After a thunderous spring, summer time will quickly arrive with its metallic blue gentle. The world is renewed each second, however what about language? Beyond the updates to the dictionaries, which stamp the official seal on phrases equivalent to farlopa, millennial or hashtag, for a while now many books have been revealed across the phrases. They are works of various stripes, however what they’ve in widespread is that they supply reflections on the present have to renew language. As Pier Paolo Pasolini stated, the world that the phrase should construct is the world by which we reside.
They are publications like The phrase that conquers demisethe Rob Riemen (Taurus); You won’t communicate. Empire, identification and language politicsby James Griffiths (Alliance); Dictionary of anonymous disappointmentby John Koenig (Captain Swing); The names of the worldby Ewan Clayton (Siruela); 20 causes to like linguisticsby Lorena Pérez Hernández (Plataforma); What language hidesby a number of authors (Philosophy&Co); The phrase that builds the worldby Pier Paolo Pasolini (Altamarea), or the reissue of Michel Foucault’s basic The phrases and the issues (twenty first century).
“Language does not create reality. It does not create matter. But it does create a halo of visibility around certain elements or events in the world and removes others from our field of attention, thus helping us to coordinate in a specific direction to influence our environment both positively and negatively. You only have to analyze the recent speeches of international leaders to see this. Saturating headlines with hyperbolic threats, such as “An whole civilization will die tonight,” clearly does not improve the world. Creating linguistic frameworks for negotiation, cooperation and mediation, yes,” reflects Lorena Pérez Hernández, professor in English Philology and doctor in Cognitive Linguistics at the University of La Rioja.
Foucault already warned that power produces truths and silences things. We must be alert to the danger that the official discourse—or what is now called “story”—is identified with an absolute social fact, as if current affairs were exclusively defined by the word cruelty: in Trump’s rhetoric some of the most used verbs are annihilate, crush, destroy and win. “One of the most important victims of the Trump administration has not been, because the previous saying goes, the reality – which is the primary sufferer of warfare -. It has been phrases,” historian Mary Beard recently denounced on the BBC.
Faced with the current corruption of words like freedom and greatness, Rob Riemen advocates moral and cultural resistance. “Protecting the that means of phrases is crucial. The hazard arises when phrases lose their that means, and other people do not likely know what they’re speaking about. This is when politics transforms into voices that solely give propaganda and extra propaganda,” he reflects in a telephone conversation.
Faced with this, the Dutch thinker opts for a grammar of life, for the use of words like forgiveness, which with a stroke of the pen “manages to subdue demise, respiratory life into the one who receives it,” he says.
Of your tongue and mine
Pronouncing or hearing terms such as forgiveness or thanks, if it is from the heart, can imply a transformation between one person and another. It’s not that strange. Human beings are eminently linguistic, and a word can save or hurt us.
And when you can’t find words that fit what you want to express, you have to use your imagination. This is the case of the writer John Koenig, who decided to create and share concepts devised by him, upon verifying that many things he felt were not faithfully reflected in the language in circulation. Thus, first in a blog and, later, in his book Dictionary of sadness unnamedKoenig invented, for example, the term without —feeling that each person you meet on the street has their own life and is the protagonist of their own story—; anemoia —when you look at old photos and feel a pang of nostalgia for a time you have never lived—; either ellipticism —sadness of not knowing how the History of humanity will end. In several interviews, Koenig has confessed that the driving force behind his dictionary was his fascination with expressions such as duende in Spanish, longing in Portuguese or hygge in Danish, which do not exist in English.
Walking in time, the word without by Koenig took on a life of its own on the Internet, where it is estimated that more than 251 million emails and 18 million text messages are sent every sixty seconds. This amazing network that connects us with each other represents a systemic change in writing, which implies a certain reordering of thought, according to Ewan Clayton, author of The names of the world. But he is an optimist, and he doesn’t think handwriting will ever go away, nor will conversation. Probably, it all adds up. “The written text reproduces speech, it is both less and more than speech: it does not register intonation, speed, volume, gestures or facial expressions, elements that help us interpret the nuances of the meaning of the spoken word,” reflects Clayton.
By ‘fardialedra’ of ‘IA-zofia’
Words, as you know, come and go. The RAE has withdrawn from circulation more than 2,700 words that reflected an era that already was. They are terms like demoñejo —of the devil—, palacra —gold nugget—, or fardialedra —loose money. At the same time, other rabidly contemporary ones are already circulating on the streets, such as ecoanxiety, IA-zofi and viral.
When using one or the other, it is not foolish to think about which linguistic paths are chosen to travel. Because writing and speaking builds—and also destroys—worlds. Language as a communication mechanism “is useful and at the same time dangerous.” “But what it really stands out for is as an instrument of conceptualization, coordination and action and, therefore, as a means to exert influence, power and change,” says Lorena Pérez.
The Russian language has the phrase jointwhich implies despicable hostility, the personification of an evil spirit of 1 group in opposition to one other, carried away by ethical turpitude. As it’s at the moment, maybe it’s good to determine that feeling and monitor it, earlier than drowning ourselves in mountains of joint. We must replicate on the phrases used. It is a good energy. In their freedom, every particular person has the flexibility to suppose for themselves. Nothing or nobody else does that. And least of all, the machines.
https://elpais.com/cultura/2026-04-21/como-explicarlo-nuevas-palabras-para-un-nuevo-mundo.html