The best of both worlds: inflated terms in IT (and other) discourses

Abstract

In the paper to which this study responds, Bruthiaux discussed verbal creativity in IT, ranging from short figurative terms such as bug and virus to such ‘heavy premodifying groups’ as random access memory and central processing memory. He also drew attention to both intransitive verb forms such as Setup is initializing and The menu will repeat, and (most notably) such ‘unaccusative’ constructs as ‘Close this dialog box when download completes’ and ‘Sit back and relax while Windows 98 installs on your computer’. The present paper takes the discussion further in terms of ‘fog’ and ‘inflation’, ‘unaccusatives’, superfluity and excessive Latinity, tautological phrasing, and such lexical curiosities as overwrite used to mean ‘replace’.