Neologisme

The Word For… by Ivan Crouch

There ought to be a word for “the limbo-like precincts of an airport baggage claim, where groggy travellers gather around the motionless treads of empty conveyor belts.” It is a singularly desolate scene, and there should be a succinct way for a forlorn luggage-seeker to text a quick apology to the friend who is idly circling the airport roads. Now, there is: “baggatory.”

That clever turn is just one of a couple hundred neologisms coined by Liesl Schillinger in her new book, “Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century.” Other gems include “social crawler” (a party-goer who accidently mingles with losers); “Facebook-happy” (a miserable person who fakes bliss in carefully managed Facebook posts); “polterguy” (an ex-boyfriend who haunts future relationships); “factose intolerant” (a person who claims a false allergy or irrational antipathy to certain foods); and “rotter” (the bottom drawer in the refrigerator where produce goes to putrefy). Most of the words and phrases in the collection are accompanied, in a bit of whimsy, by an illustration of birds acting out the scenes described: the “social crawler” is a peacock mixing with pigeons.

 

Proiecte pentru viitorul cărților

The future of the book shouldn’t be skeuomorphic    by Tom, Abba New Statesman

 

Try this at home: watch an episode of The Bridge—with subtitles—and try to browse Facebook, or send a tweet during the broadcast. What you’re likely to find (unless you’re a native Danish speaker) is that conventional second screen engagement doesn’t operate very well. On the one hand, it’s the subtitles; they demand we look as well as listen, that our eyeballs don’t flicker between device and screen and our attention fixes on one thing rather than two, but another, more subtle change, is in architecture and the lighting, in mise-en-scène. The sky is different and the city looks strange. These people aren’t speaking our language and something exotic is happening.

That’s the sensation we’re aiming to achieve in These Pages Fall Like Ash. The experience begins with the sudden appearance of another city alongside the one our 300 participants live in. They can’t see it, but they can feel its presence, hear the voices of its citizens and read their words. Two populations start to communicate and exchange ideas, stories, gifts, and then something happens. And something happening is how stories start.

Story is at the heart of this project. REACT’s Books and Print programme asks us to consider what happens when digital technology meets reading and writing. Our response is to define a grammar for writing in a digital space, where attention is a commodity and interaction is an anticipated mode of engagement.