The Bureau of Linguistical Reality
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No, The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is not something dreamed up by Borges, or the Firesign Theatre. It actually exists, or at least it exists in the same state of electronic virtual actuality as Language Log, YouTube, and the Wayback Machine.
The Bureau of Linguistical Reality was established on October 28, 2014 for the purpose of collecting, translating and creating a new vocabulary for the Anthropocene.
Our species (Homo Sapien) is experiencing a collective “loss of words” as our lexicon fails to represent the emotions and experiences we are undergoing as our habitat (earth) rapidly changes due to climate change and other unprecedented events. To this end the The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is solemnly tasked generating linguistic tools to express these changes at the personal and collective level.
Cartographers are redrawing maps to accommodate rising seas, psychologists are beginning to council people on climate change related stress, scientists are defining this as a new age or epoch. The Bureau was thus established, as an interactive conceptual artwork to help to fill the linguistical void in our rapidly changing world.
Some of the neologisms that have been submitted are cutesy blends of the kind that you’ve no doubt seen before:
gwilt
To cause wilting in plants by not providing proper horticultural care out of concern for water consumption, especially during a time of drought. The feeling of regret and responsibility for its wilting. The accompanying compensatory feeling caused by watering said plants and experiencing further gwilt for not practicing water conservation. This is a form of a Double Bind
But others are wittier (if gallows humor can be thought of as witty):
pre-traumatic stress disorder
A condition in which a researcher experiences symptoms of trauma as they learn more about the future as it pertains to climate change and watch the world around them not making necessary precautions.
déjà Sisyphé
La sensation familière et récurrente d’épuisement et de la frustration qu’une personne éprouve au moment où elle se rend compte qu’elle devra expliquer—à nouveau—une découverte scientifique importante, acceptée et démontrée à son interlocuteur réticent et refusant d’accepter ce fait. (Le plus couramment associé à l’explication du fait que le changement climatique a été généré par l’activité humaine)
A recurring sensation of exhaustion and frustration one experiences during a conversation in the moment they realize they will need to explain again—a proven, accepted and important scientific finding to the person with whom they are talking. (Usually associated with manmade climate change.)
Some of the words describe sensations and feelings that I assume are experienced only by those in a narrow segment of the population, while others describe experiences that are probably more widely shared:
soltactiphoria
The euphoria a farmer experiences when s/he gathers soil from the ground with their naked hands, assesses the soil quality with the highly sensitive skin of their finger tips, breathes in the aromas of the soil and experiences a soil “high” when the commingling of all of these senses is accentuated by the ancient, learned, earned knowledge that this is indeed a rich, nourishing, life giving soil.
psychic corpus dissonance
A term to express the conflict between mind and body that occurs when a person experiences unusually warm weather during a time that has historically been considered winter. In this state the body experiences ecstasy to be in unusually warm weather while, simultaneously, the mind experiences worry and concern that weather patterns are deeply amiss, often resulting in a sensation akin to guilt or guilty pleasure.
And then there’s this one (which I think comes from the little-known field of speculative lexicography), in which the word’s most basic sense reflects a transformation from stench to sweetness, and the relationships between the word’s various senses display a continuum of increasing abstraction:
Werríng
1. The seemingly miraculous moment of transition when compost turns from smelling the most rank to smelling sweet; the becoming of fertile soil full of life.
This involves a sort of tuning where the frequency of the matter itself changes, it is the edge of transition, like the rim of a glass.
A recognition within it that this moment, which seems like magic, is the alchemical work of bacteria, worms, fungi and other organisms that are not typically associated with magic. An acknowledgement that death and decay are the necessary fodder for life, growth and beauty.
2. A collective moment of transformation when what has seemed mired, foul and utterly messed up in a society turns into a progressive and uniting force. Where rotting structures and ideologies are turned into fertile ground for new growth. I.e. the compost empire or compost capitalism
3. A feature of the collective psychological landscape wherein what has been foul transforms into that which is divine.
The project sees itself as practicing a form of Whorfianism:
For centuries philosophers, linguists, psychologists and others have noted the power of words to influence people’s thoughts and actions and vice versa. A principal called linguistic relativity (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), holds that language affects the very ways in which its respective speakers conceptualize their entire world, in short their cognitive processes which often inform their actions. It is from the term, linguistic relativity, that The Bureau of Linguistical Reality takes its name.
We reference this term playfully but believe sincerely that until we have the language to describe the changing world around us, we will not be able to fully grasp what is happening.
However, it seems odd to me to be invoking Whorfianism to explain a project devoted to thinking up names for concepts that can, despite being previously unnamed, be described using the existing resources of the English language (as shown by the concepts are defined using only those resources).
On the other hand, given that Whorf’s linguistic-relativity thesis arose to a large extent from his work on native-American languages, maybe the Bureau’s invocation of Whorf is justified by the fact that one of the words it includes is the existing Hopi word koyaanisqatsi (“1. Life out of balance. 2. Life of moral corruption and turmoil. 3. Crazy life. 4. Life in turmoil. 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living.”). Or maybe it is the invocation of Whorf that justifies the inclusion of the word.
