THE MEMING OF LIFE

In a corner of a cupboard in our house is a stack of clip frames containing postcards, photocopies, photographs and printouts, which have over the years hung on various walls.

One of the items preserved in this way is a photocopy of a cartoon strip. It was given to me by a student on a course I once taught.

The cartoon strip is Calvin and Hobbs. One of the characters is a small boy and one is a tiger, though I can't remember which is which. In the three frames of the cartoon, boy and tiger are walking through the snow. Their conversation goes as follows (you can change the names round if necessary):

Calvin: I like to verb words.

Hobbs: What?

Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when ‘access’ was a thing? Now it’s something you do. It got verbed.

Verbing weirds language.

Hobbs: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.

Verbing weirds language. It certainly does, and this proposition might help explain what the meming of life is all about.  

The word meme is a noun, described in the Collins English Dictionary as ‘an idea or element of social behaviour passed on... in a culture, esp. by imitation’. I first heard it used by the high priest of atheism Richard Dawkins as a way of considering culture from an evolutionary perspective. And what’s more, by using the word meming, I think I might have been among the first to have verbed this particular noun.

But I’m not the only one. The noun is in dictionaries, but when I checked the verb wasn’t. Looking online (dictionary.com), a fuller definition can be found as the internet, for better and for worse, easily outstrips print when it comes to currency.

To illustrate how memes actually operate, and to reinforce the impact of the verbing process, I offer an on-the-record instance of me meming (used without object), or being memed (used with object).

In The Scrabble For Acceptance is the following passage:

Words get into dictionaries because lexicographers allow them in; in effect, lexicographers are the bouncers at the Word Club, and admission is at the discretion of the management. In recent years the dress code has become pretty liberal, though in former times even ‘smart casual’ was often not good enough.

I was rather pleased with myself for coming up with this, and it turned out that others quite liked the idea as well. In fact, The Bookseller magazine subsequently published an item headed Chambers hits out at Collins’ slang, in which the ongoing war of words between these two dictionary publishers got a few column inches. As the entire article is only about 150 words long, I can quote it more or less in full:

Reference book publisher Chambers has criticised competitor Collins for undermining the credibility of dictionaries by including  media-driven slang words.

Ian Brookes, editor-in-chief of the ninth edition of The Chambers Dictionary, said: ‘Dictionaries need to retain a sense of proportion. Words such as ‘Britneyfication’ do not meet the conventional standards for inclusion in a dictionary.’

The comments came as this summer’s battle of dictionary publishers heated up. Chambers, Collins and OUP each have new editions of their English dictionaries.

Mr Brookes said that ...‘lexicographers make the decisions on words like this based on whether the words are well established and will continue to be used. If you consider dictionaries to be the bouncers in clubs for words, underage words should not be let in.’

Ian Brookes let me know he had borrowed this image from my feature, and I had no complaints – in fact I was delighted.

But there is more. A related meming incident later took place when Patrick White of Chambers and Jeremy Butterfield of Collins went head to head on Radio 4’s Today programme. By a quirk of fate there happened to be a cassette in our kitchen radiocassette player, and at the time the broadcast went out the radio was on. As a result, I was able to record most of what was said. It was thrilling, if you happened to be me. This is an actual extract from the actual debate that ensued, transcribed by myself:

Jeremy Butterfield (Collins editorial representative): — we’re reflecting language as it’s currently used. 

Ed Stourton (radio presenter): Patrick White, that’s probably quite sensible isn’t it? I mean, apart from, you know, looking something up in the dictionary for the rules of Scrabble to see if you can use it or not, dictionaries are not ways of laying down holy scripture, are they?

Patrick White (Chambers editorial representative): No. I’m glad you mentioned Scrabble though, because Chambers is the only official dictionary for Scrabble, so it’s —

Ed Stourton: Harhar. Gosh I walked into that one didn’t I —

Patrick White: Well it’s very important because that’s why we have to be very careful what we do put in our dictionary, because it has these implications. But no, we’re not pompous at all about it, and the lexicographer does have an important role to play, deciding what does and what does not go in —

Ed Stourton: But why do you need to tell us what we can and can’t consider to be proper English usage?

Patrick White: We’re not saying it’s ‘proper English’ at all, we’re just saying that not every word that’s ever been used can go in the dictionary, that’s clearly not possible, so we act, lexicographers act, as it were, as bouncers deciding what gets in and what doesn’t get in, and we kind of feel that maybe the Collins bouncers have been seconded from the marketing department, such is the high profile of some of these words.

Ed Stourton: All right – a quick final word on that, Jeremy Butterfield?

Jeremy Butterfield: Er, the idea of Chambers thinking of itself as a trendy nightclub is really so absurd I can’t find words.

Ed Stourton: Harharhar. To hear the editor of a dictionary say he can’t find words is probably unique and a good place to leave it.

And there you have it, a meme in action, a cultural virus breeding away in its own benign niche of the infosphere, an idea, my idea, taking on a life of its own and reproducing. Or, as the Collins dictionary says, ‘being passed on, esp. by imitation’.

As a postscript, I can add that I later submitted the word meme for inclusion in the next Collins Robert French/English dictionary, and it was accepted.

So now you know: I meme what I say, and I say what I meme.