‘Sibop’ is what I heard in a supermarket I frequent in Ankara, uttered by a kid about 5 years old, exclaimed to his mother. I paused for a moment and thought in retrospect. Many a time I was puzzled with the expressions I had never in my life heard of in English language speaking contexts during my stay in Cleveland as an MA student. Yet, I was back in Turkey and in a very familiar place where my native language was being spoken, so I wanted to be able decipher the language effortlessly. I told myself that I was a language teacher who teaches using contextual clues to guess unknown vocabulary, and that it should not be a big deal for me to adhere meaning to an exclamation spoken by a 5-year-old. I thought of the first meaning of the word, the pressure relief valve in especially bicycle and car tires, which did not help much. Any metaphorical interpretation of that meaning did not fit the context. As a language teacher I went to the roots of the word, its prefix or suffix and then lastly to the circumstances it was used in. Nothing helped. Later that day, on my inquiry as to the usage of the word, I learned that during the time that I was away from Turkey, on a very popular program, the Hamdi Show, the word ‘sibop’ was used as an exclamation very often by the main characters, and it had conquered the active vocabulary of the public, yet the word’s popularity died when the show was over, and it never entered Turkish dictionaries with the ‘excited, and intimate exclamation’ meaning. Particularly this experience, but also many other such incidents made me think of how difficult it is to catch up with words that are very commonly used among lay man in a certain period of time with meanings that are artificially and arbitrarily adhered to them in a certain culture. Such words, if the circumstances they are used in continue, do enter dictionaries and then it is easier for a language teacher to deal with them in class referring to well-established dictionaries, however, these expressions may also very well ‘die’ or stop being commonly used. In such circumstances, what a certain culture uses the common fads as, is a mystery to the language learner and the teacher. Not the dictionary meanings, but the meanings that are culturally embedded in recently made-up words, expressions or phrases is difficult to deal with for the teacher, if the language teaching context does not take place in the country that the target language, in our case, English, is spoken in. English language, is especially important in that it is the lingua franca of the global culture spreading thanks to or because of Hollywood movies, shows, and series, in addition to the marketing strategies of capitalism. English is predominant in our lives all around the world via mostly the means provided by the internet, and as language teachers when we use updated authentic texts, and expect them to communicate meaning to the learners, we as teachers end up facing the mystery of new vocabulary born too recently to be an entry in dictionaries. To put what I mean in perspective, another example from my teaching experience can be given. About six years ago I had underlined the word ‘tweet’ in a student essay having checked it in the thickest dictionary I’d found. To my surprise, while the word was only recently being used in formal texts, in the coming years it was completely legitimate due to its widespread use. So, a language teacher should be updating herself every single day to be familiar with the changes in the culture of the target language.
So how can the same phenomenon of a constantly changing culture reflect itself in the language classroom? Very recently, England voted against the EU and a brand new word, ‘Brexit’ was created, funny as it may sound, it was succeeded with ‘Grexit, referring to the potential exit of Grece from the EU. Similarly, the word ‘YouTuber’ was coined to refer to layman who have become producers of YouTube video sharing materials. One such example is the word ‘glam-ma’, recently added to the language of the native English speakers, referring to a ‘glamorous grandmother’. Apparently, following the latest updates is a challenge for the English language teacher. In their authentic and recently published materials, be it reading or listening, it is not unlikely that a language teacher may have to deal with vocabulary she can neither explain nor use in an example sentence unless she can use the means to analyze the word in hand with its ‘history’, that is the background information she has to fill in the cultural gaps with. Without the context that the word is used in, regular dictionaries would not be of much help. In addition to the intra-contextual information the reader or the listener must have for full comprehension, one needs to dwell on the intertextual information as well to see if the particular expression bears a significance in relation to other texts or excerpts it is used with since every piece of language actually exists in a cultural, social and historical context. There are reasons behind why such fashionable, made-up words are coined lying in the purpose and the function they have. They might bear metaphorical meanings adhered to them only recently which makes it too difficult for the language teacher to catch up with. Also, social relations of power in the context the words are used in a particular culture affect their possible meaning and function. One may have to focus on who the ‘voice’ in the utterance belongs to in addition to the dialogue, if any, that the excerpt appears in. The words ‘hashtag, selfie, or catfish’ are examples of such culturally-laden words that have only in the last few years gained ‘legitimacy’. Take ‘çatfish’ for example, which is a word coined to describe people who create fake social media accounts to stalk others. Unless the language teacher is in to the culture of the target language, there is no way she is going to make use of a dictionary to learn or teach the word. However, an online, supposedly unrelaible, collaborative dictionary may serve her or the students, much better in this case. Other such examples can be ‘toyability and gamification’ which reflect the undeniable impact of online connectivity to our lives and livelihoods in the English language. Similarly, ‘spoiler alert’ was an expression one has to know the background of before it was finally accepted in the beginnings of 1990s. With the emergence of unlimited social media activities, the verb únfriend’ came up, which was not a registered word in published and respected dictionaries, and which a language teacher had to figure out the use via either following the media of the target language or referring to collaborative, online dictionaries updated every day by layman, such as ‘everything2.com, urbandictionary.com and 4chan.org’. Only then, a language teacher and student can be researchers able to discover knowledge exploring the language in and out of the classroom. There is no end to how the culture of the target language will change, and relatively how the language will change. But the discomfort of being distant to the ever-changing culture and its new words can be challenged once one directs herself to the right source which would not suffice with literal meanings of words, but would provide an extensive portrayal of the subliminal or disseminating messages the new words in English come with.