Linguistic Digital Metaphor

This project’s purpose was to develop a digital metaphor. My tendency was to develop linguistic metaphor since during the initial exercise included a lot words to describe interactions with technology. I thought it would be a good idea to develop new words for those interactions. Initially I researched existing “made-up” or non-official words on urban dictionary to get a more current and hip words. My inital idea of using Latin based words felt outdated and too difficult for me to understand them. Afterwards I tried to think of certain interactions with technology, and I decided to focus on digital technologies since they are more recent and might have less metaphorical language already attached to it. I continued by creating ten metaphors using words related to the interactions I thought would be more or less universal. Once these words were shown in class, I continued to develop ways to further the project and find useful ways to distribute them. I have uploaded them to urban dictionary in an effort to get them out there, however they have not been approved yet. While waiting for urban dictionary, I decided to create mock social media profiles for the words which would help further expose them to the general population. I have chosen instagram and tinder profiles for this purpose, instagram could be useful to visually show what the words mean and tinder is a good way to see if people think the words make sense and swipe right to approve them.

Project Summary

This project’s purpose was to develop a digital metaphor after recording interactions with technology for a week. My tendency was to develop linguistic metaphor since during the initial exercise, I observed that there were a lot of words used to describe one simple interaction with technology. I thought it would be a good idea to develop new and simpler words for those interactions.

Initially, I researched existing “made-up” or non-official words in the urban dictionary to get more current and hip words. My initial idea of using Latin-based words felt outdated. Afterward, I tried to think of certain interactions with technology, and I decided to focus on digital technologies since they are more recent and might have less metaphorical language already attached to them.

I continued by creating ten metaphors using words related to the interactions I thought would be more or less universal. Once these words were shown in class, I continued to develop ways to further the project and find useful ways to distribute them. I have uploaded them to the urban dictionary in an effort to get them out there. One of the words has been approved since the beginning of this project.

Final Format

In order to get feedback on the words that would be added to the vernacular language, social media profiles for the words would be used. Instagram or dating app formats seemed ideal to get feedback as Instagram could be useful to visually show what the words mean, while a dating profile format is a good way to see if people think the words make sense and swipe right to approve them.

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