User:Sevgi/Word Workshop

When we talk about words we first must understand that they are part of a thing called language. Language is a structured system of communication used to organize our experiences for ourselves and coordinate them in collaboration with others. That by itself is an awesome achievement from humans. It is proof of the human ability to learn and to relate signs to a particular meaning. Words and names are a culture's way of fixing what will actually count as reality in a universe of overwhelming, chaotic sensations, all pregnant with a multitude of possible meanings. Language exists spoken, written and signed. It gives us the ability to refer to objects, events and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. Yet language is also used to create and maintain inequalities, power structures and oppression. By the way we speak and with the words we use we contribute to and uphold the system that we are part of. Often it even goes unnoticed, because we've been raised in this system and learned its rules so we're accustomed to the sexist, racist and overall oppressive ways of speaking. In order to change that, we need to actively think about the words we use and ask if thats really what we want to say.

Even though languages consist of many many descriptive words, I'm pretty sure we all experienced the inability to give expression to an experience, idea or feeling we had. No word seems to be satisfying enough. This is called linguistic alienation. A feeling that language is incomplete or fails to capture experiences. While one might argue that this is a natural occurring phenomenon, Linguistic alienation is also used to strategically exclude certain groups from the societal discourse. It has been described in relation to colonialism as part of the process in which the language of the colonizer is imposed on colonized people in an effort to alienate them from their own culture and subjugate them in their own land. And it has been described in relation to the patriarchy as part of the process in which women were denied access from learning languages of 'higher education' in order to alienate them from their own experiences and voice to prevent them from speaking up against the oppressors. So it is an act of protest for equality to reclaim words and invent new words that makes it possible to describe the feelings that miss an attribute. And as language created reality, with using different (non-sexist, non-racist, etc.) words, we create a more equal world.

Methods of Making Up Words

A page from David F Wallace's American Heritage Dictionary

We decided on suggesting some methods of making up your own words. Feel free to come up with your own way, but please share with us how you did so we can add it to this list of methods.

We will make up words through methods listed or just one method of your choosing and create a workshop dictionary here.

Our dictionary will have the word, description, example of use.

EXPUBTIONARY

Words we use that have a specific audience

In Antarctica, there are people living completely isolated from the rest of the world, people if you shook the earth would fall down to the bottom of it, and they have been using their own words for decades now. What could be words that feel solemn to our own island of XPUB?

For example: Bootleg-Master(someone who makes neat bootleg copies of books), Cyber-Procrastinator(someone who always procrastinates a digital project for various reasons), Decentralised-Lunch(eating lunch somewhere else than others), Never-Server(a server that never works but when it works it's the best dopamine rush ever felt), Server-Server(server maintenance person who is also stunning) etc.

PREWORDS

Words that might or might not exist

Live, observe and realise your lack of words. What concepts do you think are lacking from the English dictionary or our daily lexicon? Is there a word you use in your native language that you think should be implemented or translated into a common expression?

Look at the meaning and add suffixes or words together to make a new one to create this notion

Example:

I want to describe the feeling of having 5 bad days in a row and the feeling that God owes me 1 good day at least so the 6th should be good.

I would call this superstition: POST-QUATRO-BLESS

Use it in a sentence: A bird shat on me, I saw a black cat, I don't feel so POST-QUATRO-BLESSed anymore.

Finally WORM gave me my salary, must be a post-quatro-blessing.

It doesn't matter if the sentence is making much sense at this point, lets let it brew and be content that this concept is verbalised.

BAMBINOTES

Words From Another Gen

Think about words that you, or someone you know younger or older than you use. What did you used to call apples, and can we use this word now to replace apples? Does your niece, nephew, mom, auntie, grandma use a word that feels like it has only been used by them and do you want to share this with our joined dictionary?

For example: ZAMZUM

This is an actual word used by my parents to describe something ridiculous AND naughty. This was used to describe naughty and silly things we aren't supposed to do, but quickly turned into a term used to describe politicians since the political scene at the time felt comedically cruel:

Vocabulary list from DFW's archive.

