LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM (Newspeak)

[John Cowan]

Peter_Constable at sil.org scripsit:

> In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a character who
> pronounces the word spelled k-i-l-l-e-d as "revoked", and assigns to
> "revoked" the sense of 'killed'. There is a play on words here, involving
> metaphor and extension of semantic ranges. Do we want to create tags for
> metaphors, puns, etc.?

And then there are the perfectly genuine Enroughty family of Henrico County,
Virginia, who pronounce their name "Darby".

> Such things do not constitute distinct language varieties in need of tags.

Agreed.

> If there is a *body* of literature out there in a distinct variety
> recognised and used by a defineable community of users, then perhaps a tag
> for something like "newspeak" could be warrented, but I really think a good
> case needs to be made before it be considered.

Fair enough, with of course the proviso that the literature might be oral --
Boontling only began to be written down when it was effectively dead.

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan at reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration
is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was
under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than
two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today. 
       --_Specht v. Netscape_