Global Language Monitor

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) is a company based in Austin, Texas that collectively documents, analyzes, and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. It is particularly known for its Word of the Year,Spillcam, vuvuzela are top words of 2010
/ref> political analysis, college and university rankings, High Tech buzzwords, and media analytics.

History

Founded in Silicon Valley in 2003 by Paul J.J. Payack, the GLM describes its role as "a media analytics company that documents, analyzes and tracks cultural trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon International and Global English". GLM's main services include various products based on the Narrative Tracker technologies for global Internet and social media analysis. NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the Internet, blogosphere, the top 275,000 print and electronic global media, as well as new social media sources as they emerge. In April 2008, GLM moved its headquarters from San Diego to Austin.

In July 2020, GLM announced that 'Covid' was the Top Word of 2020 for Global or International English.

Covid is the commonly used shorthand for the shorthand for Covid-19. Covid-19 is the official name of the virus caused by the SARS CoV-2 virus, so named in WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD). ‘Covid’ has received the highest number of citations ever recorded in our global survey. In fact, ‘covid’ has outranked all previous Words of the Year in the 21st century by a factor of 100.

Covid-19 is ranked No. 2. The Top Ten Words of the Year (#WOTY) for 2020 include Covid, Covid-19, Coronavirus, Corona, Face mask, Progress, Truth, Social Distancing, Trade War, and Sustainability. Typically, the Global Language Monitor ranks words, phrases, and names on three separate lists, and the lists are limited to twenty items. For this effort, GLM has combined the lists and extended the word count to fifty items.

Other recently released word-lists include:
* The Top Words of the First Fifteen Years of the 21st Century (and what they portend).
* The Top Words of 2115 (One hundred Years Hence)
* The AD 2076 Map of the Re-federalised United States (including VanCity and Scot's Land).

Top Words of 2020 (the Plague Year)

Top Words of Previous Years

2016

*A Meme and not a word of Omran Daqneesh
Omran Daqneesh in Aleppo

*Refugee
*Bigly
*Brexit
*Zika
*Opioids
*Microaggression
*Climate Changing
*Post-truth
*Anthropocene

Phrases

Names

Previous Words, Phrases & Names of the Year

;2014
:Top Words: No. 1 The Heart ♥ Emoji (for love), No. 2 Hashtag, No. 3 Vape
:Top Phrases: No. 1 Hands Up, Don’t Shoot; No. 2 Cosmic Inflation, No. 3 Global Warming
:Top Names: No. 1 Ebola, No. 2 Pope Francis, No. 3 World War I

;2013
:Top Words: No. 1 ‘404’, No.2 Fail, No.3 Hashtag
:Top Phrases: No. 1 Toxic Politics, No. 2 Federal Shutdown, No.3 Global Warming/Climate Change
:Top Names: No. 1. Pope Francis, No. 2 ObamaCare, No.3 NSA

;2012
:Top Words: No. 1 ApocalypseArmageddon, No.2 Deficit, No. 3 Olympiad
:Top Phrases: No. 1 Gangnam Style, No. 2 Climate Change/Global Warming, No. 3 Fiscal Cliff
:Top Names: No. 1 Newtown and Malala Yousafzai, No. 3 Xi Jinping

;2011
:Top Words: No. 1 Occupy, No.2 Fracking, No.3 Drone
:Top Phrases: No. 1 Arab Spring, No. 2 Royal Wedding, No.3 Anger and Rage
:Top Names: No. 1 Steve Jobs, No. 2 Osama bin-laden and Seal Team Six, No.3 Fukushim

;2010
:Top Words: No. 1 Occupy, No.2 Fracking, No.3 Drone
:Top Phrases: No. 1 Anger and Rage, No. 2 Climate Change, No. 3 The Great Recession
:Top Names: No. 1 Hu Jintao, paramount leader of China, No. 2 iPad, No. 3 Barack Obama

;2009
:Top Words: No. 1: Twitter, No. 2: Obama, No. 3: H1N1
:Top Phrases: No. 1: King of Pop, No. 2: Obama-mania, No. 3: Climate Change
:Top Names: No. 1: Obama, No. 2: Michael Jackson, No. 3: Mobama

