Part 3 (2/2)

Are Like and You Know Expletives?

It turns out that expletives may not necessarily be dirty words after all.

The 1972 edition of Websteras New World Dictionary lists two meanings of expletive: an oath or filler in a sentence. Websteras Third New International, which was published in 1961, lists two meanings: the first is filler, the second is obscenity.

So if a verbal filler is an expletive, would words like like and you know be expletives, obscenities, or just plain fillers?

However, donat call the f-word dead yet by any means. In early March 2011, three songs with that word in their t.i.tles or choruses made it to the Top 10 Hits, one h.e.l.luva bleeping development. It was part of an effort of the music industry to get away from the restrictions of censored broadcast media now that the Internet and related devices have become such a viable alternative. It also might have meant that the giant word filter was temporarily too clogged to work efficiently.

Meanwhile, raw obscenities seem to have lost favor with some politicians. They now seem to prefer more original terms. This is another linguistic area where George W. Bush set the pace early. When he came to publicly label his longtime adviser Karl Rove, for example, he did not choose a worn-out term like sha”head or aa”hole, which might have been more apt for Rove. Instead, Bush chose to call him at.u.r.d blossom,a a Texan expression from the pasture. Only a genuine language leader could be so original and effective.

Neither government nor self-appointed language censors have the right stuff for reducing the s.m.u.t quotient in movie and media fare. The only workable process is the Amglish filter that lets the public make its own decisions in the natural course of things. The trouble is that it sometimes takes too fa”ing long.

Another area where such standards are still in flux, however, is the blogosphere, especially where s.p.a.ce is provided on websites for individuals to post personal comments. The amount of vitriol and filth on some websites appears to be reaching saturation levels. But it apparently has not yet hit the level for the filter of public judgment to change the pattern.

Comedians Do Their Bit.

Comedy is central to language development because it requires an atmosphere for experimenting with words, an openness so essential to the healthy growth of language.

American comedians have been especially blessed in having such a quirky language to work with. For example, everyone knows there is no English in English m.u.f.fins, and thereas no ham in a hamburger or egg in an eggplant. And if the plural of mouse is mice, then why isnat the plural of house hice? Only a speaker of English would know that stars are visible only when they are out and that lights are not visible when they are out.

These and the many other quirks of the language werenat purposely put there; they were inherited from people even more idiosyncratic than Americans, the English. They spent centuries developing such peculiarities before s.h.i.+pping them across the sea for Americans to add their own touches.

Mark Twain was quick to see the humor in the design. And he took full advantage of it. A champion wordsmith, he tried to reduce the length of words and simplify spelling without success. Tina Fey, the latest winner of the Mark Twain award, also likes to play with words. One of her favorites is snart, a combined sneeze and fart.

Among those who helped exploit the sometimes charming defects of English during the key Amglish-forming period of the 1970s to 1990s were comics Roseanne Barr, George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Redd Foxx, d.i.c.k Gregory, Jay Leno, David Lettermen, and Richard Pryor.

A Homemade Conbobberation.

Many early Americans busied themselves making up words to fit their rough, frontier lifestyle. Among the beauties were ringtailed roarer (hearty guy), ramsquaddle (to beat up), conbobberation (ruckus), hornswoggle (cheat), screamer (beefy man), and rambunctious (unruly). So the ringtailed roarer no longer creates a conbobberation when he hornswoggles the rambunctious screamer.

Or in todayas terms, will the digerati greenwash their Blu-Rays via cloud computing and get enough street cred to virtualize their carbon footprint? Iam jus sayin.

The Seven Bad Words.

Carlin in particular was a master of originality with words. His magnum opus, Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, made it all the way up to the Supreme Court in 1978 in a case involving the governmentas right to regulate so-called indecent and obscene material on the public airwaves.22 The Supremes didnat get any of the jokes and ruled in favor of censors.h.i.+p by the Federal Communications Commission.

The ruling effectively banned the seven wordsa”ones that every adult knowsa”from programs likely to be seen or heard by children. In reality, however, the ruling boosted Carlinas fame and inspired even greater usage of the contested words both in and outside broadcasting. Thereas nothing like prohibition to make a banned item wanted even more.

