I NEED YOU! To Participate in My Linguistics Project!

[timepiececlock]

Hello, hello folks! I have Linguistics field project that I need you guys to help me with. You see, I was collecting data IRL, but I lost some of the documents and I need new data from people. Can you help me in my time of emergency? I need to get at least 18 people to fill this out, the more the better. Men are especially welcome since there's so few on my friends list. Er... that I know about, anyway. ;P

If you guys could answer these 8 survey questions, that would be great.

If you could then create a link in your journal to this entry to spread the word about my survey, that would be even better. But that's not part of the survey, so you don't have to and you could just answer the questions.

Thank you so so much.

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SURVEY

Gender:
Nationality/ the country of residence which most affected your speech:
Age:

If you are 29 years or younger, do not fill out any more questions. You may leave now with my thanks.


If you are 30 years or older, please answer the following opinion questions to the best of your ability, and feel free to elaborate as much as you like:

1. Do you think language and vocabulary in common daily use has changed since 1990?

2. Do you think widespread computer technology has had a significant effect on the vocabulary you use and understand in the last 10-15 years?

3. How would you say the vocabulary of you, your children, or the people you know has changed since 1990 with the popularization of the internet?

4. What are some new words, phrases, idioms, or other bits of figurative language you might use now that you did not use 10-15 years ago? Do these relate to technology or to other things in life?

5. What are some positive aspects of changes in slang, terminology, idioms, etc. that have occurred since or resulting from the 90s and beyond?

6. What aspects of changes in slang, terminology, idioms, etc. frustrate you or do you dislike?

7. What’s your favorite word, phrase, term or idiom introduced in the last 10-15 years?

8. Do you have a job in the computer/tech industry, and if so how might that affect your answers on this survey?

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Thank you for participating. NOTE: The age question is very important so please be honest about it... my project involves the perspective of people over 30 because that's an age wherein I judged that people would have lived long enough to accurately measure some changes in the language over longer periods of time. Of course, if you want to fill it out for fun, you're welcome to do so. Just make sure you tell me so on the age question. :)

EDIT: I've got enough now, thank you!

Comments

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Male, US, 32

1. Do you think language and vocabulary in common daily use has changed since 1990?
Oh boy. Yes.

2. Do you think widespread computer technology has had a significant effect on the vocabulary you use and understand in the last 10-15 years?
Yes, especially since I'm in the computer profession. We've tended to humanize computers, take on their aspects. We interface. My boss continuously says, "We'll talk about that off-line" during phone conferences, meaning he wants somewhere private to yell at me. We talk in inputs and outputs.

3. How would you say the vocabulary of you, your children, or the people you know has changed since 1990 with the popularization of the internet?
Well, there's the technical aspects - we talk about the Internet a lot more because it's a lot more popular. It's exposed me to different points of view, which has influenced me. I've noticed writing styles have become more "web-friendly." Technical manuals pre-Internet are long, 200 page books. Everything now is bulletpoints, short and to the point (no pun intended).

4. What are some new words, phrases, idioms, or other bits of figurative language you might use now that you did not use 10-15 years ago? Do these relate to technology or to other things in life?
See question two for some examples. In writing, I've seen people use <tags> and </tags> to denote a change in tone, like "<sarcasm>oh, that's real smart</sarcasm>". Cntrl-Alt-Delete to kill a process (or pre-Windows domination, Cntrl-C) expanded to just killing a line of thought; just mentioning control keys in real speech is kind of geeky.

5. What are some positive aspects of changes in slang, terminology, idioms, etc. that have occurred since or resulting from the 90s and beyond?
Language seems to have become more inclusive. New terms have come about (like the below-mentioned metrosexual) that didn't exist in the old times. Once we've given a term to something, we can discuss it, and we can acknowledge it. I'm not talking political correctness, but that has something to do with it - it's a combination of realizing that words can hurt, coupled with the self-actualization of a group taking over the language, or the terminology that describes itself.

6. What aspects of changes in slang, terminology, idioms, etc. frustrate you or do you dislike?
Leet speak, and the general degradation of the written word. I guess I'm of the school that writing, even informal writing, should be of a higher class than speaking. Even writing that is not permanent (IRC, for example).

7. What's your favorite word, phrase, term or idiom introduced in the last 10-15 years?
Hella. Or metrosexual.

8. Do you have a job in the computer/tech industry, and if so how might that affect your answers on this survey?
Yes - programmer and web developer, and before that, technical writer. The slang I am exposed to is computer-influenced. "I grep that," for example, using the grep UNIX command as slang for understand. Or using the ! for not in writing.

On a side note, there's a chapter on The Victorian Internet on how the telegraph influenced language. Very interesting.

Good luck.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thank you for filling out the survey!

My community pride means I have to point out though that "hella" is not a new word. As a San Jose resident I can testify that hella has been a commonly used slang word in Northern California for a long time. I've thought about it before and I would guess the entymology orginially came from the expression "a hell of a."

It has three uses: 1) a synonym for "very" as in "this is hella cool." 2) a synonym for "really" as in "this hella sucks." 3) a synyonym for "a lot" or meaning a great amount of something, as in "there are hella people here today."


Damn that Gwen Stefani! She marries the man I wanted to marry and offers our slang up to the word in a bad pop song. Curses.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Ah. That would explain the fact that I first started hearing it when I moved from Central Illinois to Northern California.

I figured I was just out of the zeitgeist.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Yep, that would do it. When I was in high school, one of my 10th grade teachers had just moved up from L.A. and he commented that he'd never heard it until he moved up here. That kinda shocked me at the time (6ish years ago), because it had never occured to me that other people everywhere didn't say it. Once I knew though, I thought it was cool.

Now when I use it and I'm talking to people not from this area, I've had people ask me if I'm using it from the song. ::balks::

I figured I was just out of the zeitgeist.

I had to look that up. "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." Huh.