Global Language Monitor

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) is an Austin, Texas-based company that collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. It is particularly known for its Word of the Year,^[1] political analysis,^[2][3] college and university rankings,^[4] High Tech buzzwords,^[5][6] and media analytics.^[7]

History

Founded in Silicon Valley in 2003 by Paul J.J. Payack, the GLM describes its role as "a media analytics company that documents, analyzes and tracks cultural trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English". GLM's main services include various products based on the Narrative Tracker technologies for global Internet and social media analysis. NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the Internet, blogosphere, the top 275,000 print and electronic global media, as well as new social media sources as they emerge.^[8] In April 2008, GLM moved its headquarters from San Diego to Austin.^[9] Most recently GLM named "apocalypse" (related to various end-of-world scenarios) as the Top Word of 2012, "Gangnam Style" the Top Phrase of 2012, and "Newtown,CT and Malala Yousafzai" the Top Names of 2012.^[10]

Top Words of the Year, Top Phrases of the Year and Top Names of the Year

Since 2000, the Global Language Monitor (GLM) has been selecting the Top Ten Words, Phrases and Names of the Year.^[11] To select these words and phrases it uses a statistical analysis of language usage in the worldwide print and electronic media, on the Internet and throughout the Blogosphere, including Social media.

GLM announced its Top Words of the Year for 2012 on December 27, 2012. The Word of the Year was "apocalypse" (related to the Maya apocalypse and various other end-of-world scenarios), "Gangnam Style" was the Top Phrase of 2012, and "Newtown, Connecticut and Malala Yousafzai" were the Top Names of 2012.^[12]

The Top Words of the Year of 2012 (WOTY)

Rank/Word/Comments

1. Apocalypse/Armageddon, and variations thereof – The word Apocalypse has been in ascendance in the English for more than 500 years. However,recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented resurgence of the word.
2. Deficit — Looks like deficit-spending will plague Western democracies for at least the next decade. Note to economists of stripes: reducing the rate of increase of deficit spending actually increases the deficit.
3. Olympiad — The Greeks measured time by the four-year interval between the Games. Moderns measure it by medal counts, rights fees and billions of eyeballs.
4. Baktun — A cycle of 144,000 days in the Maya ‘Long Count’ Calendar. This baktun ends on December 21, 2012, also being called the Mayan Apocalypse. (Actually Maya ‘long-count’ calendars stretch hundreds of millions of years into the future, December 21 merely marks the beginning of a new cycle.)
5. Meme – Internet Memes can best be conceived as thoughts or ideas rather than words, since they can and often do encompass sounds, photos, and text. Memes are propagated through every imaginable form of electronic communications, eventually surfacing in the traditional print and electronic media.
6. MOOC – Massive Open Online Course; the nature of higher education is changing and MOOC is the phenomenon to watch.
7. The Cloud — Neither the play by Aristophanes nor a forgotten title by Hitchcock, but rather where your data heads after you press <enter>.
8. Omnishambles — From the UK and the top word of the Oxford American Dictionary team, where everything, everywhere seems to be in a state of disarray.
9. Frankenstorm — Superstorm Sandy’s colloquial name. From a meteorologist’s lips to a globally recognized neologism within a few hours.
10. Obesogenic – An environment that tends to encourage obesity. Lately it has been used to describe television advertisement that promote sugary and high-calorie snacks to kids.

The Top Phrases of 2012

Rank/Word/Comments

1. Gangnam Style: A South Korean YouTube video watched 1,000,000,000 times around the world cannot be ignored because it might be considered frivolous.
2. Global Warming/Climate Change – No. 1 phrases for the first decade of the 21st century; still resonate well into its second decade.
3. Fiscal Cliff – Sharp automatic tax increases and spending cuts to U.S. Federal programs that go into effect with the new year — if the Budget Control Act of 2011 is not addressed.
4. The Deficit — The difference between what the government takes in and what it spends—is projected to be reduced by roughly half in 2013
5. God Particle — The ever-elusive Higgs Boson, the search for which, according to CERN, carries a 1 in 50,000,000 of creating a mini Black Hole that just might swallow the Earth. Oops.
6. Rogue nukes — Iran and North Korea are the focus of attention again.
7. Near-Earth Asteroid — Yet another year, another asteroid, another near-miss; this one slipping between the orbits of the Earth and the Moon.
8. Binders Full of Women — Any unfortunate misstatement or turn of phrase, especially when viewed by some 50 million in a US Presidential Debate becomes immediately meme-worthy.
9. Arab Spring — Still no Successor term as the Arab Spring morphs into something far more ominous.
10. Solar Max — The peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle; in 1854 solar storms melted telegraph wires; what’s in store for our all-pervasive electronic infrastructure?

