Katie Antonsson, “Zimmer: On Hashtags, Emoji, Language Trends and How Words Will Disappoint the Sticklers” (American Copy Editors Society, Mar. 28, 2015)
Ben Zimmer, executive editor of Vocabulary.com, Wall Street Journal columnist, chair of the American Dialect Society New Words Committee and general renaissance man of all things wordy, delivered a wide-ranging, always humorous, and occasionally musical keynote address at the ACES 2015 banquet.
Zimmer discussed what he called “Nitpickery, Debunkage, and the Joys of Getting it Right,” taking us from the reinvention of words in hip hop to glaring anachronisms in “Downton Abbey.” Through these wild examples, Zimmer landed on the notion that language is always subject to change, and whether one is a descriptivist or a prescriptivist, the goal is the same: “I think we can all agree that this notion of getting it right that we’ve been discussing at this conference in a laudable goal. When ‘right’ means appropriate to the context. That means matching language to its time, its place, its situation of use. So let’s all continue obsessing about that and let’s all work to get it right.”
We took a moment before Zimmer’s speech to talk words, technology and what it means when language changes.
Read the rest here.