Paulo
Can you just clarify what you mean by "Language Entropy"?
Entropy 'is the quantitative measure of disorder in a system'. Disorder in a system is increased by the introduction of energy, such as through greater use, stress and challenge.
I just have a feeling you might actually be thinking of Language Atrophy, where atrophy is a decrease in size and flexibility, and an increase in rigidity (and therefore order) brought about by lack of use, and lack of challenge to the structure.
Which one are you referring to?
Hi Roy,
I DO mean Entropy... I have had it put to me in the past that I meant atrophy (by no less than Linguistic PhDs). But they were arty types and didn't understand entropy in the scientific sense.
Increasing Entropy is, generally, a bad thing. Colloquially when we say entropy (unqualified) we imply
increasing entropy. Since it takes a lot of effort (according to the second law of thermodynamics) to reverse the effects of entropy.
So while there may be more energy being input, disorder is increasing.
I'm not against language changing! Creative use of language (in new and exciting ways) is a joy to behold. It's the change in language brought about by uncorrected misuse that gets me. People, in general, don't set about to create novel uses for existing words. They just (for all sorts of reasons -
and present company included) get it wrong! Nobody bothers to correct them and so they think it was OK.
Until recently, if I got something wrong, only my village got to hear the mistake. Nowadays, someone on the Net or in popular media gets something wrong and millions of people hear it - and assume it's correct usage.
Dictionaries are no use since they just record usage. Hence you can get two totally contradictory meanings for the same term (see the definition of our previous Prime Minister's favourite word - resile). But people still imbue them with the authority they no longer have... If it's in the dictionary it must be right... NO! As an aside, I once accused Sue Butler (of Macquarie Dictionary fame) on live radio of "adding to the entropy of the language". Funnily enough - they cut me off after that!
When we need to communicate unambiguously - such as in systems building and other difficult human endeavours, we need to ensure we understand each other fully.
I got started on this modelling lark over thirty years ago when I came across the writings of a rather obscure French professor of Informatics called Jean Raymond Abrial - who said: "The reason we can't build systems that work is we can't describe unambiguously what we want to build." Thirty years later.... "The reason we can't build...."
Abrial, by the way, taught Bertrand Meyer of Eiffel fame.
So, do what you can to combat
language entropy...
Paolo
