Felix

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The collective project of International Art English has become actively global. Acts of linguistic mimicry and one-upmanship now ricochet across the Web. (Usage of the word “speculative” spiked unaccountably in 2009; 2011 saw a sudden rage for “rupture”; “transversal” now seems poised to have its best year ever.) Their perpetrators have fewer means of recognizing one another’s intentions than ever. We hypothesize that the speed at which analytic terms are transformed into expressive, promotional tokens has increased.

As a language spreads, dialects inevitably emerge. The IAE of the French press release is almost too perfect: It is written, we can only imagine, by French interns imitating American interns imitating American academics imitating French academics. Scandinavian IAE, on the other hand, tends to be lousy.

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