Contemporary comedians continue to have a ball with their native language, particularly with their ability to get laughs with neologisms. Recent additions to the list include Stephen Colbertas truthiness and the recycled frenemies and Jon Stewartas labels for things like Mess-O-Potamia and Californigaytion.

Groundbreaking Authors.

The first major author to go nativea”and graphica”was Harriet Beecher Stowe, who used the language of slaves and their masters to take a strong stand against the way most blacks were treated in the United States. Her gutsy book, Uncle Tomas Cabin, published in 1851, sold more copies than any other in the nineteenth century.

Samples included aNever was born,a persisted Topsy. . . . aNever had no father, nor mother, nor nothina. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others.a Other quotations from characters in the book reflected her strong sentiments: aTreat aem like dogs, and youall have dogsa works and dogsa actions. Treat aem like men, and youall have menas works.a The pa.s.sionate novel brought her fame but also much grief, mostly from the Southern establishment and its sympathizers in the North. Many people blamed hera”or credited hera”for instigating the Civil War that resulted in freeing the slaves. She was also accused of oversympathizing with blacks by imitating their language and describing their woes so graphically.

Strong reactions continued long after her death. As the era of political correctness set in, there were numerous efforts to denigrate her book for not representing slave life more accurately. In 1949, author James Baldwin blamed her for not fully revealing athe inherent evils of a bad system.a Talk about late-hitting a little old lady when sheas downa”and under!

Stoweas realistic style became the pattern for T. S. Arthuras Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, published three years later. Like Stoweas book, this was a clever use of common speech to plead for a cause, in this case temperance. These books helped break the template of stuffy British literature and plot a more permissive course for American literature.

An Activist Lexicographer.

Even some dictionary makers can be called pioneers when they aim both to codify the language and change it. Noah Webster was a rare bird who fitted both job descriptions. He led a move not only to Americanize the language brought across the ocean but to inventory the vocabulary that existed mostly in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

His Dictionary of the English Language in 1806 was the first major U.S. dictionary. He also performed surgery on many British words by removing the final k in words like musick, dispensing with the letter u in words like colour, and transposing the last two letters in words like centre and theatre. But he failed to kill silent letters such as the b at the end of thumb, for which he got the third finger from some critics.

Websteras activism was largely inspired by Samuel Johnson and the famous dictionary he published in 1755. Johnson was of two minds as well. He vowed to afixa English by excluding new and bawdy words while publis.h.i.+ng off-color ditties such as this one by one Sir John Suckling: aLove is the fart of every heart; it pains a man when atis kept close; and others doth offend when atis let loose.a Contributing Authors.

The previously mentioned Mark Twain was another brush cutter for early Amglish with his lovable creations, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and his efforts to use the vernacular of black and white boys playing together in the South of the early 1800s. His Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1876, starts out, aYou donat know me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ainat no matter.a H. L. Mencken called Twain athe first American author of world rank to write genuinely colloquial and native American.a23 Mencken also singled out author Walt Whitman for his aromantic confidencea in the role of aiconoclastic and often uncouth American speechwaysa in fostering U.S. democracy. He said Whitmanas acentral purpose [was] to make war upon the old American subservience to 18th century English pedantry and open the way for the development of a healthy and vigorous autochthonous language in the United States.a Whitmanas love of slang led to a pioneering magazine article ent.i.tled aSlang in America.a24 Menckenas words for Whitman could also describe himself. His mammoth book, The American Language, is a tour de force of the American languageas history. Other trailblazing pioneers of language in the twentieth century include Ring Lardner and his depictions of street and bar talk in New York; Studs Terkel, with his quotes from unsung heroes; Norman Mailer, with his bold-at-the-time obscenities; and Tom Wolfeas gripping descriptions of affluent societyas seamier side.

The lowercase poet e. e. c.u.mmings deserves special mention for his playful spelling and syntax. He caused a stir in the early twentieth century by occasionally signing his name in lower-case letters and deliberately mixing up words, both of which devices were due later to spread into common usage. Among his verbal inventions that didnat catch on were mud-luscious, puddle-wonderful, and eddieandbill.

