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IN HIS novel Nineteen Eighty-four George Orwell maintained that people’s
knowledge of language actually controlled their thoughts – so the state
he described made a systematic attempt to reduce the number of words in
use, by modifying the spoken language. Orwell’s Newspeak was intended to
make certain actions impossible, because, without words to represent an
originating concept, the concept itself could not exist.

The argument is probably sound; most of us have at some time been familiar
with the feeling of being ‘at a loss for words’, where, without the language
to express ourselves, an idea must perforce remain buzzing around inside
the brain.

To help to overcome this problem most courses of specialist study aim
to enlarge your vocabulary. Specialists love jargon words, incomprehensible
to most people, but essential to those elliptical conversations known to
all scientists. To an educated outsider, such a conversation may contain
only a few words that are literally unknown, but they are likely to be surrounded
by familiar words used in unfamiliar ways, or perhaps reduced to a tangle
of initials.

This appropriation of ‘general’ words by specialists is probably of
less interest to most people than the reverse process, where a specialist
term escapes from its scientific ghetto. In this case, a newly created specialist
word becomes used by the general public – sometimes in a totally different
context. Should the right word come along at the right time, we may see
conceptual enlargements; something which wasn’t previously possible becomes
real, because the word to describe it now exists.

I became interested in this phenomenon when I asked my young daughter
– a child of the video age – to tidy her room. She responded with a request
to ‘put it on hold’. During a later disagreement, she suggested that we
should ‘rewind’ our conversation. What she had in mind was that we should
wind the conversation back, like a tape, and record things again, without
carrying over any bad feelings from the first exchange. Once I began to
look for them, other examples of such ‘leakage’ abounded.

These examples were clearly fortuitous; but could the effect be used
consciously? A very useful concept in computing is that of the computer
‘bug’. Various explanations exist for how the term came about, but it is
now generally accepted to mean an error within a computer program. A bugged
program isn’t necessarily junk; if the bug is removed, all should be well.

It seemed a pity to leave such a useful word to the exclusive use of
computer scientists, so I decided to introduce the idea of a bug to a group
of eight-year-old mathematicians. Children frequently become discouraged
by getting things wrong, particularly a calculation on which they may have
expended some effort. Once introduced to this new word, however, they need
no longer look at an answer as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but as ‘right’ or ‘bugged’.
No, that isn’t the answer; so there’s a bug somewhere . . . let’s find it
. . .

Once aware of the possibility of liberating specialist words, I found
other candidates. For example, how about the concept of ‘flaming’, known
to all who have ever made use of computer bulletin boards? Loosely based
on a catchphrase of the Human Torch, a character in the Marvel comics, ‘flaming’
describes a vitriolic written response, often to an unintentional provocation.
It’s widespread, and popular; international computer newsgroups seem to
be devoted to the practice.

Verbally letting off steam to someone who annoys you is therapeutic,
although potentially dangerous; but these ‘flames’ are accepted as safely
contained abuse. There’s even an established format: ‘Flame On!’ Surely
there’s some way this concept can be moved out of its ghetto. ‘Flame Off?’

These are examples from the world of computing, but other fields must
surely have ‘wasted’ specialist words which could potentially fill unperceived
gaps in everyday English . . . Or is the idea, um, bugged? Well, so far,
that new word seems to be catching on. My admittedly subjective impressions
show that, as far as the children are concerned, the concept it introduced
actually works, and its use is spreading. So how about digging out more
‘specialist’ words with a view to deliberately expanding the language –
and with it, ideas. NewerSpeak, here we come!

Duncan Langford is a PhD student at the University of Kent