Analysis Of Marcia Ernsthofer's 'Word Of The Year'

Selecting Realities is the captivating title of a brilliantly structured essay, where Marcia Ernsthofer succeeds in introducing the readers in the appealing topic of linguistic competitions. Ernsthofer impressively analyzes the “Word of the Year” competitions focusing in particular on the contests that are held in Germany and in the UK. In Germany, as reported by the webpage of the Society for German Language (GfdS), the purpose of “Word of the Year” (Wort des Jahres) is choosing a word that should have a “significant meaning […] for the economic, social, and political aspect of the year” (GfdS: Wort des Jahres, web). Similarly, in the UK, the winning word should “reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupation of the particular year” (Oxford University
Ernsthofer arguably states that since the “Word of the Year” should represent the country´s language usage, the number of times that a word is used should be taken into account. Concerning “Word of the Year” in Germany, words are chosen by an executive board of the GfdS from a pool of thousand terms collected from different media, and the frequency of usage is not taken into consideration, while Ernsthofer suggests that in the UK the system is more precise as a research program collects words from the Internet on the base of their frequency. Yet, the jury has the final choice in both the competitions. According to the paper, statistics should be created in order to choose a word that would really depict the language usage in the country. Apart from the difficulty of creating reliable questionnaires, a crucial problem would be that in any case the results would only concern the written language. Moreover, the frequency of use could be a relevant element of choice, but it does not seem essential as the premise of the criticism itself appears fallacious. In fact, the assertion of the paper about the competitions´ major aim, which would be depicting the language usage of the country that changes over time, is debatable. Analyzing the criteria considered for the words´ selection and the description of the traits that a suitable winning word should own, it seems plausible to assert that rather than aiming at depicting the language use, the “Word of the Year” is chosen so as to describe a time-limited period of national history. Comparing the winning words from different years, the competitions probably also offer the possibility to observe how language usage has changed; however, what stands out in the first place is that almost all the words chosen are related to major issues that have concerned the countries in one specific year. Taking as an example the competition in Germany, almost all the