Michael's Daily Musings

Michael is the boss who loves his employees like his own children; he sees himself as the hero flying in to save the day, and as such, creates many sticky situations he must maneuver out of. Michael’s vocabulary consists of many lexemes containing positive attitude thinking for his perspective about who he sees himself as the self-titled “World’s Best Boss.” Michael bases his thesis for why he feels this way on the fact that he wants to create unity with those he works with in the office and feel the love back from his employees that he so vividly exudes. Michael's speech reflects his eagerness to avoid controversy and create settings in which he and his employees "feel good." Unfortunately, this often results in extremely awkward situations because Michael often fails to realize the social implications behind what he is doing. For example, Michael creates a "diversity awareness day" in which his employees must wear cards on their foreheads with the names of different racial and ethnic groups. This turns out to be disastrous when several people end up wearing the card with the name of their actual ethnicity on it, ensiting accusations of racial slurs at Michael.

The Office Wordle

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The Lexicon of The Office

The Office includes many unique ways of using speech. The primary focus in the show centers around using words oftentimes in incorrect ways in order to emphasise a point. Michael and Dwight do this in their speech by adding extra suffixes to words. Oftentimes these speech patterns go uncorrected in the show, and the cultural understanding behind this is that the viewer will find humor in the fact that incorrect grammar or syntax usage was used. This calls for an understanding by the audience of the basic rules of the English language, and makes a case for descriptivist language* by poking fun at the fact that language can be understood even when used in incorrect settings.

*Prescriptive langauge: The idea that there is one right way to write or speak, and that English grammar rules need to be followed for proper understanding of English to occur in society. This is the opposite of Descriptive language, which depends on the context of the situation for proper usage. In other words, each context has its own correct way in which language can be used. This does not necessarily follow the rules of English grammar.

The Lexicon: What is it?

The Lexicon has its roots in the early 17th Century, where it was used to refer to books which contained lists of words and their meanings as they pertained to each other. The lexicon covers a wide area of study, including parts of words, such as prefixes and suffixes, as well as the history of how words were formed and relate to each other. Lexemes are specific groups of related words, which help to sort out meanings and provide an organizational pattern inside a lexicon.
Specific lexicons pertain to specific groups of people or a culture. By using specific lexicons, different cultures set themselves apart as unique people groups. The structure of the lexicon relies on the relationships between different word meanings, and is called Semantic Structure. No words stand alone without having a connection with other words. A semantic field can help illustrate the connections between words; this is when specific words are derived and used to arrive at other words which relate to the first words in the list. This can often lead to an endless list of relatable words. For example, the next post will contain a picture of a Wordle, which is a visual art image of specific words I have derived based on the Lexical study I’m beginning about the TV show, “The Office.”

Another important key to understanding the lexicon is the difference between denotation and connotation. Denotation is the actual dictionary definition of the word. Connotation is the particular setting in which words are used to mean different things.