"No facebooking!"

I found myself using the words from this post's title today in my English 101 class before I let my students do some work on their essays. Our classroom has computers in the back, which is great in a lot of ways, but also problematic. After all, it's hard to make sure all 25 students are using class time to actually work on their papers and not spending it on Facebook, myspace, or even checking email. Anyway, as I heard myself turn the name of that popular website into a verb, I recalled this recent article from the Kane County Chronicle, out of Kane County, Illinois. (The link came to me in a weekly email from the NCTE.)

In short, the article is about how corporate names work their way into our language, as we "Netflix" movies, "google" our old classmates, and "Mapquest" directions. The article quotes Denis Baron, a professor at the University of Illinois, who explains, “This is one of the ways that language naturally works...Common inventions, technologies and products become embedded in the language and extend their use to other areas. That’s how language changes and spreads.” For me, this is one of the aspects of language that makes it so exciting and so much fun to study. The article also quotes a Scott Osmundson (and, in a bit of poor writing, I think, it doesn't explain who he is and why we should care about his opinion), who sounds a bit afraid of such changes: “We’re starting to lose the English language,” Osmundson said. “Especially with texting and how people abbreviate words now.” I can understand some of the apprehension here, but we aren't "losing" the language--it was never this static, contained entity.

Another interesting issue to consider: what do corporations gain from such linguistic turns. As Baron suggests, it isn't always good: “It’s tricky for [corporations],” Baron said. “They want the names of their products to be on everybody’s lips, but they don’t want it to be used as a generic [word]. They don’t want all tissues to be Kleenex.”

This last line made me laugh out loud: “My friend just ‘Googled’ herself,” said Woods, 25. “That’s weird.”