Open Access: An “Academic Spring” - 26 April 2012

Open Access: An “Academic Spring”


One of the many academic databases we have access to at the American University of Beirut is the well-known database Elsevier Science Direct. Faculty members and students use this resource to a considerable extent. Yet, I was recently surprised to learn that the database had been boycotted by thousands of academics worldwide as part of the boycott of the Anglo-Dutch science publishing giant Reed Elsevier, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific, technical, and medical information, and owner of Lexis Nexis (another popular resource).

On April 1 – though this was not a joke – The Chronicle of Higher Education published “An Open Letter to Academic Publishers About Open Access” written by Jennifer Howard. Howard warned publishers that they should be nervous because of the new “Academic Spring” - the revolt against expensive publishers spreading throughout academia and represented by the Open Access movement.

Open access of course may be defined in various ways; the definition may be restricted to the relatively new open access journals, or it may include the less formal posting of working papers, blogs, and other non-peer-viewed work. While the traditional requirements of conventional academic careers may dictate otherwise, who knows what the future might bring for academia? Web 2.0 has done miracles so far. Besides, the United Nations, represented by UNESCO, supports open access.

If spring is here, can summer be far behind?


Posted by May Mikati on 26 April 2012, 5:51 PM

Softening Up the Language - 16 April 2012

Softening Up the Language


Language teachers often find themselves teaching about euphemisms, whether intentionally or not. A euphemism is a relatively harmless word or expression meant to replace a more offensive one. The blind are commonly referred to as “visually impaired” or “visually challenged”, spying is “surveillance”, and stealing can be “appropriation”.

A particularly interesting word often used as a euphemism is “overqualified”. When referring to a rejected job applicant, the term may be used as a cover-up for the fact that the employers do not wish to reveal their reasons for the rejection, or that the applicant is too old for the job, resistant to new technologies, or too demanding in terms of compensation.

The Economist editors recently published a report on euphemisms from around the world. Entitled “Making Murder Respectable”, their article defines euphemism as “a mixture of abstraction, metaphor, slang and understatement that offers protection against the offensive, harsh or blunt”. Noting that the British are “probably the world champions of euphemism”, the article concludes that, without euphemisms, the world would be a more honest but harsher place to live in. No witness to “the global war on terror” with its “friendly fire”, “collateral damage”, and “enhanced interrogation techniques” could possibly disagree.

Euphemisms definitely soften up the language, don’t they?


Posted by May Mikati on 16 April 2012, 8:34 AM

A "New Word Order" - 06 April 2012

A "New Word Order"


My previous blog post was about lexicography in the Internet age: how dictionaries are coping with the speed of language change. Here is solid background, and further reflection, on this ever more mercurial subject.

A Guardian article dated 2001 shows that back then the “New Word Order” was beginning to set in. Competition was suddenly hotting up between dictionary makers. Lexicographers had started implementing more sophisticated methods to keep up with language evolution. The author, D. J. Taylor, notes that speed had suddenly become of paramount importance in a field not particularly notable for speed. Hopeful for the future, he used a most revealing analogy: “If language is a butterfly, endlessly and effortlessly soaring above the heads of the entomologists who seek to track it down, then the nets are getting larger every year.” He reminded readers of Samuel Johnson, the most influential English lexicographer, who was the first to vehemently reject the prescriptivist approach, indicating that language is so variable that trying to police it is a doomed endeavour. Taylor added that while language does need to be tracked closely, it is like a beast that transforms itself into something else by the time one has finished the process of capturing and dissecting it. Some words take on new meanings between detection and publication.

Policing language is one thing, and tracking it is another. No wonder the constant searches, solicitation of user input, statistics and research. Will any of the well-known dictionaries ever implement live online updates to their definitions, or will they continue to solicit new input, adding appendices of possible new words, between editions? If they do all go “live”, that may be better for users, but any print editions published would automatically become obsolete. Will these dictionaries follow in the footsteps of the Encyclopedia Britannica soon?

Far-sighted thinkers, such as Michael Rundell, might ask whether there is a future at all for lexicography, or whether dictionaries will simply “dissolve” into our computers ("The Future of Lexicography: Does Lexicography Even Have a Future?”) . It would be interesting to watch and see.


Posted by May Mikati on 06 April 2012, 2:46 PM

How Dictionaries Cope With Language Change - 05 April 2012

How Dictionaries Cope With Language Change


Can English language dictionaries cope with the current speed of language change? While such change usually involves grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and phrasing, the English language appears to be changing particularly fast in the realm of phrasing: the incorporation of new words and expressions relating to various topics, influenced, among other things, by the speed of technological change. Yet, it may be inferred that technological change is not a sufficient criterion for such change. Japanese, for example, has changed little, compared with English, according to a recent National Science Foundation report; other social and cultural factors appear to play a role ("Language Change").

Paul McFedries’ intriguing web site Word Spy (The Word Lover’s Guide to New Words) is a good example on the density of new expressions entering the English language, some of which are making it into the dictionaries. To cope with the phenomenon, well-known dictionaries are providing constant online updates. Merriam-Webster, for example, has a section for words proposed by the public: “You know that word that really should be in the dictionary? Until it actually makes it in, here's where it goes” (“New Words and Slang”). How, then, in the perpetual tsunami of new vocabulary, do dictionary editors decide which new words to include in updates to their dictionaries? First of all, an unabridged dictionary is likely to include more new words than an abridged one because of space considerations. Secondly, new words go through a long process before they are either incorporated or dropped, as illustrated through the example of Merriam-Webster. To make a long story short, a typical procedure involves the following broad phases: editors “reading and marking” a variety of published material, noting neologisms, variant spellings, etc.; saving the marked passages, along with their citations in a searchable database, showing not only where each text came from but in what context the new word was used; and “definers” reading through the citations, deciding which words to keep based on the number of citations found for each word as well as the variety of publications where it is used over a substantial period of time (“How Does a Word Get into a Merriam-Webster Dictionary?”). The process is almost identical in the Oxford Dictionaries (“How a New Word Enters the Oxford Dictionary”).

Dictionaries are coping with the speed of change with the help of technology: easier access to a variety of publications, searchable electronic databases, user input and faster statistics. With time, dictionaries can only become more objective -- descriptive rather than prescriptive as most were in the past. They are also becoming more democratic. A Wikimedia era of McDictionaries or a regulated lexicographic democracy? You decide.


Posted by May Mikati on 05 April 2012, 4:43 AM