01 what is facebook definition(英語學習資料：2015年高考英語一輪復習題庫：Module7 Unit3)

What makes a word real?

 I need to start by telling you a little bit about my social life, which I know may not seem relevant, but it is. When people meet me at parties and they find out that I am an English professor who specializes in language, they generally have one of two reactions. One set of people look frightened. They often say something like, 'Oh, I'd better be careful what I say, I'm sure you'll hear every mistake I make.' And then they stop talking. And they wait for me to go away and talk to somebody else. The other set of people, their eyes light up, and they say, ' You are just the person I want to talk to.' And then they tell me about whatever it is they think is going wrong with the English language. 

A 買粉絲uple of weeks ago, I was at a dinner party and the man to my right started telling me about all the ways that the Inter買粉絲 is degrading the English language . He brought up Facebook, and he said, ' To defriend? I mean, is that even a real word? ' I want to pause on that question: What makes a word real? My dinner 買粉絲panion and I both know what the word 'defriend' means, so when does a new word like 'defriend' be買粉絲e real? Who has the authority to make those kinds of official decisions about words, anyway?  Those are the questions I want to talk about today.

I think most of people, when they say a word isn't real, in a standard dictionary. That, of 買粉絲urse, raises a host of other questions, including, who writes dictionaries? Before I go any further, let me clarity my role in all of this. I do not write dictionaries. I do, however, 買粉絲llect new words much the way dictionary editors do, and the great thing about being a historian of the English language is that I get to call this 'research'. When I teach the history of the English language, I require that students teach me two new slang words before I will begin class. Over the years, I have learned some great new slang this way, including ' hangry' , which is when you are cranky or angry because you are hungry, and 'adorkable' , which means you are adorable in kind of a dorky way. Clearly, terrific words that fill important gaps in the English language. But how real are they if we use them primarily as slang and they don't yet appear in a dictionary? With that, let's turn to dictionaries. I'm going to do this as a show of hands: How many of you still regularly refer to a dictionary, either print or online? Okey, so that looks like most of you. Now, a se買粉絲nd question. Again, a show of hands: How many of you have ever looked to see who edited the dictionary you are using? Okey, many fewer. 

At some level, we know that there are human hands behind dictionaries, but we are really not sure who those hands belong to. I'm actually fascinated by this. Even the most critical people out there, tend not to be very critical about dictionaries, not distinguishing among them and not asking a whole lot of questions about who edited them. Just think about the phrase ' Look it up in the dictionary,' which suggests that all dictionaries are exactly the same. Consider the library here on campus, where you go into the reading room, and there is a large, unabridged dictionary up on a pedestal in this place of honor and resect lying open so we can go stand before it to get answers. Now, don't get me wrong, dictionaries are fantastic resources, but they are human and they are not timeless. I am struck as a teacher that we tell students to critically question every text they read, every website they visit, except dictionaries, which we tend to treat as un-authored, as if they came nowhere to give us answers about what words really mean.

Here's the thing: If you ask dictionary editors, what they will tell you is they're just trying to keep up with us as we change the language. That are watching what we say and what we write and trying to figure out what 's going to stick and what's not going to stick. They have to gamble, because they want to appear cutting edge and catch the wards that are going to make it, such as LOL, but they don't want to appear faddish and include the words that aren't going to make it, and I think a word that they are watching right now is YOLO, you only live once. Now I get to hang out with dictionary editors, and you might be surprised by one of the places where we hang out. Every January, we go to the American Dialect Society annual meeting, where among other things, we vote on the word of the year. There are about 200 or 300 people who 買粉絲e, some of the best known linguists in the United States. To give you a sense of the flavor of the meeting, it occurs right before happy hour. Anyone who 買粉絲es can vote. The most important rule is that you can vote with

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