The Unbearable Soullessness of the BOThor | & The Need for Coining New Words ❤️

The Rise of the BOThor & Our Sense of Us!

#newspaperinlearning

I happened to read a very insightful article in the Editorial page of The Times of India, Chennai Edition.

What makes this article super-interesting is the fact that, the writer seems to have coined a new word – BOThor!

BOThor is a portmanteau word of Bot + Author, and it so perfectly encapsulates the soulless, lifeless, and automated nature of AI writing.

By combining BOT (a word associated with mechanical, soulless automation) with AUTHOR (one that traditionally demands deep human insight and lived experience), the writer seeks to highlight the inherent contradiction in AI literature, thereby justifying the addition of a brand new word to the vast repertoire of the English language.

So what pray, necessitates the coinage of a new word?

Well, there are quite a lot of factors. Let us take up just three of them for the sake of this blogpost. 

Firstly, when an invention, innovation or a new concept emerges, a new word is usually coined to name it. Terms like internet, web, software, download, malware, or smartphone didn’t exist until the rise of technology demanded the coinage of these words.

Secondly, our reality is always in a state of flux. It keeps evolving constantly. And as human behaviour and social norms evolve, we need new vocabulary to describe these new dynamics. Words like texting, following, ghosting, mansplaining, or doomscrolling came up in the past decade, to capture these new, felt experiences and shared experiences.

Thirdly, when we realise that there isn’t an exact word for expressing a particular feeling or concept, then we tend to blend existing words together to fill the void. For example, hangry (hungry + angry) or podcast (iPod + broadcast), or brunch (breakfast + lunch).

In this context, on an aside, I quite remember one interesting incident that had happened way back in the year 2003, in my I BA English Literature class. We were discussing the need and the importance of coining new words. And quoting Orwell, I said that, we need hundreds of new words every passing day to reflect the nameless things happening in our minds, in all their aura. I had then gently exhorted my students to come up with new coinages, to describe these new experiences.

Those were the days when neither students nor professors had mobile phones on us, you see! 

So after some brainstorming, one particular student - Ivan Antony John surprised us all with a lovely word.

Sir, I’ve coined a word!

Great, Ivan. What’s the word?

It’s Soulistic, Sir.

Woww! So what does Soulistic mean?

It’s a portmanteau of soul + holistic, sir. It could mean a holistic response to something that we perceive through our senses, he said.

This google report says that the word became popular in 2010s. But Ivan had coined it way back in 2003. However, sadly, back then, in 2003, Ivan did not have the proper platforms to propagate and make popular his new coinage. Quite curiously, I looked up google to see if the word soulistic has been documented. And it says, that the word has become popular after 2010!

So what is Ivan doing now? 😊

He is now the CEO of a company, and just recently he shared with me the lovely news that he has been honoured at The Oberoi, Bengaluru, on being awarded the title of the city’s most influential business leaders! 

OMG! 😊Dear Ivan, we are proud of you!

Coming back, 

In fact, if we look up the synonyms for the word LOVE, we rarely find perfectly matched synonyms.

So I don’t have any other option but to use the same word for different states of emotional responses.

I LOVE my dog.

I LOVE chocolates.

I LOVE my country.

I LOVE my soulmate.

I LOVE English Literature.

I LOVE Shakespeare.

I LOVE Ilayaraja’s music.

I LOVE pizza.

I LOVE birding, etc.

I don’t seem to have a variety of equivalents or synonyms for the word LOVE, to suit it better to each of the contexts. 😊

That’s hence, George Orwell, in his 1940 essay titled, “New Words,” emphasises on the need for coining new words.

That is one reason why Orwell says that, language has miserably failed our inner lives.

He asks –

Is there anyone who has ever written so much as a love letter in which he felt that he had said exactly what he intended?

He further argues that when we try to communicate profound internal states, the clumsiness of our existing vocabulary forces us to “falsify” our true feelings. Hence, without an option, we tend to fall back on imprecise metaphors or cliched expressions that never quite match the vivid reality inside our heads.

And that’s why he asks academia to deliberately keep inventing new words to describe the “nameless things” happening in our minds.

Lovely, ain’t it? 😊

Nameless things happening in our minds, that are yet to get the right words to describe them all.

To conclude then, the English language is a living, breathing ecosystem, and we are at a great need to constantly coin new words - known as neologisms - simply because our old words can’t always carry the weight of our new, newer realities! 😊

So when do we coin a new word?

Simple! When we feel our old words are not capable of carrying the weight of our new, newer realities.

To sum it up then, the article foregrounds something very relevant to literary beings.

What happens when words are generated by a system with no body, heart or soul that hasn’t felt glory or despair?

That’s a hollowing of one of the deepest forms of human connection. Bot hors (that’s bot plus author, in case you asked) are very, very bad news for our sense of us,

says the writer.

And that’s why, beware of BOThors.

Furthermore, storytelling is quite inseparable from human consciousness. Let AI not render them apart!