Wednesday, August 10, 2005

New words - again

The latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary is out and the usual media coverage accompanies it. An article on the BBC website, draws attention to the range of new blends such as Lollywood (the Pakistani version of Bollywood, which combines the -wood part of Hollywood and the L standing for Lahore), podcast ( a blend of I-Pod and broadcast) and chugger (charity + mugger).

The full article is here and there are more in the rest of the national press, such as The Guardian's take on it here.

The Daily Mirror meanwhile covers it here, choosing to focus on the trend towards more derogatory words than complimentary ones. Fans of Julia Stanley's research into lexical over-representation (more derogatory terms for women than men in the English language) may be interested to see that, according to The Mirror
"There are 50 words for pretty women, such as babe, cutie and eye-candy with just 20 for hunky men".

Meanwhile, if podcasting is so last year for you, you can now get Godcasting: spiritually-themed podcasts. More on this here.

Useful for:
ENA5 - language change (esp. contemporary language change essay topic)

Black British English vs MLE

The latest episode of Lexis is out and it features an interview with Ife Thompson about lots of issues connected to Black British English, i...