11 April 2008
Youth Speak
This article appeared in the August 2007 edition of eJournal USA.
By Robin Friedman
As long as there have been teenagers, there probably has been slang. Today's electronic means of communication — and the changing attitudes of some scholars — have moved slang from the realm of the spoken word to the written word with a greater degree of acceptance. Robin Friedman is a journalist and the author of several books for children and teenagers.
If you think the English language is getting shorter, you may be right. From news bytes to text-messaging to famously shorter attention spans, we're saying less — and relying on slang more.
Why?
Several reasons could be culpable, among them an inescapable saturation of technology combined with no-time-to-breathe lives, the ever-present temptation of teenage terminology, and the inevitable wheels of plain old evolution grinding — toward minus instead of plus.
With so much of our daily communications taking place online these days — and that doesn't include just e-mail, but text-messaging on increasingly teenier devices — it seems everyday English has been reduced to a code of accepted abbreviations, mysterious combinations of numbers and letters, and even symbols masquerading as facial expressions. :)
Often in all lowercase letters.
Certain numbers, "2" and "4" in particular, play starring roles — replacing, respectively, "to" and "for"—but the far more intriguing development is the embrace of the number "3" for the letter "e" ("b3" and "th3"), and the number "8" for the sound it makes ("gr8" and "l8r" for "great" and "later").
While some of these brave new acronyms can actually be self-explanatory ("u" for "you" and "ur" for "your") or fairly logical ("b4" for "before"), or can highlight the sounds the letters make ("qt" for "cutie" and "cu" for "see you") or act as abbreviations ("cuz" for "because"), or can be just straightforward acronyms ("bff" for "best friends forever"), some do border on strange ("peeps" for "people").
And, in one ironic case, the slang term exceeds its shorter ancestor ("i luv u" is now "i heart u").
Some terms that have been in circulation for quite a while are pretty recognizable: "lol" ("laughing out loud"), "btw" ("by the way"), and "imho" ("in my humble opinion").
Some, meanwhile, are bafflingly enigmatic: "iykwim" ("if you know what I mean"), "mtfbwy" ("may the force be with you"), and "wysiwyg" ("what you see is what you get").
At times, this alphabet-soup vernacular feels downright dizzying to everyone but linguists and computer geeks. But it's difficult to argue with its speed — or even its necessity — when forced to use a toothpick-sized contraption to reply to an office memorandum while driving a car (not recommended or legal but, unfortunately, all too common).
With the exception of "peeps," though, all of the above examples are mostly used in written slang. Spoken slang is a whole other story. And it's here that the younger generation truly has its say (pun intended).
Today's slang changes faster than yesterday's password. That's because words that were popular only a couple of years ago have lost favor — among today's teens — for no reason at all. These include: "phat," "sweet," "excellent," and "awesome" (which all mean "good"). So 1990s, "dude."
But, then, slang is short-lived by nature. In order for slang to be slangy, it has to have a feeling of perpetual newness. Slang is like fashion: never "in" for long. Americans eventually tire of even the most popular words, and by natural selection, only the strong survive.
So what's in these days? Meaning this month?
If you use "hot" (meaning "good" and also "attractive"), you'll seem with it, and alternatively — at least from a temperature point of view — if you use a word that has appealed to every generation since the Great Depression, you'll seem, well, "cool."
"Cool" is positively prehistoric by slang standards. It originated during the jazz culture of the late 1930s, but every generation since has embraced it as its own.
In fact, many expressions meaning the same thing as cool — bully, groovy, hep, crazy, bodacious, far-out, rad, swell — have not had the staying power of cool.
"Cool" is common not just with today's teens but with their parents as well. Adults are notorious for hijacking the lingo of their kids, but these days, knowing how to speak to this market — literally — can mean the difference between profitability and bankruptcy. The teenage demographic accounts for $170 billion a year in the American economy, according to the Taylor Group, a research firm that follows trends in the youth market.
That could explain why so much slang has crept into general usage, whether in media, popular culture, or daily use by older, more middle-aged generations ("stick it to the man," "you rock," "whatever," "old school," and "talk to the hand").
The inherent attraction of slang, after all, is in each generation's opportunity to shape its own lexicon. The result is a playful body of language that's used for its sense of linguistic fun.
Since some of these words have a tendency to originate in vice, however, they can be offensive. In fact, opponents have long charged that slang has a degrading effect on public discourse. This accusation, though, only attests to its power. After all, slang is, by definition, more clever than standard English. It's catchy, and it can produce flashes of humor and even poetry.
In 1961, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Third Edition — a respected tome published since 1898 — turned to popular publications for its entries, instead of polling a handful of academics, the way dictionaries were historically written.
The edition, which included slang for the first time, was called "monstrous," "deplorable," and "a scandal."
Today, however, all dictionaries include slang, though not everyone is happy about it. A movement known as "prescriptive" consists of scholars who believe dictionaries should teach people how to properly use language, going so far as to call their opponents "laxicographers" (instead of lexicographers) and accuse them of promoting illiteracy.
"Descriptive," meanwhile, refers to scholars who believe any language that's commonly used belongs in the dictionary. These scholars are more interested in successful communication than appropriate language; that is, it doesn't matter to them which words people use to convey language, so long as everyone understands.
Older generations may resist youthful changes to their language because of nostalgia for the good old days — or horror at the bad new ones.
In reality, however, there is no such thing as proper language, because language continually changes over time.
In the 1930s and 1940s, it was the swing and jitterbug culture that invented the hip talk of the day. In the 1950s, it was the Beat poets and fast-talking radio disc jockeys. In the 1960s, it was the hippies. Today's slang originates from hip-hop culture and rap music.
And, to that we say, "Capiche, yo?"
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
