Modern and subculture slang

ERIC PARTRIDGE devoted his life to the study of slang. Carl Sandburg called it "a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work". Samuel Johnson disapproved of slang words "frisky, clever, fun, mob", but they became part of Standard English. It is usually spoken rather than written, but not all colloquial expressions are slang: "shut up" for "be quiet" is mostly written only in dialogue, but it is not slang. Linguists maintain slang to be different from, but sharing some characteristics with colloquialisms or jargon, which is talk used in carrying out a trade or profession.

Slang, in some form, is believed to have existed as long as language. Those 15 reasons for the use of slang that Partridge found in his monumental Slang: Today And Yesterday (1933) may today be expanded to more than twice as many. Although the answer to why people use slang is often complex and book-length, it can also be summarised as language used by those who, for reasons of personality or social (group) identity, wish to be linguistically different. This often is the premise of subculture dictionaries that have become quite popular in North America, but are still largely absent in the languages of India.

One compiler of modern slang and subculture dictionaries is Lewis Poteet, a Canadian professor of English Literature I have known for almost 20 years. As his latest publications Car Talk and Plane Talk (dictionaries of words related to automobiles and aeroplanes) clearly show that far from being esoteric, such compilations are indeed what a linguist called "vital contact with the source of language - the interchange of people with the challenge of their daily environment".

In Poteet's own words, he began doing "this work from a delight in the varieties of spoken language .... (and because) slang consists of keywords of one kind of another [that] help us see the patterns of culture, psychology, history, and so forth". It was hard work because most of Car Talk and Plane Talk was heard in talk; only a few were taken from the printed sources. His other published works include dictionaries of motorcycle and ice hockey slang, and he is working on books on graffiti and police slang.

Slang is meant to express attitudes and feelings - be it hostility, ridicule or affection - better than formal words. Poteet's dictionary has ample evidence of these typical characteristics of slang.

Consider expressions, for example:

Picturesque (blue wrench = from bright blue flame of the acetylene torch used for opening anything stuck), contempt for law (plane jane = unmarked police car.) contempt for manufacturer (FORD = Fix Or Repair Daily), concise (FUBAR = Fouled [often substituted by a vulgarism] Up Beyond All Repair), sexist (couch and carry plan = a way to pay for car repairs by exchanging sex for work), vivid (salad bar = an old car which looks rather nice but is completely rusted.), burn the yellow = racing through a yellow light., humorous (baby's got a new pair of shoes = a way of noticing that a car has a new set of tyres.), bananas in the crank case = extra heavy oil put into an engine to cover up knocking due to serious internal damage, so the car may be resold.

racist (Mexican overdrive = putting the car in neutral while coasting down the hill, presumably to save gas),

figurative (clunker = a really abused, defective old car). Similar to "condum " (distortion of "condemned") used in many regions of India.

and, giving inside knowledge (Egyptian brake pedal = use of horn at all times. Can be applied equally to driving in India).

Some of the phrases in the dictionary may be considered offensive. But the combustible engine vehicle has always been the ultimate symbol of machismo. And any person naive enough to expect car slang to be free of sexist, racist and offensive phrases is gullible enough to buy a car with "around the block guarantee" (guaranteed to go only as far as around the block).

Another consistent characteristic of slang is that it is constantly changing and short-lived, with new words replacing the old. Counter-culture words from the 1960's and the 1970's like "far-out" already seem jaded, although "cool" seems to have made a comeback. Still, some slang words can have long lives. "Bones" for dice used by Chaucer in the 14th Century, is still slang, as is "booze" from Middle English, "pooped" (16th Century) and "grub" (19th Century).

In recent years, computer technology and narcotics trade and drug use have added enough slang words to keep linguists working for the next 100 years. We may safely bet bucks (another 19th Century slang word) that most phrases in lexicons such as Car Talk will soon fall out of use.

Nonetheless, they will provide a clue to the North American culture as we enter the new century, and to North America's love affair with the combustion engine vehicle in the past century.

ANAND

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