{"id":1009,"date":"2014-09-19T12:39:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T11:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2014-09-19T12:39:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T11:39:02","slug":"essentially-spoken-words-are-awesome-the-guardian-1992014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=1009","title":{"rendered":"Essentially, spoken words are awesome (The Guardian 19\/9\/2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If our most-used words are anything to go by, we spend too much time on Google and are obsessed with smartphones. Is language that transparent?<\/span><\/p>\n

How zeitgeisty are you feeling today? If you\u2019re not awe-struck, you may want to check your credentials.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Spoken British National Corpus<\/a>\u00a0recently released initial findings from a small pilot of its study into the words most characteristic of the decade so far. The study, by Lancaster University\u2019s faculty of arts and social sciences, pinpoints the digital revolution and the US as the two main influences on how British people speak. \u201cEssentially\u201d, \u201ctreadmill\u201d and \u201cawesome\u201d are the only three in the top 10 most characteristic words of the early 2010s that don\u2019t directly relate to the internet.<\/p>\n

The report\u2019s early findings can tell us a lot about how we communicate with each other, and what changes have occurred since the early 90s \u2013 the last time a study was completed to the same scale.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the question I\u2019m going to answer: in 100 years, if people look back at the results of this study, what are they going to think about us?<\/p>\n

Less marvellous, more awesome<\/strong><\/p>\n

When people picture our time, they\u2019ll imagine us taking an hour to walk to the corner shop. A pigeon, a tree \u2013 absolutely everything, they\u2019ll think, made us stop to take a deep breath into a paper bag because it was so utterly, extremely and ineffably\u00a0awesome<\/strong>\u00a0enough to reduce us to a maudlin, blubbering mess.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, we\u2019re less likely to simply marvel at things, and more likely to experience\u00a0awe<\/em>. We\u2019re far more easily impressed than we used to be, and far less reserved when it comes to voicing it. There are no such things as quiet pleasures, only loud declarations of how dumfounded we are by absolutely everything.<\/p>\n

Even this TED video<\/a>, watched by more than half a million people, wasn\u2019t enough to dissuade us saying the word so frequently. Although it does tell us that \u201cawesome\u201d is now replacing \u201cthank you\u201d.<\/p>\n

The word \u201cawesome\u201d is so pervasive in our utterly normal everyday lives that future generations might think we really did live in a time that warranted awe every 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

No pussy riot<\/strong><\/p>\n

The redundancy of \u201cpussy<\/strong>\u201d will be proof we\u2019re a generation less fond of out-of-context rudeness. It will also be a nod to our busy lives \u2013 we all know what a cat is and therefore don\u2019t have the time to call it two words. Perhaps we\u2019re also growing less fond of cats and don\u2019t want to make them sound cuter than they are.<\/p>\n

If we carry on this way, our successors won\u2019t even know what a \u201cbunny\u201d is, and will talk to newborn puppies with the same tone we\u2019d reserve for a job interview. They\u2019ll think we\u2019re soppy for even calling it a cat \u2013 they will refer to it as a \u201cmousetrap\u201d.<\/p>\n

Essentially, it\u2019s like this<\/strong><\/p>\n

We like to give people things in a nutshell, gently ease them into what we\u2019re saying \u2013 and we\u2019re also fond of tired metaphors like \u201cin a nutshell\u201d.<\/p>\n

We want people to think we\u2019re simplifying things for them. What we\u2019re about to explain is so comprehensive, so inextricably complex that we can\u2019t fathom what the consequences would be if we didn\u2019t break it down.<\/p>\n

Of course, in 100 years people will have figured out how to live in floating houses, so prefacing an explanation of how a pencil case opens with \u201cessentially<\/strong>\u201d won\u2019t seem so impressive.<\/p>\n

What is this \u2018Google\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just as this conjures ridiculous images of people lugging catalogues around, in a century people will think of us with the same pity. We had to rely on a search engine, they will cry as their robots hold a tissue over their eyes before the first sympathetic tear has formed. But they\u2019ll feel even worse for those who came before us, and wonder how ingrained catalogues must have been in their lives that they came up in conversation so often.<\/p>\n

Lifedevices<\/strong><\/p>\n

We can\u2019t just call them phones, we like to attribute human tendencies to the clever little people we carry around with us, AKA\u00a0smartphones<\/strong>. Future generations will assume we pour tea from hyperactivekettles, cook food in extrovertedmicrowaves and detangle our hair with sadisticbrushes.<\/p>\n

Too much time in the gym<\/strong><\/p>\n

The study says that \u201ctreadmill<\/strong>\u201d didn\u2019t occur in the 1990s data, and that its prevalence now could be part of a wider trend of increased health awareness.<\/p>\n

What it really shows is that we hate the outside world so much we\u2019d rather stare at a wall while we exercise, and that the only thing we love more than wall-staring exercise is constantly talking about it. It might also have something to do with\u00a0some workplaces now offering treadmill desks<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 we\u2019re no longer at work, we\u2019re \u201con the treadmill\u201d.<\/p>\n

I prefer peanut butter<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marmalade used to be \u201cone of the country\u2019s most used words\u201d, according to the study. So what happened? Too many choices of cereal took over, and we finally realised marmalade is disgusting.<\/p>\n

America hasn\u2019t just given us the word awesome \u2013 there\u2019s evidence that its cultural staple,\u00a0peanut butter<\/strong>, has overtaken sales of marmalade.<\/a><\/p>\n

Alongside crumpets and \u201csplendid\u201d, what used to be something evocative of Britishness has been overtaken by its American competitor. Future generations won\u2019t be blamed for thinking of us as discerning, if a little ruthless.<\/p>\n

Increase in calories<\/strong><\/p>\n

The study says: \u201cWords like \u2018calories\u2019 are much more common today than they were.\u201d My guess is that 90% of calorie talk takes place in offices. Just like exercising on a treadmill, we like to vocalise our inner calorie mathematics dialogue (which, to anyone who does this, is really, really interesting).<\/p>\n

Future generations will despair at another example of us turning healthy decisions into everyone else\u2019s business. At least we can burn off our peanut butter calories on the irascibletreadmill.<\/p>\n

Jessica Brown\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If our most-used words are anything to go by, we spend too much time on Google and are obsessed with smartphones. Is language that transparent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,13,57,56],"tags":[150,145],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}