United We Slang

Long before "bling," "24/7" and "hater" became household words, before one got "props" for matching nouns to verbs-long before "Ma" was a girl who was anything but your Ma ....there was slang.

Ah, slang! Do we even know what the word means anymore? Merriam Webster defines it as, "language peculiar to a particular group." But to which group does this definition apply? Which group is most credited or blamed for its entry into the American glossary? The didactic writers of the 1980 blockbuster movie Airplane had an inkling of slang's scapegoats and left us, in the annals of comedy, with arguably the most hilarious scene in a movie.

In an airplane sit two African-American men. One frustrated man attempts to communicate the other's need of an aspirin. A well-intentioned, but hopelessly confused Caucasian flight attendant, apologetically explains that she cannot understand them. Enter a matronly Caucasian woman who, conveniently seated across the aisle from the two men, graciously offers to "translate" on their behalf. "Excuse me stewardess, I speak jive," she declares with the bravado of a caped superhero brandishing a weapon. What ensues is an uproarious, exchange between the trio. The matronly woman, head gestures abounding, alternates between brusque, fragmented sentences (when addressing the men) to overly-articulated, grammatically impeccable English (when addressing the flight attendant). In the end, though a crisis is averted, the ailing man admonishes the woman for intervening. After all, he understood the flight attendant-even if she didn't understand him.

But are we always supposed to understand one another? Isn't the understanding, or lack thereof, why slang was created to begin with? Those versed in slang, while no doubt appreciative of its trendy, hyperbolic, and time-saving qualities, must nevertheless acknowledge that a speaker's main objective in speaking slang, however subconscious, is not merely to communicate, but to obfuscate. You see, when it comes to slang, camouflage is at least, if not more, important than communication.

Consider the teenager who is speaking on the telephone when her mom or dad enters the room. Even if the conversation is sickeningly benign, adolescent defiance and paranoia, necessitate that a decision be made. Either she walk out of the room, possibly hurting her parent's feelings, perhaps even arousing suspicion, or draw from her extensive lexicon of slang words. The choice is clear.

Let's not forget about our favorite decade of excess, the 60's, which has graced us with many quotable terms such as "bummer," which according to our trusty Webster's dictionary turns out to mean, "a bad experience, as a bad reaction to a hallucinogenic drug." *Gulp.* There are also myriad ethnic slang words, and many racial slurs, which will not here be repeated. Sorry.

Whatever happened to the good ole' days when slang was esoteric? When you had a "friend," a kind of slang crypt keeper, who aided and abetted you in getting into the secreted vaults and then getting out with goods? In the "hood," for example, slang terms went into circulation a good two years before the rest of America caught on. But that didn't mean YOU had to wait to be informed-not if you had an "inside man" or woman on the scene.

Alas! All the planning, all the linguistic espionage-all has gone to waste with the advent of VHI, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Reality TV. Now everyone speaks slang! In fact, slang has become so mainstream that Standard English is now slang. If you don't believe me, if you're secretly scoffing at this assertion, test me. Create a new word. Videotape yourself saying it. Be sure to use the word in a sentence with plenty of context clues. Now wait. The transit time between when your word is first spoken to when it passes into "active" circulation will be about a half hour: the time it takes for your video to be uploaded and viewed on YouTube.

Despite it all, I must confess, while part of me "hates" on this generation for its familiarity with slang, for its access to this Holy Grail of acceptability (an access for which I endlessly labored in high school), I cannot help but to derive a sense of satisfaction that the line of demarcation between culture and class has now been obliterated. We are no longer an "us" and "them" nation. We are all, equally...and regrettably... ignorant.

However inanely we speak, e-mail and text, nothing gets lost in translation. And that, my friend, is progress.

I think.