Jumping for Junie.

Then thereas the more recent Junie B. Jones, the controversial character in a series of books from Random House originally aimed at the kindergarten crowd but later upgraded to older ages and expanded into movies, games, and coloring pages. With her informal language, Junie indirectly promotes Amglisha”and book salesa”with clever misspellings and questionable grammar in phrases like aI hearded that namea and arunned away.a In other words, she fits into the Amglish world, much to the dismay of many parents who wonder how their offspring can ever learn formal English by reading such material. Other parents swear that their children have been inspired to do more writing and reading than they otherwise would have. They add that the use of the vernacular by Barbara Park, the creator of Junie B., is similar to Mark Twainas cla.s.sic use of it in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the top American cla.s.sics.

Which set of parents is closer to the truth?

If the question is whether Junie has harmed the ability of young Americans to communicate, the answer seems to be no. One glance at the degree of texting, phoning, and e-mailing by youngsters shows that they have no problem making themselves understood by their peers while greatly enjoying the process.

If Huck caused no serious problems for readers of his day, Junie B. is not likely to do so today.

Cleaning Up Huck.

As the year 2011 began, however, Twainas book became the center of another type of controversy stemming from his use of the word n.i.g.g.e.r 219 times in the book. The racial issue came up like thunder when it became public that Alan Gribben, a language professor at Auburn University in Alabama, had decided that each word should be replaced by the word slave in a new edition, even though the slave in the book had been freed.

Gribben explained that the n-word had become so explosive at a time of growing political correctness that the book might become one that people praise but donat read. aItas such a shame,a he told the a.s.sociated Press, athat one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers.a25 The news story set off a national debate over whether the much-read literary cla.s.sic should be changed after so many years. Most critics said Twain himself would have objected. He once wrote, aThe difference between the almost-right word and the right word . . . is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.a But Comedy Centralas Stephen Colbert supported the idea of whitewas.h.i.+ng American history and suggested that the job had only begun. aItas great to have the n-word out of Huckleberry Finn. Now get to work on the Moby D-word.a Except for his joking response, it looked like another example of the language filter starting to work, this time not on common obscenities but on the use of overtly racial terms. As this is written, not all the votes are in, but the Amglish system of allowing the public to make the ultimate decision on controversial language seems to be working, though often slowly and erratically.

This chapter has described some of the pioneers who helped create the informal language that is replacing formal English in the United States. The next chapter will describe how the new American lingo has spread around the world.

The New World Lingo.

go out mubarak.

a”Words on a manas forehead in Tahrir Square, Cairo, February 8, 2011.

This crudely crayoned message in Cairoas Tahrir Square is only one of many examples of the informal English penetrating the rest of the world. Such signs are part of a growing strategy by people in other countries to solicit international support for their causes by getting news microphones and cameras to pick up their crudely framed English words and convey them to the centers of world power.

Also ill.u.s.trative of the U.S. influence in the Arab uprisings in 2011 was the central role played by American-based social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. The spark that lit the populist fires in Egypt was a graphic photo on Facebook of the distorted face of an Egyptian man beaten to death by police. When it became public on February 8 that the man who posted the photo online was Wael Ghonim, the Middle East manager of Google, the news brought out the largest crowd in Egyptian history to honor him.

These words and photos on the Internet were additional proof, if any were needed, of the worldwide influence of American language and pop culture. According to the Voice of America, there were 5 million users of Facebook in Egypt when the public demonstrations began there on January 25.

Five years earlier, Amglish had already penetrated the very birthplace of English so thoroughly that the nationas soccer superstar David Beckham blurted out the following words about his children: aThe homework is so hard these days. Itas totally done differently to what I was teached . . . and you know, I was like, aOh my G.o.d, I canat do this.a1 The new lingo had obviously gotten in too deep for him or anyone else to kick the habit.

Normally, Brits donat like to play second fiddle to their former colonies, but when it comes to keeping current with the latest patter from across the pond, they are obviously turning out to be little more than lapdogs in bulldog drag.

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