Whoa. The OED entry Lollywood takes its first incidence from a Usenet group. Check it out:
The first thing that amazed me about it was simply seeing NetLanguage in the OED -- I think of internet-speak as less valid, less documentable, than traditional print language, from which the OED has historically (of course) derived its word histories. But the internet...it's a lot closer to speech. Perhaps my surprise at seeing what I apparently regard to be a disposable form of language intrude on what I apparently consider a more solid, "authoritative" form's territory indicates that I unconsciously regard written and spoken language as substantially different. Of course, what the OED, or any dictionary, is actually doing is always attempting to play catch-up to spoken language by documenting its entry into print, which endures where spoken language does not. One of the (characteristically public sphere) assumptions of the dictionary is that if a word is printed and circulated, it can accurately be said to be part of the public consciousness, of language as a unified whole.
Another assumption we tend to make about word in the OED is that the "author" of their first listed usage invented them. It's common to cite the OED as part of proof that a particular writer first crystallized or described some concept or practice by making up a word for it. I've done that myself: the word "valediction" has no entry prior to a 1614 letter by Donne. I used this piece of information to claim that Donne's valedictory poems express a particular attitude towards leave-taking that makes sense particularly or "originally" in context of the early seventeenth century, and of Donne's poetry in particular. Specifically, I claimed that Donne found no word for the expression of leave-taking that suited his needs, and so created "valediction."
There's nothing unusual or unorthodox in this sort of claim. But what my surprise at the "Lollywood" definition made me realize is that I habitually underestimate the way in which these assumptions are always, in some way, fictions. "Valediction," for instance. Yes, the first instance OED records was written down by Donne in 1614. But when was it published? 1839. In the first edition of his collected works to also include letters. This "originality" I attribute to Donne requires that personal letters be considered authoritative, language-making speech. The way they acquire that status is to be published. They are published because we have made the cultural decision that they have public value. The fiction is that language will ever be still, can ever be said to have a definite originary point, can ever be authoritative. There are, of course, a few words that might legitimately be said to have been specifically coined by one Authorial person or one Work. Often these are simply eponyms, like "euphusism" or "malapropism."
But most words aren't part of some unified, Authorized body of language. And seeing internet-derived word histories points that out quite vividly to me. Dictionaries are always in one sense playing catch-up to language, in another sense, creating their own linguistic world (structured by the fictions of print and authorial attribution). Actually, thinking about the project of dictionary-making in the first place usually makes me feel dizzy, anxious, and kind of sick. The project of trying to "catch" every word in widespread use is so impossible, and so arbitrarily defined that it triggers a kind of agoraphobia in me. And to think of that attempt spreading to internet language (as of course it must do, the internet being the amazing workshop of interaction between the spoken and the written, the authorized and the unauthorized that it is) is even more dizzying to me. The late 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, I feel, were at least able to perpetuate the fiction that print more-or-less got language while it was still current – the internet so clearly explodes that. Internet archiving is so notoriously haphazard, the world of it so wide (and especially when we're talking about English) that the impossibility of the project comes to the forefront.
Which isn't to mean that the word history of "Lollywood" is useless – not at all. That Usenet entry at least tells me that the word was in common enough use in Indian/Pakistani music circles by 1995 that it was easily understood by internet-speakers. (I might question: is it a coinage of the technological elite, somewhat, since although a growing number of people in 1995 regularly used the internet and participated in usenet groups, that number was still not a majority?) But what the definition does to is make me think hard about my assumptions about language, authority, and history. Which are, of course, some of my favorite things to think about. Thanks, OED!
Lollywood, n.,
The Pakistani film industry, based in Lahore; Lahore regarded as the base of this industry.
1995 Re: Sabri Brothers? in rec.music.indian.misc (Usenet newsgroup) 9 Nov., I hope it's clear from the above that the least important thing about them is that they have done numbers for Bollywood or Lollywood!
The first thing that amazed me about it was simply seeing NetLanguage in the OED -- I think of internet-speak as less valid, less documentable, than traditional print language, from which the OED has historically (of course) derived its word histories. But the internet...it's a lot closer to speech. Perhaps my surprise at seeing what I apparently regard to be a disposable form of language intrude on what I apparently consider a more solid, "authoritative" form's territory indicates that I unconsciously regard written and spoken language as substantially different. Of course, what the OED, or any dictionary, is actually doing is always attempting to play catch-up to spoken language by documenting its entry into print, which endures where spoken language does not. One of the (characteristically public sphere) assumptions of the dictionary is that if a word is printed and circulated, it can accurately be said to be part of the public consciousness, of language as a unified whole.
Another assumption we tend to make about word in the OED is that the "author" of their first listed usage invented them. It's common to cite the OED as part of proof that a particular writer first crystallized or described some concept or practice by making up a word for it. I've done that myself: the word "valediction" has no entry prior to a 1614 letter by Donne. I used this piece of information to claim that Donne's valedictory poems express a particular attitude towards leave-taking that makes sense particularly or "originally" in context of the early seventeenth century, and of Donne's poetry in particular. Specifically, I claimed that Donne found no word for the expression of leave-taking that suited his needs, and so created "valediction."
There's nothing unusual or unorthodox in this sort of claim. But what my surprise at the "Lollywood" definition made me realize is that I habitually underestimate the way in which these assumptions are always, in some way, fictions. "Valediction," for instance. Yes, the first instance OED records was written down by Donne in 1614. But when was it published? 1839. In the first edition of his collected works to also include letters. This "originality" I attribute to Donne requires that personal letters be considered authoritative, language-making speech. The way they acquire that status is to be published. They are published because we have made the cultural decision that they have public value. The fiction is that language will ever be still, can ever be said to have a definite originary point, can ever be authoritative. There are, of course, a few words that might legitimately be said to have been specifically coined by one Authorial person or one Work. Often these are simply eponyms, like "euphusism" or "malapropism."
But most words aren't part of some unified, Authorized body of language. And seeing internet-derived word histories points that out quite vividly to me. Dictionaries are always in one sense playing catch-up to language, in another sense, creating their own linguistic world (structured by the fictions of print and authorial attribution). Actually, thinking about the project of dictionary-making in the first place usually makes me feel dizzy, anxious, and kind of sick. The project of trying to "catch" every word in widespread use is so impossible, and so arbitrarily defined that it triggers a kind of agoraphobia in me. And to think of that attempt spreading to internet language (as of course it must do, the internet being the amazing workshop of interaction between the spoken and the written, the authorized and the unauthorized that it is) is even more dizzying to me. The late 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, I feel, were at least able to perpetuate the fiction that print more-or-less got language while it was still current – the internet so clearly explodes that. Internet archiving is so notoriously haphazard, the world of it so wide (and especially when we're talking about English) that the impossibility of the project comes to the forefront.
Which isn't to mean that the word history of "Lollywood" is useless – not at all. That Usenet entry at least tells me that the word was in common enough use in Indian/Pakistani music circles by 1995 that it was easily understood by internet-speakers. (I might question: is it a coinage of the technological elite, somewhat, since although a growing number of people in 1995 regularly used the internet and participated in usenet groups, that number was still not a majority?) But what the definition does to is make me think hard about my assumptions about language, authority, and history. Which are, of course, some of my favorite things to think about. Thanks, OED!
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