The Top Names of the Year (2012)

Rank / Name / Comments

1. Newtown, CT and Malala Yousafzai (tie) — The Connecticut site of a horrific massacre of innocents; and the Pakistani girl shot by terrorists for promoting the right to education for girls.
2. Xi Jinping — Replaces Hu Jintao serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, under whose administration China has seen a decade of extraordinary growth.
3. Kate Middleton — With a baby on the way (and the publishing of photos of a most private nature), the Duchess of Cambridge maintains a high profile.
4. Barack Obama – Hope and Change retreat further into the history books as Obama survives a brutal campaign.
5. Mitt Romney — Soon to depart into the wormhole that most losing US Presidential candidates invariably find themselves. Dukakis? Mondale? Etc.
6. London Olympics — A triumphal return to the Olympic stage that would have astounded those present at the first Post-War Games in 1948.
7. Higgs Boson — The long-sought particle theorized to have been present at the creation, is confirmed in CERN experiments. (And, yes, Dr. Higgs, has lived to see confirmation of his conjecture.)
8. Europe (E.U. / Eurogeddon) — United, breaking apart, saving the Euro, abandoning the Euro, with the UK again as an ‘interested onlooker’. How do you say ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ in German?
9. Felix Baumgartner – Austrian Felix Baumgartner becomes the first skydiver to break the speed of sound, reaching a maximum …
10. Senkaku Islands — No one actually cares about these rocky, inhospitable outcroppings; it’s the mineral rights under surround seas of concern here.

Previous Words of the Year,Previous Phrases of the Year, and Previous Names of the Year include:

2011: Top Words: No. 1: Apocalypse, No. 2: Deficit, No. 3: Olympiad Top Phrases: No. 1: Gangnam Style, No. 2: Global Warming or Climate Change. Top Names: No. 1: Steve Jobs, Nos. 2: Osama bin-Laden and Seal Team 6, No. 3: Fukushima

2010: Top Words: No. 1: Spillcam, No. 2: Vuvuzela, No. 3: The Narrative Top Phrases: No. 1: Anger and Rage, No. 2: Climate Change, No. 3: The Great Recession Top Names: No. 1: Hu Jintao, paramount leader of China, No. 2: iPad, No. 3 Barack Obama

2009: Top Words: No. 1: Twitter, No. 2: Obama, No. 3: H1N1 Top Phrases: No. 1: King of Pop, No. 2: Obama-mania, No. 3: Climate Change Top Names: No. 1: Obama, No. 2: Michael Jackson, No. 3: Mobama

2008: Top Words: No. 1: Change, No. 2: Bailout, No. 3: Obama-mania Top Phrases: No. 1: Financial Tsunami, No. 2: Global Warming, No. 3: “Yes, We Can!” Top Names: No. 1: Barack Obama, No. 2: George W. Bush, No. 3: Michael Phelps

2007: Top Words: No. 1 Hybrid (representing all things green), No. 2: Surge Top Phrase: Climate Change Top Name: Al Gore

2006: Top Word: Sustainable Top Phrase: Stay the Course Top Name: Darfur

2005: Top Words: No. 1, Refugee, No. 2: Tsunami, No. 3: Katrina Top Phrase: Outside the Mainstream Top Name: (acts of) God

2004: Top Word: Incivility (for inCivil War) Top Phrase: Red States/Blue States, No. 2: Rush to War Top Name: Dubya/Rove

2003: Top Word: Embedded Top Phrase: Shock and Awe, No. 2: Rush to War Top Name: Saddam Hussein, No. 2: Dubya

2002: Top Word: Misunderestimate Top Phrase: Threat Fatigue Top Name: W (Dubya)

2001: Top Word: Ground Zero Top Phrase: ‘Lets Roll’ Top Name: The Heros

2000: Top Word: Chad Top Phrase: Dot.com Top Name: W (Dubya)

Top Words, Stories, Phrases and Names of the Decade

The Top Words of the Decade from 2000 to 2009 were headed by Global Warming.^[13]

The Top Words of the Decade from 2000–2009

Word / Year / Comments

1. global warming (2000) Rated highly from Day One of the decade

2. 9/11 (2001) Another inauspicious start to the decade

3. Obama- (2008 ) The US President’s name as a ‘root’ word or ‘word stem’

4. bailout (2008) The Bank Bailout was but Act One of the crisis

5. evacuee/refugee (2005) After Katrina, refugees became evacuees

6. derivative (2007) Financial instrument or analytical tool that engendered the Meltdown

7. google (2007) Founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’