;2008
:Top Words: No. 1: Change, No. 2: Bailout, No. 3: Obama-mania
:Top Phrases: No. 1: Financial Tsunami, No. 2: Global Warming, No. 3: " Yes, We Can!"
:Top Names: No. 1: Barack Obama, No. 2: George W. Bush, No. 3: Michael Phelps

;2007
:Top Words: No. 1 Hybrid (representing all things green), No. 2: Surge
:Top Phrase: Climate Change
:Top Name: Al Gore

;2006
:Top Word: Sustainable
:Top Phrase: Stay the Course
:Top Name: Darfur

;2005
:Top Words: No. 1, Refugee, No. 2: Tsunami, No. 3: Katrina
:Top Phrase: Outside the Mainstream
:Top Name: (acts of) God

;2004
:Top Word: Incivility (for inCivil War)
:Top Phrase: Red States/Blue States, No. 2: Rush to War
:Top Name: Dubya/Rove

;2003
:Top Word: Embedded
:Top Phrase: Shock and Awe, No. 2: Rush to War
:Top Name: Saddam Hussein, No. 2: Dubya

;2002
:Top Word: Misunderestimate
:Top Phrase: Threat Fatigue
:Top Name: W (Dubya)

;2001
:Top Word: Ground Zero
:Top Phrase: ‘Lets Roll’
:Top Name: The Heros

;2000
:Top Word: Chad
:Top Phrase: Dot.com
:Top Name: W (Dubya)

Top Words, Stories, Phrases and Names of the Decade

The Top Words of the Decade from 2000 to 2009 were headed by Global Warming.

The Top Words of the Decade from 2000–2009

Word / Year / Comments
# global warming (2000) Rated highly from Day One of the decade
# 9/11 (2001) Another inauspicious start to the decade
# Obama- (2008 ) The US President’s name as a ‘root’ word or ‘word stem’
# bailout (2008) The Bank Bailout was but Act One of the crisis
# evacuee/refugee (2005) After Katrina, refugees became evacuees
# derivative (2007) Financial instrument or analytical tool that engendered the Meltdown
# google (2007) Founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’
# surge (2007) The strategy that effectively ended the Iraq War
# Chinglish (2005) The Chinese-English Hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands
# tsunami (2004) Southeast Asian tsunami took 250,000 lives
# H1N1 (2009) More commonly known as Swine Flu
# subprime (2007) Subprime mortgages were another bubble to burst
# dot.com (2000) The Dot.com bubble engendered no lifelines, no bailouts
# Y2K (2000) The Year 2000: all computers would turn to pumpkins at the strike of midnight
# misunderestimate (2002) One of the first and most enduring of Bushisms
# chad (2000) Those Florida voter punched card fragments that the presidency would turn upon
# twitter (2008) A quarter of a billion references on Google
# WMD (2002) Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
# blog (2003) First called ‘web logs’ which contracted into blogs
# texting (2004) Sending 140 character text messages over cell phones
# slumdog (2008) Child inhabitants of Mumba’s slums
# sustainable (2006) The key to ‘Green’ living where natural resources are never depleted
# Brokeback (2004) New term for ‘gay’ from the Hollywood film ‘Brokeback Mountain’
# quagmire (2004) Would Iraq War end up like Vietnam, another ‘quagmire’?
# truthiness (2006) Stephen Colbert’s addition to the language appears to be a keeper

