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Language
is changing
by Angel Stokes
Battalion staff
As 1984 draws near, it may be
noted that most of George
Orwell's predictions in his book
"1984" haven't come true—yet.
Newspeak, the official lan
guage of Oceania — the country
where the story took place, was
a language created through the
destruction of words. News-
peak's purpose was to narrow
the range of thought and enable
communication of ideas with
one word.
Today, many specialized
words have been created and
many words have been twisted
to mean something different.
Verbs sometimes are used as
nouns, nouns as verbs.
"The English language is
changing in enormous and crea
tive ways," says Garland Can
non, an English professor at
Texas A&M.
Large numbers of abbrevia
tions and acronyms are being
accepted as nouns and verbs, he
says. For example, SST and SSTs
(acronyms for Supersonic
Transports) are used as nouns
and RSVP is used as a verb (i.e.
he RSVPed me). Although these
constructions look odd, Cannon
says they are correct.
Functional shifts in the lan
guage — using a noun as a verb,
verbs as nouns, adjectives as
nouns — have been around for
years. Commonly used as a
verb, the noun "research" is an
example of a functional shift.
For example: the research was
completea (noun); the problem
was researched by two experts
(verb).
In Newspeak, an almost com
plete interchangeability among
different parts of speech existed.
Any word in the language could
be used as a noun, verb, adjec
tive or adverb.
Unlike the shrinking lan
guage Newspeak, the English
language is expanding. People
have bigger vocabularies oe-
cause of the increase in new
words. Cannon says. This ex
pansion may cause people to
use the dictionary more than
people did 200 years ago.
A large number of new com
pounds are used to form words,
he says, and it's not uncommon
for five words to be put together
as one word.
Compound words were used
in Newspeak, but were used as a
limitation on the vocabulary and
not as an expansion. The word
ungood was used instead of bad
and plusgood meant better than
gooct. By adding prefixes to the
words, definitions become more
limited, and independent
thought becomes almost impos
sible.
Scientific words were also
part of the Newspeak vocabul
ary, but only in the most rigid
form. Like all words in News-
peak, the definition was precise
and was used for only one disi-
line. Scientists and technicians
ad a list with words used in
their work and rarely knew the
meanings of any other special
ized words.
Today, hundreds of
thousands of technical words
exist as truly technical terms,
Cannon says, but some of the
terms are coming into everyday
usage. Computer terminology is
creeping into daily usage as
computer use is becoming more
common.
Another occurrence in the En
glish language is the develop
ment of specialized words.
Susan Evans, a graduate stu
dent in Education Curriculum
and Instruction, is doing a study
of words created during the
Vietnam War.
Most of the words or phrases
are military terms or words used
by soldiers, she says. Body
count — defined as a count
made of people killed in battle—
is one of the words. Other exam
ples are "in country," which
means being in Vietnam,
"wiped out," which means
someone has been obliterated
and "New Hamlets," which re
fer to concentration camps.
Evans says new meanings for
old words also were coined dur
ing Vietnam. These include
"ballgame," meaning an opera
tion or a contact, and "band-
aid," meaning a medic. U.S. sol
diers called the Viet Cong sol
diers "Charlie" and later shor
tened it to "Chuck" or "Chaz."
Cannon, who has just
finished writing a book on his
torical change in the English lan
guage, says linguists find it im
portant to note the changes in
the language.
But, according to Orwell, the
final adoption of Newspeak isn't
set to take place until the year
2050.
Eavesdropping —
a sophisticated art
by Bonnie Langford
Battalion Staff
Mention "1984" and vi
sions of ever-watchful TV
screens may come to mind.
The fear of being watched or
being caught by the Thought
Police haunted Winston and
other characters in George
Orwell's "1984."
Orwell was correct in his
prediction of future electronic
surveillance. It does exist, but
not quite the way Orwell pre
dicted. Most surveillance is
done by criminals who are
more interested in corporate
secrets than in thought-
crimes.
Electronic eavesdropping
has become so sophisticated
that the Texas A&M Law En
forcement and Security Train
ing Center offers a course in
"countermeasures." So much
money and so many ideas are
lost daily from the illegal elec
tronic eavesdropping and sur
veillance that the majority of
large companies have de
veloped security methods to
protect their ideas.
Charles L. Taylor, presi
dent of Data Loss Prevention
Inc., is one of the instructors
for the electronic eavesdrop
ping course. He trains secur
ity representatives who come
from all over, including large
corporations and law enforce
ment agencies.
"Industrial espionage is big
business," he says. "Anyone
can buy an eavesdropping de
vice at Radio Shack and
they're in business."
The Electronic Eavesdrop
ping Countermeasures clas
ses are offered six times a
year. Each participant must
pay a $650 fee, but this is a
small amount compared to the
millions of dollars lost as a re
sult of eavesdropping.
"Criminals are using it
against even law enforcement
agencies, " he says. " iney can
use it to keep track of what the
police departments are doing
and find out about things like
drug raids. In one police raid
they found $9,000 worth of
bugging devices that the cri
minals were using on the
police."
The majority of electronic
surveying is aimed against
businesses.
"A company may have an
idea that suddenly appears
with another company,"
Taylor says. "It could be a
coincidence or it could be
spying, but the only way you
can prove that is by the coun
termeasures."
One student in the course,
who asked not to be indenti-
fied, works for a large corpor
ation in New York. He says
that there is no way to tell how
much money his company
loses each year because a lot of
the cases are undocumented.
"The only time we know
about a bug is when we find
it," he says. "But there could
be more out there that we're
not good enough to find."
He says that he does about
300 "sweeps" a year. A sweep
is an electronic search for sur
veillance devices. But the
technology is so advanced, he
says, that he.came to the
school to find out how to bet
ter carry out the searches.
Taylor says it is common for
out-of-state people to come to
the school oecause it is the
only one of its kind in the na
tion.
"Manufacturers offer short
courses, but these are mostly
to sell equipment," he says. "I
start by trying to teach the
fundamental electronics so
they will know what is being
done. Then I start teaching
them some of the eavesdrop
ping techniques."
These electronic surveill
ance techniques are illegal, ex
cept when a judge in the U.S.
District Court or U.S. Court of
Appeals issues an order for
surveillance to study criminal
activities.
The idea of teaching illegal
techiniques is a controversial
addition to the course, but
Taylor says that in order to
prevent eavesdropping, one
must first know how it's done.
"You have to teach a police
man how to shoot a gun be
fore he can fight crime," he
says. "You have to know how
to eavesdrop to be able to stop
it. We don't let just anyone
into this course, because they
might use what they learn to
eavesdrop. Everyone is with
law enforcement or corporate
security, or is licensed
security."
Telephone tapping is the
most popular method of
eavesdropping used because
it is easy to do and hard to
detect, Taylor says.
"There aren't any accurate
statistics, but I would estimate
that 80 percent of all eaves
dropping is done by phone
taps," he says. "This method
allows the criminal to get the
information he wants and also
a quality audio. There's no
thing worse than having a lot
of tape with noise .covering
the important things."
The expansion of the com
puter age also makes tele
phone taps popular, he says,
oecause computers are easily
accessible through telephone
lines. Companies lose large
amounts of software this way,
he says.
Domestic spying also crops
up, Taylor says.
"I've gotten calls from
wives and husbands asking
me to spy on their spouses,"
he says. "I have to tell them
that it's illegal, but they want
it done anyway. There's a big
market for this illegal electro
nic surveillance."