8. surge (2007) The strategy that effectively ended the Iraq War

9. Chinglish (2005) The Chinese-English Hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands

10. tsunami (2004) Southeast Asian Tsunami took 250,000 lives

11. H1N1 (2009) More commonly known as Swine Flu

12. subprime (2007) Subprime mortgages were another bubble to burst

13. dot.com (2000) The Dot.com bubble engendered no lifelines, no bailouts

14. Y2K (2000) The Year 2000: all computers would turn to pumpkins at the strike of midnight

15. misunderestimate (2002) One of the first and most enduring of Bushisms

16. chad (2000) Those Florida voter punched card fragments that the presidency would turn upon

17. twitter (2008) A quarter of a billion references on Google

18. WMD (2002) Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction

19. blog (2003) First called ‘web logs’ which contracted into blogs

20. texting (2004) Sending 140 character text messages over cell phones

21. slumdog (2008) Child inhabitants of Mumba’s slums

22. sustainable (2006) The key to ‘Green’ living where natural resources are never depleted

23. Brokeback (2004) New term for ‘gay’ from the Hollywood film ‘Brokeback Mountain’

24. quagmire (2004) Would Iraq War end up like Vietnam, another ‘quagmire’?

25. truthiness (2006) Stephen Colbert’s addition to the language appears to be a keeper

The Top Stories of the decade from 2000-2009

Rank/News Story/Comment

1. Rise of China The biggest story of the decade, outdistancing the No. 2 Internet story by 400%.

2. Iraq War The buildup, the invasion, the hunt for the WMDs, and the Surge were top in print and electronic media outlets.

3. 9/11 Terrorist Attacks The 9/11 Terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC seemed to set the tone for the new decade.

4. War on Terror President George W. Bush’s response to 9/11.

5. Death of Michael Jackson A remarkably high ranking considering that MJ’s death occurred in the final year of the decade.

6. Election of Obama to US presidency The rallying cries of ‘hope’ and ‘Yes, we can!’ resulting in the historic election of an African-American to the US presidency.

7. Global Recession of 2008/9 The ongoing world economic restructuring as opposed to the initial ‘economic meltdown’ or ‘financial tsunami’.

8. Hurricane Katrina New Orleans was devastated when the levies collapsed; scenes of death and destruction shocked millions the world over.

9. War in Afghanistan Now in its eighth year with an expansion into neighboring Pakistan.

10. Economic Meltdown/Financial Tsunami The initial shock of witnessing some 25% of the world’s wealth melting away seemingly overnight.

11. Beijing Olympics The formal launch of China onto the world stage.

12. South Asian Tsunami The horror of 230,000 dead or missing, washed away in a matter of minutes was seared into the consciousness the global community.

13. War against the Taliban Lands controlled by the Taliban served as a safe haven from which al Qaeda would launch its terrorist attacks.

14. Death of Pope John Paul II The largest funeral in recent memory with some 2,000,000 pilgrims in attendance.

15. Osama bin-Laden eludes capture Hesitation to attack Tora Bora in 2002 has led to the continuing manhunt.

The Top Phrases of the Decade from 2000–2009

Word/Year/Comments

1. climate change (2000) Green words in every form dominant the decade

2. Financial Tsunami (2008) One quarter of the world’s wealth vanishes seemingly overnight

3. ground zero (2001) Site of 9/11terrorist attack in New York City

4. War on Terror (2001) Bush administration’s response to 9/11

5. Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003) Bush’s WMDs never found in Iraq or the Syrian desert

6. swine flu (2008) H1N1, please, so as not to offend the pork industry or religious sensitivities!

7. “Let’s Roll!” (2001) Todd Beamer’s last words before Flight 93 crashed into the PA countryside

8. Red State/Blue State (2004) Republican or Democratic control of states

9. carbon footprint (2007) How much CO² does an activity produce?

10. shock-and-awe (2003) Initial strategy of Iraq War

11. Ponzi scheme (2009) Madoff’s strategy reaped billions & heartache

12. Category 4 (2005) Force of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans’ seawalls and levies

13. King of Pop (2000) Elvis was the King, MJ the King (of Pop)

14. “Stay the course” (2004) Dubya’s oft-stated guidance for Iraq War

15. “Yes, we can!” (2008) Obama’s winning campaign slogan

16. “Jai Ho!” (2008) Shout of joy from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’

17. “Out of the Mainstream” (2003) Complaint about any opposition’s political platform

18. Cloud computing (2007) Using the Internet as a large computational device

19. threat fatigue (2004) One too many terrorist threat alerts

20. same-sex marriage (2003) Marriage of gay couples

High tech terms

On March 29, 2013 announced The Most Confusing High Tech Buzzwords of the Second Decade of the 21st century, thus far (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013) with commentary follow:

2013 Rank, Buzzword, Last Year’s rank

1. Big Data (1) — Soon Human Knowledge will be doubling every second. ’Big’ does not begin to describe what’s coming at us.
2. Dark Data (New)- Might not have noticed it because … it is ‘Dark Data’ ‘Big Data’ has begun to spin off its own superlatives.
3. The Cloud (2) — All that data has got to go somewhere. Hint: it’s neither your phone nor your tablet.
4. Yottabytes (New) – Showing up on lots of technologists’ radar lately: a quadrillion gigabytes.
5. The Next Big Thing (3) — A cliche rendered ever more meaningless but still on everyone’s tongue.
6. Heisenbug (New) – A bug that disappears when you try to detect it, finally making the list after a steady ascent over the last decade.
7. 3-D Printer (New) – Watch this space. This technology has been used in CAD design for years and science fiction for decades — but now they are impinging upon everyday life.
8. Phablet (New) – The Next Big Thing? The odds are against it since consumer goods tend to evolve into single-purpose appliances.
9. REST (New) – Representational State transfer is slowly climbing its way up the list.
10. Web X.0 (5) — Formerly Web 2.0, 3.0, etc.

The study was released in conjunction with Austin's South by Southwest Interactive festival.

On March 17, 2010, the Global Language Monitor presented the Most Confusing High Tech Buzzwords of the first decade of the 21st century (2000–2009).^[14]

1. HTTP — HyperText Transfer Protocol is used for HTML (HyperText Markup Language) files.
2. Flash — As in Flash Memory. “Flash’ is easier to say than “ I brought the report on my EEPROM chip with a thin oxide layer separating a floating gate and control gate utilizing Fowler-Nordheim electron tunneling”.
3. God Particle – The Higgs boson, thought to account for mass. The God Particle has eluded discovery since its existence was first postulated some thirty years ago.
4. Cloud computing – Distributing or accessing programs and services across the Internet. (The Internet is represented as a cloud.)
5. Plasma (as in plasma TV) — Refers to a kind of television screen technology that uses matrix of gas plasma cells, which are charged by differing electrical voltages to create an image.
6. IPOD – Apple maintains that the idea of the iPod was from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
7. Megapixel – One million pixels or picture elements.
8. Nano – Widely used to describe anything small as in nanotechnology. Like the word ‘mini’ which originally referred to the red hues in Italian miniature paintings, the word nano- is ultimately derived from the ancient Greek word for ‘dwarf’.
9. Resonate – Not the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude, but the ability to relate to (or resonate with) a customer’s desires.
10. Virtualization – Around since the late ‘70s, virtualization now applies to everything from infrastructures to I/O.

On November 19, 2008 Global Language Monitor announced the most confusing yet frequently cited high tech buzzwords of 2008 to be cloud computing, green washing, and buzzword compliant followed by resonate, de-duping, and virtualization. Rounding out the Top Ten were Web 2.0, versioning, word clouds, and petaflop. The most confusing Acronym for 2008 was SaaS (software as a service).

On 14 October 2007 GLM released a list of the most confusing high tech terms and buzzwords. The words included: iPod, flash, cookie, nano and kernel, followed by megahertz, cell (as in cell phone), plasma, de-duplication and Blu-Ray. Other terms being tracked included terabyte, memory, core, and head crash. The most confusing acronym was found to be SOA, for service-oriented architecture, an acronym which IBM published a book about.^[15]

The studies were released each year on the anniversary of the cookie, the invention that made the World Wide Web practical for widespread surfing, communication, and e-commerce.^[16]

Counting English words

GLM announced the 1,000,000th English word on June 10, 2009.^[17] This controversial exercise was widely covered in the global media.^[18][19] The count itself was widely criticized by a number of prominent members of the linguistic community, including Geoffrey Nunberg,^[20] and Jesse Sheidlower^[21] and Benjamin Zimmer.^[22] on the grounds that since there is no generally accepted definition of a word, there can never be a definitive count.^[21][22][23]

The finalists, which met the criteria of a minimum of 25,000 citations with the necessary breadth of geographic distribution and depth of citations, were:

1. Web 2.0. 2. Jai Ho! 3. N00b. 4. Slumdog. 5. Cloud computing. 6. Carbon Neutral. 7. Slow Food. 8. Octomom. 9. Greenwashing. 10. Sexting. 11. Shovel ready. 12. Defriend. 13. Chengguan. 14. Recessionista. 15. Zombie Banks.^[24]

