What is a blogger? What exactly do they do? Well, to tell the truth, the definition is fairly loose. Let us take a quick look at the evolution of the word for a further understanding. Blogger is an example of “verbage,” which is when you turn a noun into a verb. Think of the word texting. It never was used as a verb until text messaging became a common feature on most cell phones. So the word blog, which is a neologism, is turned into a verb which in turn becomes a noun to describe the person who writes blogs.
I do need to give credit to the funny pages for teaching me the word verbage. A certain six year old with a vivid imagination (and the vocabulary of a grad student) taught me that “verbage weirds the language.” What does this show? The first is that, considering that the media becomes the message, our new technological advances bring new forms of communication, which in turn shapes the language that we use. While Shakespeare may have invented a number of new words (because when you are that good you can do that), I believe that the rapid invention of new words is largely due to the work of bloggers.
Think about it: Shakespeare was one man writing not to be read, but to be heard onstage. I mean, he really did not care that his work was saved for posterity. He just wanted to produce great plays as well as his sonnets and poems. So his potential audience was a bit smaller. Any blogger has the potential to reach millions if not billions of readers. Plus, there are millions of bloggers typing away at this very moment. The law of averages say that we are the new guardians of the language.
It is a natural progression. The printing press increased literacy and started to bring literature to the masses. As the means of production have gotten cheaper and cheaper, we have arrived at a new pinnacle. Producing the written word is now practically free and distribution is. Bloggers are the new Shakespeare? Possibly. We may have to wait another 500 years to find out.