The Top Stories of the decade from 2000-2009

Rank/News Story/Comment
# Rise of China The biggest story of the decade, outdistancing the No. 2 Internet story by 400%.
# Iraq War The buildup, the invasion, the hunt for the WMDs, and the Surge were top in print and electronic media outlets.
# 9/11 Terrorist Attacks The 9/11 Terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC seemed to set the tone for the new decade.
# War on Terror President George W. Bush’s response to 9/11.
# Death of Michael Jackson A remarkably high ranking considering that MJ’s death occurred in the final year of the decade.
# Election of Obama to US presidency The rallying cries of ‘hope’ and ‘Yes, we can!’ resulting in the historic election of an African-American to the US presidency.
# Global Recession of 2008/9 The ongoing world economic restructuring as opposed to the initial ‘economic meltdown’ or ‘financial tsunami’.
# Hurricane Katrina New Orleans was devastated when the levies collapsed; scenes of death and destruction shocked millions the world over.
# War in Afghanistan Now in its eighth year with an expansion into neighboring Pakistan.
# Economic Meltdown/Financial Tsunami The initial shock of witnessing some 25% of the world’s wealth melting away seemingly overnight.
# Beijing Olympics The formal launch of China onto the world stage.
# South Asian tsunami The horror of 230,000 dead or missing, washed away in a matter of minutes was seared into the consciousness the global community.
# War against the Taliban Lands controlled by the Taliban served as a safe haven from which al Qaeda would launch its terrorist attacks.
# Death of Pope John Paul II The largest funeral in recent memory with some 2,000,000 pilgrims in attendance.
# Osama bin-Laden eludes capture Hesitation to attack Tora Bora in 2002 has led to the continuing manhunt.

The Top Phrases of the Decade from 2000–2009

Word/Year/Comments
# climate change (2000) Green words in every form dominant the decade
# Financial Tsunami (2008) One quarter of the world’s wealth vanishes seemingly overnight
# ground zero (2001) Site of 9/11terrorist attack in New York City
# War on Terror (2001) Bush administration’s response to 9/11
# Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003) Bush’s WMDs never found in Iraq or the Syrian desert
# swine flu (2008) H1N1, please, so as not to offend the pork industry or religious sensitivities!
# " Let’s Roll!" (2001) Todd Beamer’s last words before Flight 93 crashed into the PA countryside
# Red State/Blue State (2004) Republican or Democratic control of states
# carbon footprint (2007) How much CO² does an activity produce?
# shock-and-awe (2003) Initial strategy of Iraq War
# Ponzi scheme (2009) Madoff’s strategy reaped billions & heartache
# Category 4 (2005) Force of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans’ seawalls and levies
# King of Pop (2000) Elvis was the King, MJ the King (of Pop)
# "Stay the course" (2004) Dubya’s oft-stated guidance for Iraq War
# " Yes, we can!" (2008) Obama’s winning campaign slogan
# " Jai Ho!" (2008) Shout of joy from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
# "Out of the Mainstream" (2003) Complaint about any opposition’s political platform
# Cloud computing (2007) Using the Internet as a large computational device
# threat fatigue (2004) One too many terrorist threat alerts
# same-sex marriage (2003) Marriage of gay couples

Annual fashion capital rankings

An annual ranking of the leading fashion capitals is produced by Global Language Monitor, a US-based company that tracks trends through language use worldwide. The 2017 top-sixty three fashion capitals, according to its rankings, are listed below.

Commentary from Global Language Monitor About the 2017 edition of its annual fashion capital rankings

The current 2017 rankings now include 63 fashion capitals. There are three new fashion capitals from West Africa: Accra, Ghana; Dakar, Senegal; and Lagos, Nigeria. There is one new fashion capital from East Asia: Kuala Lumpur. There is one new fashion capital from the Middle East: Beirut, Lebanon. Before the various insurgencies in the region, Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. There are two new fashion capitals from North America: Portland, Oregon known for its ‘weird’ culture, much like Austin, Texas and Columbus, Ohio known in the fashion world as the manufacturing headquarters of Henri Bendel, Victoria’s Secret, the Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F), and others.

Commentary from Global Language Monitor individual cities in the 2017 edition

No. 3 Barcelona — Moving into Big Four Territory is Big News by definition.

No. 4 Milano — Reclaiming its Big Four status; hmm, perhaps all that re-thinking and revamping just might be having an impact (we’ll see in 2018).

No. 6 London — Had a great run earlier in the decade, but not so great lately (If you consider the No. 6 spot not so great).

