Authors:

 Aranha Filho, Jayme.

Title:

 Upgrading the Dictionary

Keywords:

 dictionary, neologism, linguistic change, technobabble

Abstract:

 The general topic of this paper is the linguistic incidence of the socio-cultural change related to the introduction of new technologies (in particular the information and communication ones). At a more specific level, it is a reflection on the experience of 'dictionaryzing' neologisms and old words' new senses, that belong to an effervescent group of words, collectively being forged to name, to describe, to set down the multiplicity of computer-related occurrences. This considerations are fundamentally based on decisions and hesitations that recurrently emerged during the work as a contributor to the new edition of one of the most prestigious Brazilian dictionaries of Portuguese language, informally called simply Aurélio. Four main problematic topics will be considered:

(1) Untranslatable words; almost undefinable words; unnamed concepts.
(2) Semantic 'contamination': migration of computer expressions to common use on other contexts; old words applied extensively to new computer facts.
(3) Criteria for neologisms inclusion/exclusion.
In search of citations: the computer vocabulary sanctioned by literature.
Jayme Moraes Aranha Filho, jaranha@ax.apc.org, lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Anthropologist of science and technology, and webdeveloper, he has a medical degree from UERJ (1983) and a Master of Social Anthropology degree from Museu Nacional/UFRJ (1990). Since 1995, he develops research on internet sociability, focusing on the construction of persona on the word wide web personal pages. Part of his results were presented at academic and cultural meetings; some are on-line (in portuguese) at http://www.ifcs.ufrj.br/~jaranha/doc. In the just-concluded new edition of the Aurelio Dictionary of Portuguese Language (in press), he was responsible for the selection and definition of the computer related terms (with Amir Geiger). At the moment he is developing some non-commercial web projects, one of them is an on-line database of Portuguese Bibliography of Classic Texts and Studies (at the Dept. Ancient Philosophy/UFRJ).