Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scatolinguistics

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was - no consensus

Scatolinguistics

The better part of this article doesn't promise to do more than repeat what's at Profanity -- why duplicate? The large majority consists of little essays on two naughty words of English, to which many more could no doubt be added; I hadn't realized that Wikipedia was a dictionary of etymology (let alone ethnoetymology). -- Hoary 06:20, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC) I still think that this opinion was appropriate for the article as it then stood. However, the article has now changed a lot, and I recommend that its contents be merged with either Profanity or an as-yet non-existent article on James D. McCawley. (The article now links to Jim McCawley, but this isn't the name he chose to use on his books. Cf the similarly fascinating, witty, and Wikipedia-worthy Geoffrey K. aka Geoff Pullum.) -- Hoary 03:56, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• Never heard of this term before. Strongly suspect neologism. In any case, it is largely duplicate in purpose. Delete. Lacrimosus 08:22, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: I found today that the term really does exist. Moreover, it's arguable that that with its religious-related baggage, "profanity" is a misnomer. Anyway, profanity is by far the better article on this minor subfield of sociolinguistics, which is very seldom called "scatolinguistics". -- Hoary 08:36, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
• Merge with profanity -Thryduulf 10:46, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and Cleanup. I had already noted several issues with this article on its talk page. (The original author had stated that he would be revising the article.) It is a term that occurs in the wild. (But, again, see the talk page for discussion of that, too.) The (factually correct portions of the) individual sections of this article should be merged with the existing Fuck and Arse articles, leaving just the introduction, which should be cleaned up. (Remove all but the first two sentences and append a link farm, referring to the existing articles as examples.) Uncle G 11:17, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
  • Comment: But Uncle, the last time I looked at it, "Scatolinguistics" claimed to be the study of "Profanity". Now, while sociology is the study of society and sociology should most certainly claim its own article (articles, actually), I don't see why there's either a general need to have an article on X and another purportedly on the study of X -- particularly when the "study" barely exists. (Let's see -- is there a peer-reviewed British Journal of Scatolinguistics, or a West Coast Conference on Scato-Linguistics?) Instead, it very much looks to me as if this is a new (and inferior) attempt at what has already been done in Profanity. But OK, if the Scatolinguistics article is worth preservation, how would you like to see its future relationship with Profanity? -- Hoary 11:32, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

• "Scatolinguistics" claimed to be the study of "Profanity" — Tut tut. Don't use the (poorly written) original article as the definition of the term. I've already supplied a somewhat better definition. Uncle G 15:46, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
• the "study" barely exists — Actually, it seems to have a fair amount of evidence for existence. Indeed, the article at Profanity can be viewed as a contribution to the field of scatolinguistics, just as the H2G2 article is. It isn't an article on scatolinguistics itself, however, any more than an article in the field of biology is an article on biology. Uncle G 15:46, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
• how would you like to see its future relationship with Profanity? — The same as its relationship to the Fuck and Arse articles now is. (We already have the "little essays on [...] naughty words of English" that you thought weren't fitting for Wikipedia, by the way.) The original author was going in the wrong direction by trying to duplicate text that we aready have in existing articles, as I originally mentioned on the talk page. An encylopaedia article about scatolinguistics shouldn't be the definitive treatise in the field of scatolinguistics. Uncle G 15:46, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

• Comment: Thank you for the reasoned and interesting reply, which I'm still digesting. In the meantime, one clarification. While still wondering about its suitability for Wikipedia, I'm impressed by the article on "fuck". The worries about fittingness have nothing whatever to do with squeamishness or prudeness. I have no qualms at all about the intelligent use of the word fuck on Wikipedia; indeed, I used it myself in contributions to Expletive (which I now see has a worrying degree of overlap with Profanity). -- Hoary 02:34, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• Delete as neologism (very little google activity for this term) but check that no valuable information might be lost--if so, merge those bits into Profanity or elsewhere as appropriate. Starblind 13:06, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

• It is not a neologism. Hoary himself said that the term exists. The term has apparently been around since 1967, moreover. It may be linguistic jargon, but since a Google Groups search reveals that others have since adopted its use, and feel no need to explain the word when they do, it is not a neologism any more. Uncle G 15:46, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