I guess it depends on how you perceive reality.
Gwen Katz said,
May 4, 2018 @ 2:42 pm
This strikes me as a more highbrow version of Urban Dictionary.
Dennis Paul Himes said,
May 4, 2018 @ 3:09 pm
I'm curious about the misspelling "Homo Sapien" (without the final S). I've seen it often enough that I wonder if it is just a misspelling, or if perhaps it's due to a misanalysis of "Homo Sapiens" as a plural.
Robert said,
May 4, 2018 @ 3:32 pm
Looks like sniglets have come of age.
david said,
May 4, 2018 @ 4:20 pm
"linguistic relativity (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), holds that language affects the very ways in which its respective speakers conceptualize their entire world"
IANALinguist but it has just occurred to me that this makes sense when one is making up new words, as publishing scientists, hard and soft, sometimes feel called upon to do. As a publishing scientist I have tried to use language that expresses how I conceptualize what I have observed in the hope that readers will use it to conceptualize their experience.
I am not claiming that S-W were thinking this way, only that there is some truth in what they were saying. Influenced by years of Language Log lurking I have learned to look down on S-W theory. Again, IANAL, and I have not read S-W myself.
KB said,
May 4, 2018 @ 5:41 pm
@Dennis Paul Himes: I didn't notice that, but once you pointed it out, I immediately thought of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_the_Funky_Homosapien
AntC said,
May 4, 2018 @ 5:55 pm
@david, some version of S-W is what's behind the language planning of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984: if the lexicon doesn't include some (subversive) concept, then citizens won't be able to think it.
The language planning/censoring in PRC seems to be the equivalent today, and netizens are resisting it tooth and nail, good on them.
'Bureau of Linguistic Reality' sounds to me too much of the same. Do they have a neologism for 'patronising attitude of climate scientists to the general population who are just trying to make a living'?
Chris Brew said,
May 4, 2018 @ 7:34 pm
I don't know how you can be so confident that the real world is not something dreamed up by Borges.
Paul Garrett said,
May 4, 2018 @ 8:08 pm
@ChrisBrew, now that you mention Borges as candidate for "prime cause", my universe has irrevocably shifted.
Ray said,
May 5, 2018 @ 2:18 am
this is cute and all, but I wish they actually did have some kind of visual "conceptual artwork" (usage maps? ngrams? regional signage?) to show us. (people are just as swayed by the eye as they are by the ear, maybe even more so!)
Michael said,
May 5, 2018 @ 3:03 am
"sapien" is not the only problem. How about "principal"?
Philip Taylor said,
May 5, 2018 @ 3:41 am
I stopped reading at "Our species (Homo Sapien)".
Thomas Rees said,
May 5, 2018 @ 4:00 am
I like “scientists are beginning to council people”; yes, they do love their committees!
David Marjanović said,
May 5, 2018 @ 6:11 am
Stop right there, Folks With a Fancy Name. It's Homo sapiens, the -s not being an English plural ending; the species name is in lowercase as Article 28 requires, and the whole thing goes in italics according to Recommendation 6.
*eyeroll*
I know people with pre-traumatic stress disorder, though.
Definitely a misanalysis, like "bicep".
Or the complete lack of hyphens that makes "climate change related" or "life giving" harder to parse.
Neal Goldfarb said,
May 5, 2018 @ 12:41 pm
The comments here seem to be devolving into just making fun of the folks at the Bureau of Linguistical Reality for their spelling mistakes and so on—something that's neither interesting nor entertaining. Further comments along those lines will be deleted.
Neal Goldfarb said,
May 5, 2018 @ 12:46 pm
@AntC:
I gotta say that I'm not seeing much similarity between what the BLR is doing—proposing new words, in the belief that by doing so they will increase the expressive range of the language—and the censorship that is practiced by Big Brother the PRC, which seeks to do precisely the opposite.
번하드 said,
May 5, 2018 @ 1:25 pm
I do wonder if resources are better used in adding new words for new concepts,
which could make sense, or at trying to save preexisting words from being voluntarily robbed of any associated meaning.
Big Sister Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I'm looking at you…
Sevly said,
May 5, 2018 @ 5:32 pm
The way they frame their goal is certainly overwrought, but as @Gwen said the the end result is simply a domain-specific neologism engine, which, you know, all the power to them, especially as some of them are actually quite clever. It would be neat to see the better ones gain traction. The others? Well, you know, you win some, you lose some.
Ray said,
May 5, 2018 @ 9:43 pm
"The comments here seem to be devolving into just making fun of the folks at the Bureau of Linguistical Reality for their spelling mistakes and so on—something that's neither interesting nor entertaining. Further comments along those lines will be deleted."
LOL
Frank said,
May 7, 2018 @ 2:28 pm
Not spelling mistakes, really, just a side-effect of running their word mutation generators to the max. Those thing are leaky, you know.
seriously said,
May 10, 2018 @ 1:16 pm
A reference to Firesign Theatre! Now I can be happily entertained the rest of the day, with random phrases rolling around the back of my mind! Thanks!