No. 7 Amsterdam — Moving up 15 spots is quite a move.

No. 9 Vegas — Back in the Top Ten, more evidence that the Red Carpet experience does indeed have an impact.

No. 10 Dubai — More evidence that billions of dollars Do, indeed, have an impact.

No. 17 Seoul — Finally making the move in Asia, not No. 1, but a respectable No. 3 regionally.

No. 21 Washington, DC — A move into respectability!?

No. 28 Melbourne and No. 34 Sydney — Trading Places

No. 44 Portland, OR — A very nice debut.

No. 47 Kuala Lumpur — Another solid debut.

No. 46 Boston, No. 48 Miami, No.53 Chicago, No. 54 Houston, and No. 59 Toronto — All down by twenty spots, or more.

No. 63 Caracas — On Hiatus due to Insurrection.

Methodology: For this analysis, the Global Language Monitor used its proprietary Brand Affiliation Index (BAI), the same technology used to measure global brand equity for the Olympics, World Cup, the Fortune 500, and others. This exclusive, GLM longitudinal-study encompasses the prior three years to better assess short-term velocity and longer-term momentum. The study is a Big Data textual analysis based on billions of webpages, millions of blogs, the top 375,000 global print and electronic media, and new social media formats as they appear. This is the eleventh edition of the survey, which was first made public in 2007.

High tech terms

On March 29, 2013 announced The Most Confusing High Tech Buzzwords of the Second Decade of the 21st century, thus far (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013) with commentary follow:

2013 Rank, Buzzword, Last Year’s rank

# Big Data (1) — Soon Human Knowledge will be doubling every second. ’Big’ does not begin to describe what’s coming at us.
# Dark Data (New)- Might not have noticed it because … it is ‘Dark Data’ ‘Big Data’ has begun to spin off its own superlatives.
# The Cloud (2) — All that data has got to go somewhere. Hint: it’s neither your phone nor your tablet.
# Yottabytes (New) – Showing up on lots of technologists’ radar lately: a quadrillion gigabytes.
# The Next Big Thing (3) — A cliché rendered ever more meaningless but still on everyone’s tongue.
# Heisenbug (New) – A bug that disappears when you try to detect it, finally making the list after a steady ascent over the last decade.
# 3-D Printer (New) – Watch this space. This technology has been used in CAD design for years and science fiction for decades — but now they are impinging upon everyday life.
# Phablet (New) – The Next Big Thing? The odds are against it since consumer goods tend to evolve into single-purpose appliances.
# REST (New) – Representational State transfer is slowly climbing its way up the list.
# Web X.0 (5) — Formerly Web 2.0, 3.0, etc.

The study was released in conjunction with Austin's South by Southwest Interactive festival.

On March 17, 2010, the Global Language Monitor presented the Most Confusing High Tech Buzzwords of the first decade of the 21st century (2000–2009).

# HTTP — HyperText Transfer Protocol is used for HTML (HyperText Markup Language) files.
# Flash — As in Flash Memory. "Flash’ is easier to say than " I brought the report on my EEPROM chip with a thin oxide layer separating a floating gate and control gate utilizing Fowler-Nordheim electron tunneling".
# God Particle – The Higgs boson, thought to account for mass. The God Particle has eluded discovery since its existence was first postulated some thirty years ago.
# Cloud computing – Distributing or accessing programs and services across the Internet. (The Internet is represented as a cloud.)
# Plasma (as in plasma TV) — Refers to a kind of television screen technology that uses matrix of gas plasma cells, which are charged by differing electrical voltages to create an image.
# iPod – Apple maintains that the idea of the iPod was from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
# Megapixel – One million pixels or picture elements.
# Nano – Widely used to describe anything small as in nanotechnology. Like the word ‘mini’ which originally referred to the red hues in Italian miniature paintings, the word nano- is ultimately derived from the ancient Greek word for ‘dwarf’.
# Resonate – Not the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude, but the ability to relate to (or resonate with) a customer’s desires.
# Virtualization – Around since the late ‘70s, virtualization now applies to everything from infrastructures to I/O.