• Agreed, fair enough. I withdraw my comment that it is a neologism. My vote remains, however, since neologism or not, it's a very, very, VERY rarely-used word, and this article seems unlikely to be the palest ghost of what's already located at Profanity, Fuck and elsewhere. Since I can't imagine any information applicable to "Scatolinguistics" but not to "profanity", I don't understand what could ever be presented in this article. If you can think of any, please let me know, I might be wrong. Starblind 19:01, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)
• My own Google Groups search revealed only five posts with the word (and four of those hits are the same quote used in the now-modified article), which does not attest widespread use. There is only one hit for the corresponding adjective "scatolinguistic". It may technically not be a neologism since it was invented about 40 years ago, but if somebody invents a word and it is barely used at all for decades (even within the field in which it was invented), I fail to see why we should distinguish it from a neologism. They don't feel the need to explain it because it is an easily recognizable portmanteau word, like if I made up a word like, say, "dentolinguistics" for the study of different words for teeth. — Ливай | ☺ 17:08, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• (Only one of the hits is the quote used in the article. The others don't actually contain quotes.) You are trying to claim that if something isn't notable, it is a neologism. That doesn't wash, I'm afraid. If you want to argue notability, argue notability directly. (And if you are going to argue non-notability on the grounds of limited interest, which is what you apparently will be, please explain why all of those H2G2 readers won't be interested in what scatolinguistics is.) Don't argue that something isn't a neologism, but since you don't deem it to be notable it "really is" a neologism regardless. Uncle G 17:46, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

• We get so many non-notable words here on VfD though that the "neologism" argument is pretty much short for "some word that was made up by some individual(s) and hasn't gained widespread use", i.e. a non-notable word. I suppose our terminology isn't technically correct. In any case my argument was that this is a non-notable word, not that it is a recent coinage, because such words are perfectly welcome so long as they are actually used by a sizable group of people. The notability of the name of a field of study is easy to measure: does anybody in that field refer to it as such? So far, I see no evidence of scatolinguists or their scatolinguistic texts, although there is a significant amount of study done on profane words (I'm a linguistics student and I've seen it). I would not declare unencyclopedic an article about the study of profane words, but it would need a clearer and more recognizable title, and since this article explains little more than the meaning and source of the word itself (i.e. a dicdef), I think it should be deleted. — Ливай | ☺ 21:51, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• You are trying to have things both ways. Two comments ago you asserted that it was an easily recognizable word, yet now you assert that it isn't recognisable. Uncle G 17:00, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• Well, by that I mean that an educated person (the type of people reading the few articles on the linguistics of profanity in which the word is used) could probably meaningfully guess what it means by decomposing it into its constituent words, but I imagine there are many laymen who don't know what "scatological" means or who would not be able to readily decompose it. I think a more conventional title ("Study of profanity" or somesuch) would be overall more readily understandable and appropriate for the subject, but I really don't see why an explanation of it should exist outside the profanity article. — Ливай | ☺ 07:56, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• since this article explains little more than the meaning and source of the word itself — ... and provides links to Wikipedia (and to external) articles in its field, much like the Parapsychology article does. Uncle G 17:00, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• But the parapsychology article expands the explanation to an actual encyclopedic discussion of the topic (rather than just the word), and links do not make an article encyclopedic either. — Ливай | ☺ 07:56, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• does anybody in that field refer to it as such? — Yes. You did the Google search, you saw John M Lawler, who also says that he's a linguist (albeit an associate professor, not a student), referring to it as such. Uncle G 17:00, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• One linguist. Great. Do you have any idea how many thousands of semi-prominent linguists there are and the thousands of words they invent for certain concepts that never really catch on in the field? My question was not really whether there was one person in linguistics uses the term, but whether it was in significant currency among the community of specialists studying profanity. The evidence I can find shows that it is not in their terminologies. — Ливай | ☺ 07:56, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Comment: indeed, it is not a neologism. However, it is very little used. I had a look in the library, and found that it wasn't listed in any of:
  • Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed (1989) (yup, the multivolume monster)
  • Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1993)
  • International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2nd ed (4 vols, OUP, 2003), or in its index
  • Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (10 vols, Pergamon, 1994), or in its index
  • Crystal, Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 5th ed (Blackwell, 2003)
  • Bussmann, Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics (Routledge, 1996)

Sorry, I looked for but could not find a dictionary of sociolinguistics. (Perhaps Livajo could have a bash at this.) And I admit that I didn't look at every reference work about linguistics, but I certainly did look at the largest of the encyclopedias and each newish dictionary that I could see.

The fact that scatolinguistics doesn't appear in any of these doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the term, but it makes me wonder whether the term is worth explaining. -- Hoary 03:31, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• Delete. Neologism. --BM 14:39, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Modified article. I've done the cleanup, along the lines that I discussed above. Uncle G 15:46, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

• Comment: you've done an excellent job, Uncle G. What's written there certainly deserved preservation. (Incidentally, the comments from South Hanoi I.T. on "Fuck you" within Zwicky's festschrift for JDMcC are thought-provoking as well as hilarious.) However, I still question where it should be preserved -- see my revised recommendation at the top of this Vfd page. -- Hoary 03:56, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• Rename to James D. McCawley leaving a redirect in place is certainly one route, and not a bad one. As I was doing the rewrite, I considered how much of the material really belonged in a biographical article. The redirect would be important, though. I think that "scatolinguistics" may well be something that people are going to look up in an encyclopaedia (and find themselves surprised, as you have been, to discover that people have written sensible, and often serious, linguistic treatises in this field). However, reading the table of contents of Parapsychology has prompted me to consider that there is further non-biographical encyclopaedic potential here as well. I've added some section stubs worth considering. Uncle G 17:00, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

