Recently I came across some news about the English Dictionary that really grabbed my attention. It seems to be the case that in the newest (6th) edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary published in 2007, about 16,000 words have lost their hyphens, so now for example, make-over is makeover, ice-cream is icecream, and bumble-bee is bumblebee. Angus Stevenson, the editor of the Shorter OED explained that "People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for.…Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography. The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned." (askoxford.com). It seems astounding that we're officially changing the face of a language and disregarding grammatical rules and principles for none other than aesthetic reasons! How much more image obsessed can we get? Then again, in an age of instant-messaging, text-messaging, and downsizing thoughts into tweets of 140 characters or less, who has got the time (or space) to abide to proper syntax? Sadly, I probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that kids are being taught abbreviations and slang before they ever learn correct spelling.
Another of the distinctive features of the Shorter is the use of pop culture quotations to elucidate definitions. The dictionary quotes authors like Dan Brown and TV scripts such as Ricky Gervais' and Stephen Merchants' The Office. Also for the first time in OED history, Internet sites such as www.fictionpress.com are used as evidence sources.
So what's the big deal, right? We watch some television programs and read some books and they rub off on us, altering the way we use language. It's inevitable, and benign...right?
Perhaps we ought to think again. In fact, I'd say our manipulation of language is one of the most poignant indicators of a society that has stopped living its reality, and now merely imitates it. In the vein of French theorist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulation, 1985), modern society has become so reliant on simulacra - likenesses or representations - that it has lost contact with the real world on which the simulacra are based, to the point that the distinction between reality and representation breaks down. In this, a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right, the hyperreal, bearing no relation to reality whatsoever. Baudrillard theorizes that this lack of distinction partly originates in contemporary media and pop culture (television, film, print, internet) through which we use various means to lend credibility to that which has no existence in and of itself. Take the modern-day sitcom such as Gossip Girl, or 90210. Television is able to create a world of fantasy, something without its own reality, against which we then judge ourselves and our own positions. Remarkably, the moral center of our universe becomes inferred from the hyperreality we witness on television, the photo-shopped images we see in magazines, the feelings of euphoria we experience from visiting non-functional utopias like Disneyland and the Las Vegas strip. Occurrences around us are registered as important only when and if we see them on the 6 o'clock breaking news or in a headline in the paper. And now, evidently, we're even backing words and changing their spelling to reflect this hyperreality.
The Office's Michael Scott is no longer seen as a fictional individual who speaks and acts words written for him in a script. Michael Scott has now become a point of reference, an individual originator of meaning whose own words we isolate and quote in a dictionary to understand the language we speak.
Quite simply, artificiality has become our point of reference. Welcome to the 21st century! But where do we go from here?

• Andrea Benotas's blog