On November 19, 2008 Global Language Monitor announced the most confusing yet frequently cited high tech buzzwords of 2008 to be cloud computing, green washing, and buzzword compliant followed by resonate, de-duping, and virtualization. Rounding out the Top Ten were Web 2.0, versioning, word clouds, and petaflop. The most confusing Acronym for 2008 was SaaS (software as a service).

On 14 October 2007 GLM released a list of the most confusing high tech terms and buzzwords. The words included:

''iPod'',
''flash'',
''cookie'',
''nano'' and
''kernel'',
followed by
''megahertz'',
''cell''
(as in
''cell phone''),
''plasma'',
'' de-duplication''
and
''Blu-Ray''.
Other terms being tracked included
''terabyte'',
''memory'',
''core'',
and ''head crash''.
The most confusing acronym was found to be SOA, for service-oriented architecture, an acronym which IBM published a book about.

The studies were released each year on the anniversary of the ''cookie,'' the invention that made the World Wide Web practical for widespread surfing, communication, and e-commerce.

Counting English words

GLM announced the 1,000,000th English word on June 10, 2009. This controversial exercise was widely covered in the global media. The count itself was widely criticized by a number of prominent linguists, including Geoffrey Nunberg, and Jesse SheidlowerWord Count
Jesse Sheidlower, ''Slate'', April 10, 2006 and Benjamin Zimmer, on the grounds that since there is no generally accepted definition of a word, there can never be a definitive count.

The finalists, which met the criteria of a minimum of 25,000 citations with the necessary breadth of geographic distribution and depth of citations, were:

1. Web 2.0. 2. Jai Ho! 3. N00b. 4. Slumdog. 5. Cloud computing. 6. Carbon Neutral. 7. Slow Food. 8. Octomom. 9. Greenwashing. 10. Sexting. 11. Shovel ready. 12. Defriend. 13. Chengguan. 14. Recessionista. 15. Zombie Banks.

Critics noted that the target date had been changed a number of times from late in 2006 to early in 2009.

It was also criticized on grounds that a count is impossible because "word" is not a scientifically valid concept. Google addressed this situation by counting the words in the 15 million scanned texts in their corpus. Global Language Monitor states the general criteria for inclusion on its site, maintaining that it is simply updating the established criteria for printed dictionaries beginning with the works of Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster.

The New York Times quoted Paul JJ Payack as saying that the PQI is "an algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet in relation to frequency, context and appearance in global media. It is a weighted index that takes into account year-to-year increases and acceleration in the last several months". In general terms, GLM describes its Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), used to run its analytics on global language trends and, as a weighted index, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum and velocity, using frequency data on words and phrases in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, and throughout the blogosphere, as well as in proprietary databases (Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, etc.). It can also create "signals" that can be used in a variety of applications.

Obama an English language word

On 20 February 2008 GLM announced that the latest word to enter the English language was "obama", derived from Barack Obama, in its many variations. GLM described Obama- as a "root" for words including obamanomics, obamican, obamamentum, obamacize, obamarama, obamaNation, Obamafy, obamamania and obamacam. GLM announced it to be an accepted word, once it met the group's published criteria: a minimum of 25,000 citations in the global media, as well as achieving the necessary 'breadth' and 'depth' of citations.

Top US Colleges and University Rankings

The Global Language Monitor publishes other lists relating to the English language including: the TrendTopper MediaBuzz College Guide rankings of the top 425 U.S. colleges and universities according to their internet brand equity.