• Delete, seems to be a non-notable portmanteau neologism. — Ливай | ☺ 16:51, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Merge information on word and redirect to profanity. hfool/Roast me 03:26, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Merge anything useable to Profanity, then add redirect. Megan1967 04:11, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as a trivial construction, dicdef, that seems to spontaneously crop up now and then. Not widely used enough to make an article. Wyss 05:01, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Still have to endorse delete vote after cleanup, on the basis that the term is still not widely known enough (featuring it would give it a prominence that it does not deserve). Lacrimosus 08:03, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Keep in its current form. This is an article about the study of profanity and other matters. As it stands, it contains enough unique material to warrant an article seperate from Profanity.
• Keep; this subject even has scholarly journals dedicated to it (e.g. Maledicta). Psychonaut 01:14, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The subject obviously exists (!), but it's not called scatolinguistics by linguists. Wyss 02:54, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• I forgot to mention, the etymology of the prefix scat doesn't really match the wider topic implied by the article, so even the name of this non-area of linguistic study is linguistically dodgy. Wyss 23:00, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• The expansion of the term was already mentioned in the article as it stood when you last commented on it. I even mentioned as much in my original talk page comment on the original article. Please keep up. I also note that there seems to be a lot of work published in the field for such a "non-area of study". The editors of the various books and articles referenced seem to be studying this area of linguistics quite thoroughly. A claim that this is a non-area of linguistic study, when Wikipedia itself has several examples of works in this field, is laughable. Uncle G 02:33, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)

• The label is etymologically incorrect and mentioning this in the article doesn't solve the problem. Please stop trying to cloud the issue by implying (inaccurately btw) that I've not read the article or am not "keeping up". So far as the linked references go, the BBC story contains a journalist's offhand use of the term, and the other two employ it similarly, in a tentative, almost humorous context. Obviously, linguists have deeply studied these sorts of words, that's not the point of this VfD. The question is, does a recognized field of linguistic study called scatolinguistics exist in the peer-reviewed literature? The answer very much appears to be no. Finally, referring to other articles in WP that may themselves be candidates for VfD is not a convincing reason to keep this one. Wyss 02:47, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Merge into profanity and redirect. Such a study is definitely existant and worth of an article, but it is not widely known as scatolinguistics. I'm a linguistics student myself, and like Livajo I've never heard or seen this word. JoaoRicardo 19:46, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Comment I originally started this article, but I readily admit that I had no idea what I was doing and that the H2G2 entry is infinitely better. I've always used the word 'scatolinguistics', but I don't know where I've heard it. Please delete it if you like; I readily defer to your undoubtedly superior judgement. The alleged topic of scatolinguistics has always been a favourite of mine and I was prompted to write something about it because of my extreme interest in the field. I like to undertake informal studies at my high school and compare things like British and American usage and male versus female usage. But what can I say. I'm just a teenager, I'm a relative newcomer to Wikipedia, the H2G2 entry is so much better than I could ever manage (I just reread it today actually) and I defer to the superior judgement of you who are so experienced in this regard. The Administrators should remove this embarrassment of mine from the compendium of knowledge that is Wikipedia before it causes any more problems. I blush in shame. echomikeromeo 04:22, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Comment: Spoken like (a bit too much of) a gentleman, Echomikeromeo. Meanwhile, it was I who stuck the VfD notice on your original article. But it was nothing personal, and there no hard feelings, I hope: after all, subsequent discussion reminded me of the amazing and enjoyable articles in Studies out in Left Field. (If you've never studied any linguistics, parts of them will be incomprehensible -- but you should understand, enjoy, and even learn from others. So do look out for the book.) Please don't let the critical treatment of this article of yours discourage you from writing others. -- Hoary 05:15, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)

• • Comment: I'm not a gentleman, I'm a lady, but no hard feelings at all. My linguistic study has been largely comprised of repeated readings of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and the television program The Story of English. I'm trying not to feel discouraged - and I'll remember the old adage to 'write what you know'.echomikeromeo 20:45, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please don't feel discouraged, and do try writing another article! Welcome to Wikipedia :) Wyss 22:48, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, sociolinguists don't really concern themselves with making dictionaries. — Ливай | ☺ 10:39, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Comment, it's been brought to my attention that I somehow managed to delete a large portion of this VfD section's content while I was editing the other day. It was accidental, and I'm dismayed. It happened again just now as I was trying to leave this message. My regular browser client sometimes does similar things when it has been up and running for a long time, and WP has been having server problems lately, so I suspect it was for one or both of those reasons. My apologies to all for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused, and thanks for your patience (and to Psychonaut for catching it!). Wyss 03:29, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • No problem. As your comment was cut-off in mid-sentence, I didn't think the deletion was intentional. Psychonaut 03:45, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.