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<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">There's a new post on the Web of Language:</font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Banning words for the new year</font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;">In the spirit of New Year’s resolutions like </span><em style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;">quit
smoking, lose weight, exercise more, </em><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;">each January brings new calls to ban words, the linguistic equivalent of losing
weight. But while New Year’s resolutions are self-imposed—I decide that an hour on the elliptical watching</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span><em style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Sherlock</em><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;">would
be better than an hour on the couch with</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span><em style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Sherlock </em><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; orphans: auto; widows: auto; text-align: -webkit-auto;">and
a bowl of chips—word bans tend to be imposed by someone else.</span></div>
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Usually it’s an individual or a group that wants to ban a word<em>. </em>One such group, at Lake Superior State University, posts an annual <a href="http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php" data-mce-href="http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php">banished
words list</a>. Instead of <em>learn a new word every day, </em>the New Year’s resolution of this crowd is <em>ban a new word every day. </em>This year’s banned words are <em>selfie, twerk, </em>and <em>hashtag.</em></p>
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It turns out that quite a few people actually like these banned words: <em>Oxford Dictionaries </em>honored <em><a href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/100386?ACTION=POST&displayOrder=desc&displayType=search&displaySearch=hashtag&displayColumn=created&displayCount=1" data-mce-href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/100386?ACTION=POST&displayOrder=desc&displayType=search&displaySearch=hashtag&displayColumn=created&displayCount=1">selfie</a></em> as
its 2013 Word of the Year, with <em>twerk </em>dancing close behind, and both the Web of Language and the American Dialect Society named <em><a href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/86413?ACTION=POST&displayOrder=desc&displayType=search&displaySearch=hashtag&displayColumn=created&displayCount=1" data-mce-href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/86413?ACTION=POST&displayOrder=desc&displayType=search&displaySearch=hashtag&displayColumn=created&displayCount=1">#hashtag</a> </em>as
Word of the Year for 2012 (<em><a href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/108073" data-mce-href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/108073">marriage</a> </em>and <em><a href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/108407" data-mce-href="http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/108407">invasion
of privacy</a> </em>are the Web of Language’s 2013 word and phrase of the year).</p>
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Banning words won’t stop people from using them: nominations on the Banished Word List are so peppered with <em>selfie </em>and <em>hashtag</em> it seems that even the nominators themselves are reluctant to give up using the words they claim to hate. . . .</p>
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<div>read the full post on the Web of Language: <a href="http://bit.ly/weblan">http://bit.ly/weblan</a></div>
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<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Dennis Baron</font></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Professor of English and Linguistics</font></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Department of English<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span><span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span></font></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">University of Illinois<span class="Apple-converted-tab"> </span></font></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">608 S. Wright St.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"><font face="Helvetica" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Urbana, IL 61801 </font></div>
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