Linguists/sociologists, I got a question???

This is something I have noticed lately.

Take a noun and turn it into a condition, but don't comment one way or another on whether it's good or bad. Seems to be a way to comment without actually stating a position, like the weasels who don't use the word "problem" but the word "Issues"!!! I hate that!!


Examples: Somebody has a case of the Mondays. From the movie "Office Space".

DH was at work and his particular way of programming was said by his boss to be a "Joe thing", assuming his name is Joe.

Commercial: "Don't you wish vegetables tasted less vegetabley?" :banghead:

This seems like de-fanging words and taking their power away, and turning them into a meaningless tautology (tautology is A = A).

Is this inoffensive corporate speak? Is there a name for it??

Thanks!!

that's pretty common, and been around for a long time.

Vegetabley is an adverb.

The "Joe Thing" seems to be recognition of a particular style, like saying a guitar riff sounds like Eddie van Halen or an essay reads like Dave Barry.

Your example of issue versus problem as a kind of weasel word I get - but the other words were not that.

is it that you want all comments to have some kind of clear critique involved in them, good or bad? If so, not everything needs to be judged. I can say "That reads like Dave Barry" as a statement of fact, without having to say whether I think that's a good thing or a bad thing. Not sure where the harm is in doing that.

that lets you refer to the general malaise that is whatever it is that keeps bugging you.

Vegetabley is an obvious attempt from someone who is about to pitch some new variety of vegetable dish to you to refrain from poisoning the well. If they were to say "Don't you wish that vegetables could taste less bland/shitty/like a horse's penis?" The viewer might well respond "Yeah! Fuck vegetables, I'm having some more meat tonight!"

Here's a bit from Calvin & Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes once discussed verbing in Bill Watterson's great comic strip:

Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed. . . . Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.


(from here: http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/verbingfaq.htm)

language is a living thing, constantly undergoing cultural adjustments.

I agree, and people who abuse hyperbole should be taken out and shot.

They never seem to go anywhere.

I think, especially the examples you provide, there's nothing wrong about it. It just takes an active interpretation. Like the "Joe thing," one (could) assume that it's commentary on the uniqueness of that particular programmer. A wish that vegetables to not taste like vegetables makes sense, if you hate vegetables (a thing I can't understand myself). Why can't vegetables taste like fruit?

If no amount of information is added with the use of the new noun, then yeah, it's a tautology and utterly useless in conversation other than time filler or a distraction.

I've heard that in the corporate world that people will use heavily the passive voice because it helps avoid confrontation. "Mistakes were made," rather than, "I sold you and all the employees out in a highly illegal way. I'll continue to suck money from you people until there's nothing left and then I'll retire with a large compensation package and laugh about it with my new girlfriend when I should be in jail. Haha, you all are a bunch of losers." Quite a bit of difference.

We have forgotten how to describe things in traditional English. We have a rich language populated by with multifacets of descriptive adjectives and phrases, yet so many have fallen into disuse.

So because folks don't have a rich vocabulary to choose adjectives from, they use worn-out words or phrases, or make stuff up (as "Joe-thing" and "vegetabley").

In contrast, think Senator Patrick Moynihan and his colorful use of the English language.

I don't know if there's a name for it other than "uneducated".

the masses.

edit: punctuation error.

"I made a mistake." I can not remember how they gently say someone told a lie, maybe the word they use is "being untruthful."

How is that in any way a tautology? How is the power taken out of the statement?

It is an inventive way to use the word "Monday," and, depending upon the circumstances, it could be an effective use of the word.

and what's better is, we had to 'solution' those opportunities!!!!!!....not solve problems, but 'solution opportunities'

It's no wonder no one knows what anyone is saying anymore.

Flexibility is a virtue in any language.

Or, as Calvin and Hobbs once said: "Verbing weirds language."

It's nice to codify the language to make it standard. But living languages don't stay codified.

"Vegetably" is an adjective. -y is a productive morpheme in English. "Crabby", "fishy", and "peachy" are examples. It's been productive for a very long time. It's more in vogue now that 20 years ago, although I've been told that -ish is rapidly gaining ground (even as uber- is fading).

Sometimes the reason for the innovation has less to do with the need for new content--the claim that language has to follow some sort of logic or abide by aesthetic rules died in the 1930s--and with the need for a different stylistics. Of course, that requires that your semantics not be emotional or stylistic, but truth-propositional.

"Joe thing" is just a (rather old) faddish locution. I rather thought it was dead by now. Fads come and go. It's a colloquialism, not corporate-speak. To be honest, excessive -y productivity is also colloquial. We Americans don't make a clean distinction between what is clearly formal and what is solely colloquial.

Words often are bleached, "have their power taken away" (although words only have the power that listeners give them), just as they become specialized (and have power added). What's really neat is when words become taboo, when they "gain power" (to use your metaphor): Take the French word pochette, "little pocket": It came to be applied to a woman's purse, quite an acceptable term, and altered its pronunciation a bit along the way; it later evolved into a moderately offensive word referring to women's anatomy and all thought of having it refer to a woman's purse vanished. It's reasonably understand that words change their meanings and the ways they do it in. Working out the precise reasons for a kind of general case seems to be difficult. Attempts have been made; I personally haven't seen one that I think holds water.

I need to be a bit more "Scotchy" to take this on.

People who verb nouns deserve to be violenced.