Critics noted that the target date had been changed a number of times from late in 2006 to early in 2009.^{[25][26][27][28][29][30]} It was also criticized on grounds that a count is impossible because "word" is not a scientifically valid concept. Google addressed this situation by counting the words in the 15 million scanned texts in their corpus.^[31] Global Language Monitor states the general criteria for inclusion on its site, maintaining that it is simply updating the established criteria for printed dictionaries beginning with the works of Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster.^[32]

The New York Times quoted Payack as saying that the PQI is "an algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet in relation to frequency, context and appearance in global media. It is a weighted index that takes into account year-to-year increases and acceleration in the last several months".^[33] In general terms, GLM describes its Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), used to run its analytics on global language trends and, as a weighted index, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum and velocity, using frequency data on words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, and throughout the blogosphere, as well as in proprietary databases (Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, etc.). It can also create "signals" that can be used in a variety of applications.^[34]

Obama an English language word

On 20 February 2008 GLM announced that the latest word to enter the English language was "obama", derived from Barack Obama, in its many variations. GLM described Obama- as a "root" for words including obamanomics, obamican, obamamentum, obamacize, obamarama, obamaNation, Obamafy, obamamania and obamacam.^[35] GLM announced it to be an accepted word, once it met the group's published criteria: a minimum of 25,000 citations in the global media, as well as achieving the necessary 'breadth' and 'depth' of citations.^[36]

Other analysis and rankings

The Global Language Monitor publishes other lists relating to the English language including: the TrendTopper MediaBuzz College Guide rankings of the top 400 U.S. colleges and universities according to their internet brand equity.^[37]

Top Universities (January 2013): Rank/University/Previous Ranking

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1
2. Harvard University 2
3. Columbia University 4
4. Stanford University 8
5. University of California, Berkeley 14
6. Yale University 9
7. University of Chicago 3
8. University of Texas, Austin 10
9. Cornell University 6
10. Princeton University 15
11. University of Pennsylvania 12
12. Ohio State University, Columbus 16
13. University of Washington 11
14. University of California at Los Angeles 7
15. New York University 20
16. University of Wisconsin, Madison 5
17. Virginia Tech 19
18. University of California, Davis 17
19. University of California, San Diego 22
20. University of Minnesota 35

Top Colleges (January 2013): Rank/College/Previous Ranking

1. University of Richmond 1
2. Bucknell University 4
3. United States Military Academy 19
4. Wellesley College 12
5. School of the Art Institute of Chicago 17
6. Amherst College 6
7. Williams College 2
8. Middlebury College 14
9. Vassar College 20
10. Pratt Institute 10
11. Babson College 27
12. The Cooper Union 9
13. United States Naval Academy 24
14. Bowdoin College 22
15. Occidental College 13
16. Rhode Island School of Design 37
17. Swarthmore College 26
18. Lafayette College 30
19. Oberlin College 8
20. Bard College 43

The Top Global Fashion Capitals (2012). Each autumn, the Global Language Monitor releases its rankings of the Top Global Fashion Capitals.^[38]

The 2012 Top Global Fashion Capitals, with Rank, Previous Year’s Rank, and commentary follow.

1. London (1) – Competitors stymied by Kate Middleton and now the hugely successful Summer Olympics.
2. New York (2)– That toddling town is waiting in the wings for London to stumble.
3. Barcelona (7) — Iberia rules with two fashion capitals in the Top Five.
4. Paris (3)– Topped ‘haute couture’ category, of course.
5. Madrid (12)– Making a strong move toward the top.
6. Rome (13)– Edging Milano this time out.
7. Sao Paulo (25) — The Queen of Latin America, again.
8. Milano (4) — Slipping a few spots, but never for long.
9. Los Angeles (5) — The City of Angels strengthening its hold as a true fashion capital.
10. Berlin (10) — Remains among the elite — and deservedly so.
11. Antwerp (44) — A surprising large climb in a very short time (up 33 spots).
12. Hong Kong (6) — Tops in Asia, though down six year over year.
13. Buenos Aires (20) — Moving steadily upward.
14. Bali (21) — Steady climb attests to it being more than just swimwear.
15. Sydney (11) — Remains near the top, a few steps ahead of Melbourne, as is its wont.
16. Florence (31) — A big move for Firenza (up 15).
17. Rio de Janeiro (23) — Building toward the 2016 Summer Games.
18. Johannesburg (41) — Jo-burg breaks into the Top Twenty.
19. Singapore (8) — Trailing Hong Kong but leading Tokyo and Shanghai.
20. Tokyo (9) — No longer the No, 5 to the Top Four, competition is aglow in Asia.

and 15 Top All-Time Bushisms, and many others.^[39]

References

External links

• Official Site