Top Universities (January 2016):
Rank/University/Previous Ranking

Top Universities Last

# Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1
# University of California at Los Angeles 6
# University of California, Berkeley 3
# University of California, Davis 7
# University of California, San Diego 12
# University of Chicago 4
# University of Texas, Austin 5
# Harvard University 2
# University of Washington 13
# University of Southern California 27
# Stanford University 8
# University of Wisconsin, Madison 15
# Yale University 21
# University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 16
# University of California, Irvine 37
# University of Virginia 19
# University of California, Santa Barbara 36
# University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 20
# University of Minnesota 22
# Ohio State University, Columbus 28
# Columbia University 14
# Princeton University 17
# University of Pennsylvania 11
# Duke University 61
# University of California, Santa Cruz 84
# New York University 9
# Emory University 33
# Michigan State University 24
# Cornell University 23
# Johns Hopkins University 30
# Northwestern University 10
# University of Florida 67
# Florida State 48
# University of Missouri, Columbia 51
# Virginia Tech 65
# University of Arizona 77
# University of Iowa 44
# Georgia Institute of Technology 26
# Washington University in St. Louis 25
# Indiana University, Bloomington 32
# University of Miami 46
# Washington State University 79
# University of Pittsburgh 45
# University of San Diego 149
# University of Oregon 49
# American University 58
# University of Phoenix 98
# Purdue University 31
# Iowa State University 47
# University of Georgia 43
# University of Tennessee 90

Top 50 US Colleges by TrendTopper MediaBuzz 2016

Rank/College/Previous Ranking

# Wesleyan University 54
# School of the Art Institute of Chicago 27
# College of the Holy Cross 58
# Williams College 6
# University of Richmond 2
# United States Military Academy 1
# Smith College 47
# United States Naval Academy 20
# Middlebury College 7
# Pratt Institute 10
# Wellesley College 4
# University of the Arts, PA 69
# Berklee College of Music 72
# Babson College 9
# Oberlin College 19
# Rhode Island School of Design 22
# Bucknell University 11
# Vassar College 8
# Barnard College 21
# Colgate University 14
# Bowdoin College 15
# Pomona College 3
# Davidson College 25
# Bennington College 96
# Lafayette College 13
# Swarthmore College 16
# United States Air Force Academy 43
# Colby College 46
# Mount Holyoke College 44
# Bard College 18
# Amherst College 4
# Fashion Institute of Technology 64
# Morehouse College 35
# Carleton College 36
# Occidental College 17
# Furman University 66
# Bryn Mawr College 31
# The Juilliard School 30
# Reed College 24
# Bates College 48
# Washington and Lee University 38
# Kenyon College 40
# Drew University 45
# Dickinson College 23
# Skidmore College 39
# Colorado College 89
# Trinity College, CT 33
# DePauw University 49
# Gettysburg College 32
# Haverford College 50

Top US Colleges by Category

* The 222 Top US Universities 1. MIT, 2. UCLA, 3. Berkeley
* The 199 Top US Colleges 1. Wesleyan (CT), 2. SAIC, 3. Holy Cross
* The Top US Private Universities 1. Chicago, 2. Harvard, 3. Stanford
* The Top US Public Universities 1. UCLA, 2. Berkeley, 3. UC Davis
* The Top US Private Colleges 1. Wesleyan (CT), 2. SAIC, 3. Holy Cross
* The Top US Public Colleges 1. West Point, 2. Annapolis, 3. Air Force
* The Top Engineering Universities 1. MIT, 2. Virginia Tech, 3. Georgia Tech
* The Top Engineering Colleges 1. Harvey Mudd, 2. MSOE, 3. SD School of Mines
* The Top Catholic Universities 1. U San Diego, 2. Boston College, 3. Notre Dame.
* The Top Catholic Colleges 1. Holy Cross, 2. Siena College, 3. Willamette
* Top Denomination-related Colleges 1. St Olaf, 2. High Point, 3. Muhlenberg
* Top Military and Service Academies 1. West Point, 2. Annapolis, 3. Air Force
* Top Art, Design, and Music Schools 1. School of the Art Institute AIC, 2. Pratt Institute, 3. School of the Arts, PA
* Top Women’s Colleges 1. Smith, 2. Wellesley, 3. Barnard
* Top Historically Black Colleges and Universities 1. Morehouse, 2. Spelman, 3.Rhodes

and 15 Top All-Time Bushisms, and many others.The Morning File: To find the Word of the Year, follow the money
Gary Rottstein, ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', January 12, 2009

References

External links

Official Site

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Companies based in Austin, Texas
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