neilmac (asker) Jun 30, 2019:

UPDATE Yesterday I sent my draft to my "proofreader" colleague for checking. She has just sent it back to me with "glocal" corrected to "global"; it never occurred to her that it could be a widely accepted and current term. So, that kind of reinforces my initial wariness about its currency. Caveat emptor.

neilmac (asker) Jun 24, 2019:

Thanks to everyone ... I didn't expect such a swift response. I have no one else around to sound off to today, so I really appreciate it.

neilmac (asker) Jun 24, 2019:

@Mark The area is sociology and education, and the text is aimed at a highly jargon-tolerant professional audience, who likely don't share my healthy disdain of some of the terminologies they deploy.

neilmac (asker) Jun 24, 2019:

@Björn I'd probably define a neologism as something which has been relatively recently coined, which the way I look at it could be stretched to include virtually any period in the second half of the 20 century. And the decade of the 80s doesn't seem all that far-off, although many neologisms from that era probably fell quickly into disuse, especially the technology-related ones (Sony Walkman, floppy disks…)....

neilmac (asker) Jun 24, 2019:

Hmm For example, a couple of seconds ago I was tempted to use the word "vertebrating", a calque of a Spanish term which is used unabashedly there, also in Catalan, but which is underlined in red by Word and usually appears in quotes( 'Vertebrating') in the few published papers where it appears. Now that I've looked at 'glocal' again, it doesn't seem so shocking, so I'll probably use it without the italics.

Björn Vrooman Jun 24, 2019:

Agree with Tony... ...except for one thing maybe: The term has already gained sufficient currency to be included in all major dictionaries (with the exception of M-W):
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/glocal
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/glocal
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/gloca...
https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/glocal
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/de/submission/12171/Glocal

Also, it first appeared in the 1980s(!!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glocalization

That was more than a generation ago. Not sure what your definition of a neologism is.

Best

Charles Davis Jun 24, 2019:

Mark made the same point more concisely while I was writing :-)

Charles Davis Jun 24, 2019:

I think there's also a case to be considered against marking it. It depends on the target readership. This word is not very new and is fairly well established; it's in the Oxford online dictionary. "Glocalization" has been around since the late 80s and has an entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as in Wikipedia (inevitably).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glocalization
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/glocal

In a sociology text aimed at readers with at least a working knowledge of modern sociology, marking a word like this could be taken as faintly insulting; it implies "here's a strange word", but they might think: "what do you mean strange? Who is this bozo?"

Mark Nathan Jun 24, 2019:

Agree with Tony, I think the target readership is key here, if it is for a professional audience that is likely to be familiar with the term then writing "glocal" seems unnecessary, perhaps even unhip. But if this is intended for a more mainstream audience then I would go with the inverted commas.

Tony M Jun 24, 2019:

@ Asker Personally, I see no justification for italicising it, which is usually reserved for e.g. foreign words that have not been translated.
But I think there is a good case for using " ", in order to draw attention to it as a neologism and avoid people inadvertently reading over it...