“Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped over and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a

very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my
bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”

Nathan Hope (2002)

SELFIE WITHOUT SELF

( MAUREEN T. STA. ANA)

Language is growing every generation. As language evolved, so does the meaning of

words. Many of the new words added to the ever-growing lexicon of the English language are
just created from scratch, and often have a little or no etymological pedigree. According to
Global Language Monitor, around 5,400 new words are created every year; it’s only the 1,000 or
so deemed to be in sufficiently widespread use that make it into print. One particular term is the
word selfie which was named by the Oxford Dictionary as “Word of the Year” in 2013.

In search of its origins, the same dictionary ( Oxford Dictionary), traced its use back to
2002, when an Australian man with face wounds caused by a domestic incident took a picture
of his own face and published it in an online Australian forum and called it a selfie. (Wikipedia)
Since the term was coined by an Australian, the history of Australian- English should also be a
consideration on why the term was called such.

Australians are known for using diminutives which is not very common in American
English. Diminutives may be seen as slang, but many forms are used widely across the whole
of society. Some forms have also spread outside Australia to other English speaking countries.
In Australian English, diminutives are usually formed by taking the first part of a word, and
adding an a, o, ie, or y. So 'fire officer' becomes 'firie', tradesperson becomes 'tradie', and a tin
of beer gets called a 'tinnie'. Alternatively in some cases no ending may be added. While the
form of a diminutive is arbitrary, their use follows strict rules. The idea of using diminutives by
the Australians is that diminutives as fascinating grammatical class in themselves are universal.
and are prominently used in child language. The association that diminutives have with
childhood is key when we start to consider their use in wider, adult speech contexts. (Wikipedia)
Chomsky points out that a child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone
because the language spoken around them is highly irregular – adult’s speech is often broken
up and even sometimes ungrammatical. Chomsky’s theory applies to all languages as they all
contain nouns, verbs, consonants and vowels and children appear to be ‘hard-wired’ to acquire
the grammar. By adding diminutives to the language, it will create a more friendly and relax
form of communication which will make the child’s language acquisition a not traumatized one. It
goes also with the idea of the motherese theory in acquiring language which is according to
Chomsky, children will be able to acquire language better if it will be in the form of baby-talking
which is one of the idea behind the using of diminutives by the Australians. Seemingly, Chomsky
agreed with the use of diminutives in the language basing on his theory in language acquisition.
 Regardless of this having been or not the first or one of the first uses of the word, the
fact is that, since then, both the word and its referent have been closely tied to the interaction
processes that progress through the utilization of new information. A selfie is not a self- portrait,
although they share familiar ties, the elements of reality to which the sign points are different. A
self- portrait designates in general, an image or photograph that someone produces of
him/herself, selfie and its referent on the other hand are essentially a product of the
contemporary world. Contemplating on this, Frege is true after all in his Sense and Reference
when he made mention that the sense of a proper name is grasped by everybody who is
sufficiently familiar with the language or totality of designation to which it belongs but this
serves to illuminate only a sign aspect of the reference. The selfie and self-portrait are two
different reference but they share the same sense in a manner that they refer to taking self-
photo but in different manner. Many self-portraits in history of photography that look seemingly
similar to selfies—self-portraits in mirrors, self-portraits made while holding the camera in one’s
extended arm etc. But these images are not selfies because they were not “taken with a
smartphone or webcam and shared via social media” as per the definition. They are not
products of the networked camera. The term “selfie” is not just a shorter version of “self-
portrait,” but has its own historically specific meaning.

Another important aspect that may be inferred from the word’s expression is the fact that
it is a form used in the whole world in its original language, regardless of translation, which
proves that it is a globalized word, typical of a society connected through the intertwining of
multiple networks. It is not an accident that its meaning is described by the Oxford Dictionary as
a “ photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically taken with a smartphone or webcam via
social media”. Kripke on his theory of proper names talks about rigid designators in the possible
world. According to him, a possible situation is a possible world, It contains the same objects as
those that exist in the actual world though in different relations. Thus, the names of the objects
must refer to the objects necessarily and not contingently. 'The possible world , for Kripke, are
the possible situations that present alternative ways of describing the world and are not distant
planet - like places which we see through a telescope. He explained that the meaning of a word
is always true in all possible world. Regardless of how term is used or not used and regardless
of place the term is being used, the meaning of selfie will always be a photograph taken by
oneself by means of using a smartphone and posting it in social media.

The term also has something to do with Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language which
according to him, reality is a vast collection of facts that can picture in language. Wittgenstein
focuses on language and language use . He focuses, in part, upon language and language use
because in his judgment it is the word as it is spoken that ultimately mediates meaning. It is
through the word that experience is filtered and by which phenomena become meaningful. In
other words, Wittgenstein correlates experience of the world and its everyday meaningfulness in
terms of language as a filter: ordinary experience of the world and its specific data are
meaningful precisely because man has the use of language. It was the meaning assigned by
the Australian man that makes the term selfie meaningful. Apparently, Wittgenstein’s view could
be the basis of how the term selfie is being used today.
 Lastly, the morphosemantic structure of the word, also reveals important things. Firstly,
the morpheme self indicates that the information in the real world of which it speaks is one’s
self, pointing out to a certain precedence of the I. Secondly, the suffix ie declares that to this
one’s self, which has become a noun. The analysis suggests the importance of knowing first the
syntax to be able to come up with the meaning of a particular term or word. It coincides with
Davidson’s Semantic of Natural Languages. As an advocate of Chomsky’s idea on language
creativity and recursiveness and he believes that knowing the meaning of truth is to know first
the surface structure of it. Davidson believes that each word in a language in an expression has
already meaning; his theory was concerned on construct the meanings of a speaker’s
sentences out of the meanings of their parts and on how those parts are assembled.

There are many ways to analyze the term selfie. From the dictionary definition, origin,
function to morphosemantic structure of the word; it shows how a simple term will turn into a rich
concept. Through the conglomeration of the different language theories by the different linguist
philosophers, it offered a deeper understanding of the word and was able to come up with a
better understanding of the concept SELFIE.

.
 REFERENCES

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