"Words show what makes us tick"
"Smoking ban," "deportation," "density stress" - since 2003, the Swiss "Word of the Year" has reflected what the Swiss population's thoughts and conversations revolve around. From this year on, the ZHAW's Department of Applied Linguistics will choose the Swiss "Word of the Year", in all four national languages. Werbewoche spoke to Prof. Dr. Daniel Perrin, who will be in charge of the word selection.
Interview: Anne-Friederike Heinrich
Werbewoche: Mr. Perrin, what is the point of choosing a "Word of the Year"?
Daniel Perrin: The "Word of the Year" reflects how society in Switzerland thinks, how it talks and what concerns it. The "Word of the Year" is a word that has been used particularly frequently this year and shows what moves us and what makes us tick.
Do you also care about the "Unword of the Year"?
We will no longer distinguish between them in the future. Because it's not possible to say whether a word is a good or a bad one - i.e. a "nonword". In the future, we will make a ranking of the first three words in the "Word of the Year.
Daniel Quaderer and his "Word of the Year Office" in Vaduz organized the word selection from 2003 to 2016. Why is the ZHAW now taking care of the word selection?
Daniel Quaderer has asked us. What appeals to us about the choice are three things: First, with our data corpus Swiss-AL, we can demonstrate which words are newly emerging in public discourse and how their use develops in public. Thus, we can not only pick a word, but also show how and when a word emerged or emerges with a new meaning and how it spreads. Second, we're switching from monolingual to quadrilingual. And third, we want to involve the public in the discourse by inviting them to submit suggestions via social media and join in the discussion about the "Word of the Year." We want to encourage public reflection on what language says about us.
That sounds like a very professional and scientific approach. Is the transfer of the word choice to the ZHAW connected with the goal of scientifically substantiating the word choice?
That is the reason, exactly. In the Anglo-American world, for example, the corresponding choice is carried by "Oxford Dictionaries", since 2005 separated into "UK" and "US". They also work with a text corpus. We additionally work in the jury with language practitioners such as slam poets, bloggers, etc., who bring their own word suggestions. We can then check whether suggestions are actually a new word and how it has moved. This gives us a solid multi-method process that combines spontaneous impressions from language practitioners with scientific data from corpus analysis.
Before 2003, "Word" and "Unword of the Year" were sought for the entire German-speaking area. Why has Switzerland had its own "Word" and "Unword of the Year" since 2003?
There are things that are discussed completely differently in Switzerland than in Germany or Austria. Terms that are very important in Germany, such as "Harz IV" (German "Word of the Year" 2004, editor's note), play no role in Switzerland. The language is similar, but there are different discourses; that's why different words are perceived as important in Switzerland and also in Austria than in Germany. And the point is to show which word has gained importance in the discourse.
"Now the Swiss 'Word of the Year' will be quadrilingual, interactive and measurable," your media release says. Can you explain that briefly?
We want to choose the "Word of the Year" in our four national languages, starting this year with German and French and coming up with Italian in two years and Romansh in three years. Interactive means that we will build a website and enable word suggestions via social media. And the "Word of the Year" will be measurable by comparing it with the Swiss-AL corpus.
How do you work with the data corpus?
One of our most important working tools at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the ZHAW is the corpus Swiss-AL. With it, we can measure discourse. For example, we can observe how positions are formed in the discourse on energy issues, how positions are linguized, how positions displace others, how discourses change - in short: how the public talks about something.
How does the corpus come about?
We load into our database the main Swiss media contributions, then a selection from YouTube and Twitter, texts from the administration and from various other sources that we can prove are relevant in the public discourse. These texts are mainly keyworded automatically, partly in the course of later processing. Thus, we have in this corpus the mirror of public discourse in Switzerland for each year, so far for 2016. With each new year, the corpus continues to grow; and we expand it retroactively for comparative studies over time.
The whole, detailed interview read in the current print issue 5/2017 - in your mailbox on March 10, 2017. If not: Here you will receive the "license to read".
