WORD OF THE MONTH APRIL 2010: GREENWASH

Greenwashing is a marketing technique in which a company falsely claims environmental responsibility. As more and more consumers are concerned about sustainability and the environment, a growing number of corporations have stepped up, claiming to be improving their environmental practices and reforming their industries. While this may certainly be true in some cases, many of the claims of environmental stewardship made by companies are actually false, or at the very least extremely misleading.

The term is a portmanteau of “whitewashing,” in the sense of covering up misdeeds, and “green,” a common term used to refer to environmentally sound practices. The green movement encompasses food sources, building, energy, and everything in between, and it also represents a substantial source of potential income. A growing number of citizens, especially in the First World, are willing to pay a premium for “green” products. In addition to environmentally sensitive companies who are genuinely trying to practice business ethically, a number of corporations launch extensive greenwashing campaigns detailing all the ways in which they are environmentally responsible. For unwary consumers, the glossy greenwashing ads can suggest that the company is reputable and responsible.

LYRICS
The environment is dying, we need a solution fast.
If we don't find a big old plan, this simply will not last.
We don't wanna freak anybody out,
We don't wanna make a scene.
We'd rather sweep it under the mat,
But instead, we'll paint it green.
Green, green, green, we'll paint it green.

It doesn't really matter what it is,
What it does or why it stinks
Or what it means as long as it is green.

It doesn't really matter what it burns,
Or what it makes or what it kills
Or what it's for, as long as it is green.
Green, green, green, green, let's make it green.

Politicians feed us crap, celebrities are the same.
It's mostly about how green they are and who deserves the blame.

How green you are is not how much you give,
Or how loud you are, it's how you live.
So know your greens and think a bit.
Because you don't have to be green to be green

WORD OF THE MONTH MARCH 2010: HURT LOCKER

In most military emplacements and ships, everything is stored in its own designated place, and that place is usually called a "locker" (for example, hoses are kept in the hose locker, paint in the paint locker, etc.). Military people often extend a naming theme into other areas (for example, a person's nose might be called a "snot locker", as that's where Joe keeps his snot). The hurt locker is the place where pain is found; either because someone is causing somebody pain ("You and I are going to have us a session in the hurt locker") or because entering into a given situation is sure to bring pain ("Man, that village was a full-on hurt locker"). The latter usage applies to the film.


Journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who wrote and produced the film The Hurt Locker, first heard this expression in Baghdad. In 2004, Boal went to Bagdad and embedded with an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal ) squad to write an article for Playboy, The Man in the Bomb Suit, a story about an Army staff sergeant who had disarmed the most bombs in Iraq.

“I was trying to interview a soldier about a bomb that was there, and I was trying to figure out how much explosive charge the bomb carried, how many pounds and how much damage it could do, and he just sort of said, ‘Put it this way; if it goes off, it will put you in the hurt locker. And I’d never heard that before, and it really sunk in,” partly because Mr. Boal was close enough to be put in the hurt locker himself.


To put someone in a "hurt locker" is to physically mess someone up, badly. It is roughly synonymous with causing someone "a world of pain." According to the movie's official web site, "In Iraq it is soldier vernacular to speak of explosions as sending you to "the hurt locker." The hurt locker is the destination for victims of explosions. For members of the Army's elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad, the likelihood of ending up in the hurt locker is a risk they live with daily. As a title, “it appealed to me because it gets to a central theme of the film, which is the cost of war and the brutalizing effects of combat,” Mr. Boal said. “And so more or less, to be really reductive about it, if you’re in Iraq, you’re in the hurt locker.”

Source: The Carpetbagger, the Awards season blog of the NY Times

Best actor nominee Jeremy Renner, who plays Staff Sgt. William James, an army sergeant and bomb-disposal expert in the Iraq War drama, explains what the title means to him:

For me, it was a thousand different things and when I first saw it I thought that’s just a really fucking cool title. Page one, “The Hurt Locker, what is this about?” And then it became a casket, I thought of it as a casket or a hospital bed, not as a place. And after shooting it, it was an emotional and spiritual place of pain and despair and loneliness and loss. This is personal stuff, this is for me, this has nothing to do with the movie, that is what it seemed to represent because we were all in the hurt locker, somehow.

There was an outhouse for 200 people that were all in diarrhea that’s the hurt locker! Get me out of this suit, were all going to the hurt locker, you know what I’m saying. So it was a lot of things for a lot of people. You know it doesn’t matter what I think so much, it’s how one interprets it. That is why I love the movie title, I love the characters because it’s so rich, and they are not one note, and there is room for interpretation. I love that.

WORD OF THE MONTH FEBRUARY 2010: NOUGHTIES

The Noughties are the years from 2000 to 2009

The expression Noughties is formed from a derivation of the word nought (meaning 'zero' or 'nothing'), on the model of established references to other decades such as eighties, thirties, fifties etc.

At the advent of the 21st century and the third millennium, there was a whole host of ideas as to how we should collectively refer to the years beginning with zero. Among the suggestions were the Ohs, the Oh-Ohs, the Zeros, the Two-thousands, the Ones, the Nulls and, interestingly, the Naughties. Though in the US the word naught is a common spelling variant for nought, its usage is archaic in British English, which may explain why Noughties was favoured over Naughties.

The ultimate success of the noughties relative to the other candidates may partly be attributable to its catchy phonetic overlap with naughty, originally though to be a disadvantage, but creating the potential for wordplay as in naughty noughties or noughtiness.

WORD OF THE MONTH JANUARY 2010: VIRAL

A viral video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or instant messaging, blogs and other media sharing websites. Viral videos are often humorous in nature and include televised comedy sketches.

Matthew "Matt" Harding is an American video game designer and Internet celebrity known as Dancing Matt for his viral videos that show him dancing in front of landmarks and street scenes in various international locations. Harding has since received widespread coverage of his travel exploits in major print and broadcast media outlets and was hired by Visa to star in their Travel Happy campaign.

WORD OF THE MONTH NOVEMBER 2009: GLOCALIZATION

glocalization (BrE also -isation)
the fact of adapting products or services that are available all over the world to make them suitable for local needs: As an example of the glocalization of fast food marketing, McDonald’s in France are using Asterix in promotions instead of Ronald McDonald.
The word glocalization is formed from two existing words, globalization and local. There are many words like this in English; for example, edutainment means ‘entertainment which is also educational’, and is formed from entertainment and education, and an infomercial is a commercial which also provides information.

WORD OF THE MONTH OCTOBER 2009: SIT-IN

A sit-in is a form of direct action that involves one or more persons non-violently occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change.
This month all the EOIs in Galicia have staged a 48-hour sit-in in shifts to protest against the new Circular 5/2009. For your information, there is a website which has a compilation of all the news that have been published since Circular 5/2009 arrived. You can also listen to some interviews with some of us teachers here and watch videos here.

EOI sit-ins in Galicia

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