Productivity in Internet Language

Today’s plan is to investigate the levels of productivity found in an online context.

Recall that productivity is the state where a morpheme is available to be used with complete acceptability and unquestionable grammaticality. Creativity is generally used to describe a level of productivity where a given combination is understandable, but unusual, ‘cutting edge’, ‘new’, surprising, or ‘simply not done’. Put differently, productive uses of morphology are understood and ‘taken for granted’ and generally not questioned, but creative uses are understood, but feel like you’re doing something ‘new’.

Notes

• For today’s activity, you are not allowed to use entire template substitutions (e.g. Drake meme vs two buttons), nor to use changes in the words of top or bottom text. Focus on other morphemes and subelements, and ideally ones we’ve not talked about in class, rather than these low hanging fruit!

• You’re not required to ‘mock up’ the change, if you don’t want to. Feel free to use online generators or MSPaint, but if you’d rather just describe it, that’s fine too.

Task 1: Find a productive morpheme

First, find a morpheme, either from a specific meme, or a more general morpheme used in many memes, which is very productive, and readily combines with many other memes.

To show this:

• Show us examples of this morpheme in its original context (if such a thing exists)
• Show examples of this morpheme in use in a few other memes, in context where it ‘works’ uncontroversially
• Make an example of this morpheme in a brand new meme or context where it ‘works’

Task 2: Find a more creative morpheme usage

Now, identify a morpheme, and find a new use for it which is understandable, but feels ‘new’, ‘unusual’, or ‘different’, and is less ‘productive’ than ‘creative’.

To show this:

• Show us an example of this morpheme in a few contexts where it’s still understandable, but where it feels unusual, innovative, or surprising
• ‘Push the boundaries’ of the morpheme, and find a context where it just barely works, but still makes sense.

Task 3: Find a non-productive element

Finally, think of the internet linguistic forms you know, and identify a meaningful element of them which is not productive. This element of form should carry some analyzable meaning, either right now, or historically, but it really can’t be used in other templates.

To show this:

• Show us the morpheme in its context, and explain the form and meaning correspondence
• Attempt to use it in a few memes where you might expect it to work, and show us that it generally doesn’t work well

Discussion

Once you’ve finished the tasks above, here are a few discussion questions for your group:

1. Many people have argued that a morpheme’s productivity is closely related to the frequency with which it’s used in a language. For instance, the plural -s (as in ‘cats’) is much more common than the plural -en (as in ‘children’ or ‘oxen’). Does this match your intuition about productivity of your morphemes?

2. Often, morphological creativity creates something entirely novel. Sometimes, it results in a ‘new word’ (e.g. ‘floordrobe’ from ‘wardrobe’), or in other cases, it results in a new affix (e.g. ‘-holic’ from alcoholic, now productive in ‘chocoholic’). Do you feel like your ‘creative’ example could result in a new form you could use in the future?

3. Productivity comes and goes. ‘-en’ used to be productive as a plural, but isn’t anymore. Similarly, ‘-holic’ is now pretty damned productive. Can you think of a morpheme, either in memes or in other language, which used to be productive, and isn’t anymore?