the seventies, this time of
Speaker 1: fictional work venties six novel by Ira Levin, The Boys
Speaker 1: from Brazil. Oh, the one about don't they want to
Speaker 1: clone Another Hitler? Yeah, it's a It concerns a a
Speaker 1: fictional plot where you have uh not Nazi ex pats
Speaker 1: living in South America who are hatching a scheme to
Speaker 1: clone at off Hitler. Uh, you know, using cloning technology
Speaker 1: to create all of these uh the these these male children,
Speaker 1: and then trying to figure out how to raise them
Speaker 1: so that you can nurture their genetic legacy into you know,
Speaker 1: I guess the ideal form of the fere um, which
Speaker 1: I know. There are a lot of problems with this plot,
Speaker 1: a lot of holes in this plot, but it was
Speaker 1: a very popular work and they made a pretty uh
Speaker 1: I remember being a pretty entertaining film version of this
Speaker 1: as well, and which Greg Repact plays uh uh Dr
Speaker 1: Joseph Mangela, but also Laurence Olivier is the good guy,
Speaker 1: right hunter um yeah, And so I I have very
Speaker 1: vague memories of this film. I think I saw it
Speaker 1: on American movie Classics back in the day, but I
Speaker 1: remember it. I remember it being disturbing and effective in places.
Speaker 1: I never read the book myself, but I was leafing.
Speaker 1: I picked up grabbed a copy of it and leaf
Speaker 1: through it before we were we recorded this with this episode,
Speaker 1: and I did run across the passage where one character
Speaker 1: is telling another about the origin of the word clone
Speaker 1: and referring to the uh you know, the Greek and
Speaker 1: the uh and the the the botanical origins of the term.
Speaker 1: Uh So, anyway, I guess the idea here is that,
Speaker 1: you know, you have two popular works that are using
Speaker 1: the word clone, and they helped to sort of boost
Speaker 1: the signal throughout uh, you know, the fictional world and
Speaker 1: just the the the popular conceptions of the science itself.
Speaker 1: One of the funny things though, in this selection you
Speaker 1: pulled out is that one character says that the old
Speaker 1: word for cloning was mono nuclear reproduction, and then complains,
Speaker 1: why would you coin a new word like clone when
Speaker 1: the old ones convey more? The other character says, cloning
Speaker 1: is shorter. Oh, yes, how true coloss Uh yeah, and uh.
Speaker 1: I was going to actually read this this uh this
Speaker 1: bit from the Boys from Brazil, but I thought it
Speaker 1: might be a little confusing because the the character that
Speaker 1: is explaining it mentions a different biologists and mentions in
Speaker 1: English biologists by the name of Haldane, which I thought
Speaker 1: might confuse people who were listening to the origin story
Speaker 1: that we've presented thus far. Okay, well, I hope I
Speaker 1: didn't confuse anybody. But I like how they reproduced the
Speaker 1: same conversation. It's interesting and it is again worth I think,
Speaker 1: stressing the importance of science fiction especially with scientific terminology,
Speaker 1: because there are plenty of other examples where a bit
Speaker 1: uh like an idea is presented first in science fiction
Speaker 1: and then gets picked up as a possibility within the sciences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might think that somebody created a robot and then
Speaker 1: came up with the name robot, but no, yeah goodness.
Speaker 1: And this is without even getting into the situation where
Speaker 1: you have fictional worlds that in which the creator comes
Speaker 1: up with their own lexicon for like a an alternate
Speaker 1: reality or futuristic reality like one of them. Think the
Speaker 1: more jarring examples of this would be a clockwork orange
Speaker 1: or inn In Banks wrote a book called Fearsome Engine
Speaker 1: that is totally a totally um worthwhile read. But it
Speaker 1: has like I think, three different perspectives in it, and
Speaker 1: one of them is a is is is written in
Speaker 1: this futuristic slang, and it's really really takes a little
Speaker 1: bit of getting used to before you're rolling with it
Speaker 1: and understanding what the character is saying. Um now, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it's arguable to what extent those
Speaker 1: kind of exercises ever actually produced new words, but there's
Speaker 1: certainly the potentiality is there, um, you know, any time
Speaker 1: any time a new word is presented, you're you're putting
Speaker 1: out the possibility that it could, uh, it could become
Speaker 1: a part of language itself. Yeah, I guess, so, I
Speaker 1: guess you can't know what uh, you can't know when
Speaker 1: you're making a word happen? Right? Can you introduce something
Speaker 1: and it's like, I don't know, it's it's in their
Speaker 1: hands now? Yeah? All right, Well, you know, hopefully this
Speaker 1: we received a lot of great feedback from our previous
Speaker 1: episode on invented words, so hopefully we'll hear a lot
Speaker 1: of great feedback on this episode as well. We would
Speaker 1: obviously love to hear everyone's thoughts on on new words
Speaker 1: that they've picked up, new words that you've rejected, or
Speaker 1: are there words from science fiction specifically that you find
Speaker 1: yourself using within a particular in group or a fandom.
Speaker 1: Are there are there some that you wish would be
Speaker 1: picked up by the by the wider world at large?
Speaker 1: What are the worst business neologisms you've to deal with
Speaker 1: on a regular basis? Please share those with us for sure?
Speaker 1: Or the best you know? Again, I don't want to
Speaker 1: deny sometimes they might be useful. Sometimes they're very useful,
Speaker 1: all right, you say with utter despair. No all right.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Invention, you will find this show anywhere you
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Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.
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