Friday, May 04, 2018
Who's the Darwinian 2
As usual, BBC's non-news departments know how to write a true and objective article, even while their "news" departments are vending genocidal hallucinations. This time it's an article on forming and spreading new words.
The researcher behind the study, Jack Grieve at the University of Birmingham, analysed more than 980 million Tweets in total – consisting of 8.9 billion words – posted between October 2013 and November 2014, and spanning 3,075 of the 3,108 US counties. From this huge dataset, Grieve first identified any terms that were rare at the beginning of the study (occurring less than once per billion words in the last quarter of 2013) but which had then steadily risen in popularity over the course of the following year. ... Once again, the greatest creativity appeared to arise in the regions with the largest African American populations.The author gets EVERYTHING right, unlike most writers or commenters on word formation. New words and syntax always come from the proles. In England it's the Cockneys, not the nobles. In America it's the blacks, not the Ivy League academics. Why? When you're immersed in a culture of personal connections, dealing directly with harsh reality, you need to describe new situations accurately. When you're immersed in an arid desert of pure orthodox verbal doctrine and theory, you need to adhere rigidly to the verbal formulas of the rigid doctrine.
Labels: Answered better than asked
¶ 11:51 PM