That's such a ZAMZUM. Don't do any ZAMZUMness, be serious. That mayor is being a ZAMZUM, why did we vote for him?

Faute de Mieux

The David Foster Wallace Method

This method was coined by David Foster Wallace. He left behind editions of dictionaries that had words circled in them. The words would be underused, misused or forgotten, hard to pronounce, in short they would be unemployed words in the dictionary. DFW would use these words in his books and revive them. In the end you would also need a dictionary to read his books. We will use his method to choose words and revive them. The words can stay with their meaning or if you think it SOUNDS like another meaning, the word can adapt that.

For example: BREGMA

BREGMA is a spot on the skull that is the crossing point of two sections, sagittal suture and coronal suture. These sutures cross each other almost in the shape of a ⏊ and the point they meet is bregma.

"I have such a headache, I feel like my head is going to explode from the bregma" "Mom, I'm stuck at the bregma of art and technology. Could you pick me up?"

Dictionary-pad Structure

-

WORD here is my word

MEANS and this is the description, it means something to me. Something specific and special. It has been on my mind for very long. It has to get out now. Today is the day because I realised this is the moment my word can join the world of other lost meanings of unmade words. Together we form a dictionary of sorts.

THIS Here is how to use my word.

You have to write WORD and MEANS and EXAMPLE before all the text. Can't use paragraph breaks but can use <br> if you like. start with - end with + . Easier to copy paste the example on pad and change it.

+

Zine / Story

After the word making, we want to suggest two things to create together. One is a dictionary in the form of a zine. This will be already possible with the web->print from the etherpad, so we really want to do that and have a dictionary of our own.

The second is a story writing exercise like the one we had with Imane. We want to use this method of writing and combine it with our words that we just made up. It would also be nice to have the story and then the dictionary together in the zine like these words are not only made but used.

Would you like to do this, let's take a temp check! :)

References and Further Reading

• Words we use today that were made up by famous writers(includes words like: Cyberspace, Bedazzle)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/19/top-10-words-invented-writers-authorisms

• Cyber security glossaries that use made up words from the last 10 years or so. I think this is interesting in the way that we encounter these words and there seem to be a new term every 5 minutes. This is how we take the power of misunderstanding/understanding/demystifying back.

https://cyberpeaceinstitute.org/glossary/

https://niccs.cisa.gov/resources/glossary

• The GAKhN Dictionary of Artistic Terms, 1923–1929

From 1921 to 1930, the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (Gosudarstvennaia Akademiia Khudozhestvennykh Nauk, or GAKhN) organized lectures, performances, concerts, and conferences and staged nearly two hundred art exhibitions. The academy's diverse membership included Marxist philosophers, avant-garde theorists, art scholars, scientists, and literary critics, many of whom worked on a dictionary of artistic terms that was conceived as a companion to other lexica planned by the academy including a Dictionary of Artistic Technology. Although the dictionary was never completed, scholar Igor' Chubarov has reconstructed the 313 lemmata from various documents and archival sources. Almost fifty entries have been translated for this issue, including terms for the formal analysis of art (“plane,” “surface,” “composition and construction”), entries written by practitioners of note (Moisei Ginzburg's entry for “architecture”), and historical documents of the discourse of the period (Nikolai Tarabukin on paper architecture in America).

https://monoskop.org/images/7/7c/The_GAKhN_Dictionary_of_Artistic_Terms_1923-1929_2017.pdf

• Dictionary of Non Philosophy by Laurel Francois

https://monoskop.org/images/2/2b/Laruelle_Francois_Dictionary_of_Non-Philosophy.pdf

• Untranslatability, Interdisciplinary Perspectives

https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781351622059_A36382323/preview-9781351622059_A36382323.pdf

• picture dict

https://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/OxfordPictureDictionary.pdf