April 3, 2012
In linguistics, an idiolect [id-ee-uh-lekt] is a variety of a language unique to one individual person. It is manifested by patterns of vocabulary or idiom selection (the individual’s lexicon), grammar, or pronunciations that are unique to the individual. Every individual’s language production is in some sense unique.
Linguists disagree about exactly what is shared, in terms of the underlying knowledge of the language, among speakers of the same language or dialect. According to this view, a language is an ‘ensemble of idiolects… rather than an entity per se.’
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April 3, 2012
Estuary English is a dialect of English widely spoken in South East England, especially along the River Thames and its estuary. Phonetician John C. Wells defines Estuary English as ‘Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England.’
Some people adopt the accent as a means of ‘blending in,’ appearing to be more working class, or in an attempt to appear to be ‘a common man’ – sometimes this affectation of the accent is derisively referred to as ‘Mockney.’ A move away from traditional Received Pronunciation accents is almost universal among middle class young people.
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April 3, 2012
Mockney (a portmanteau of ‘mock’ and ‘Cockney’) is an affected accent and form of speech in imitation of Cockney or working class London speech, or a person with such an accent. A stereotypical Mockney comes from a middle or upper-middle class background in England’s Home Counties (the counties encircling London).
Mockney is distinct from Estuary English by being the deliberate affectation of the working-class London (Cockney) accent. A person speaking with a Mockney accent might adopt Cockney pronunciation but retain standard grammatical forms where the Cockney would use non-standard forms (e.g. negative concord / double negative). The first published use of the word according to the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1989.
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April 3, 2012
U and non-U English usage, with U standing for upper class, and non-U representing the aspiring middle classes, were part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolects) in 1950s Britain and New England. The debate did not concern itself with the speech of the working classes, which in many instances used the same words as the upper class.
For this reason, the vocabulary list can often appear quite counter-intuitive: the middle class prefers ‘fancy’ or fashionable words (even neologisms), often euphemisms, in an attempt to make themselves sound more refined, while the upper class in many cases sticks to the same plain and traditional words that the working classes also use, as they have no need to make themselves sound more refined, conscious of their status.
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April 3, 2012
The Deep Web (also called the Invisible Net, the Deep Web, Undernet, or the hidden Web) refers to World Wide Web content that is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexable by standard search engines. It should not be confused with the ‘dark Internet,’ the computers that can no longer be reached via Internet, or with the distributed filesharing network ‘Darknet,’ which could be classified as a smaller part of the Deep Web.
Mike Bergman, founder of ‘BrightPlanet,’ credited with coining the phrase, has said that searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the Web’s information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot ‘see’ or retrieve content in the deep Web—those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search. The deep Web is several orders of magnitude larger than the surface Web.
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April 3, 2012
Simian Mobile Disco are an electronic music duo and production team from London, formed in 2005 by James Ford and Jas Shaw. Musically, they are known for their analog production. In addition to his work with Simian Mobile Disco, Ford is a producer and has worked with artists such as Florence and the Machine, Peaches, Arctic Monkeys, and Klaxons. Simian Mobile Disco originally formed as a DJ duo, on the side of their early four-piece band Simian. They released a number of early tastemaker singles, such as ‘The Mighty Atom / Boatrace / Upside Down’ on I’m a Cliché and ‘The Count’ on Kitsuné, but gained more fame for their remixes of artists such as Muse, Klaxons, The Go! Team, Air, and others.
In 2006, Kitsuné released the duo’s underground hit ‘Hustler,’ which features guest vocals from New York singer Char Johnson. The band’s debut album, ‘Attack Decay Sustain Release’ was released in 2007 on Wichita Recordings. The lead single, ‘It’s the Beat,’ features Ninja from UK indie band The Go! Team on vocals. Their sophomore studio album, ‘Temporary Pleasure’ was released in 2009, and featured many guests including Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip, Beth Ditto of Gossip, and Chris Keating of Yeasayer.
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