Because Language: The Evolution of Slang and Dialects
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Transcript of Because Language: The Evolution of Slang and Dialects
Because Language:The Evolution of Slang and Dialects
By Kathleen Laufenberg
Human languages have never been static entities. The grammar,
vocabulary, and dialects of every language on the planet evolve with
the society that uses it. However, while the evolution of language is
a linguistic fact, the processes and catalysts involved in it are more
difficult to define. For example, examine the changing use of the
word “dude.” In the 1870’s, a “dude” was a well-dressed (or overly-
dressed) man from a metropolitan area; in the 1980’s, the word morphed
in to a term for casual greetings between peers – “Hey, dude!”1 How
did this change of meaning occur, and why? Language use evolves over
time within society in three main stages: the creation of slang terms
and language dialects by subcultures due to geographic and social
boundaries, the early adoption (comparatively speaking) of linguistic
changes by younger age groups (especially young females,) and the
increasing adoption and usage by individuals within a society until
the change reaches its saturation point.
David M. Hummon defines slang as, “language that is not accepted
as ‘good, formal usage’ by the majority of the public and is largely
1 Robertson, Kelly. "The Evolution of Slang," The King's Page, August 3, 2013.
part of oral, rather than written, expression.”2 Slang terms often
originate from individual subcultures which use slang as a sort of
“in-speak” with other members of the “in-group.”3 However, there is a
difference between general slang and subcultural slang. General slang
terms are “widely recognized in the culture” while subcultural slang
terms are “only intelligible within a smaller social world.”4 In cases
where a subcultural slang term becomes useful to society on a larger
scale however, such words will expand in use beyond a specific group
and gain wide-spread acceptance within society.5 Race, gender, sexual
orientation, education, industry, income, and other differentiating
characteristics create subcultures within a society. These various
subcultures then increase demand for new slang terms deemed necessary
for clear communication by those specific groups.
One American subculture with a predisposition for the creation
and use of slang terms is the population of undergraduate college
students. College slang is expressive, on occasion seemingly
offensive, and has an informal style of expression and student-centric
orientation.6 College students are typically young, and they use both
2 Hummon, David M. "College Slang Revisited: Language, Culture, and Undergraduate Life." The Journal of Higher Education 65, no. 1 (January/February 1994): 75-98.
3 Zarella, Dan. "How and Why Slang Spreads." DanZarrella.com. 2008.4 Hummon, 77.5 Zarella.6 Hummon, 77.
general slang (which is already in widespread use within American
society) and subcultural college slang terms, used for “communicating
the values of undergraduates rather than the concerns of other adults
in and outside the academy.”7 There are four general categories which
all slang use by this subculture can be grouped within: general slang,
regional slang, national collegiate slang, and local college slang.
The relationships between these four types of slang can be represented
visually below:
SLANG USE BY AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENTS
National Local
ALL ADULTS General
slang
Regional
slang
UNDERGRADUATES
ONLY
National collegiate
slang
Local college slang
Design for table inspired byHummon..
This table shows how the geographic and social boundaries of
slang terms can differ. The first category, general slang, is used 7 Hummon, 77.
widely among the American public. Many of these terms have dictionary
definitions despite their origins as slang. This includes words such
as babe, bitch, brown-noser, dick, jerk, womanizer, and yuppie.8 Other terms used by
students are collegiate slang, which is generally used geographically
but socially bounded: dork, dweeb, god, god squad, granola, monger, and party
animal.9
Slang can also be geographically bounded. In fact, when Hummon
analyzed the slang used among college students, he found that the
great majority of college slang is local rather than general. At Holy
Cross College, a Catholic Liberal Arts College in Notre Dame, Indiana,
72.3% of slang usage was classified as local slang, while only 27.7%
was placed in the general slang category.10 However, he also notes
that Holy Cross College might be an environment which encourages the
development of more localized slang terms “if one assumes that the
small, private, socially homogenous residential college provides a
more coherent and exclusive social context for the elaboration and
transmission of student culture.”11 When comparing the different rates
of use of different types of college slang at Holy Cross (a small
private liberal arts institute) to the University of California at
Davis (a large public university) the differences in slang usage based8 Hummon, 80.9 Hummon, 81.10 Hummon, 82.11 Hummon, 81.
on local differences become more pronounced. Slang terms about campus
life make up 33.7% of slang use at Holy Cross, but only 18.1% of slang
use at UC-Davis.12 On the other hand, terms pertaining to personal
attributes make up 40.1% of the slang terms at UC-Davis, but only
27.8% of the terms used at Holy Cross College.13
This assumption based on Hummon’s findings would lead one to the
conclusion that Warren Wilson College, being a small, private,
residential liberal arts college in an isolated environment, would
also possesses an ideal social scene for the development of localized
slang terminology just like Holy Cross. Without any hard data it is
difficult to say. However, international students at Warren Wilson
College admit more difficulty understanding their peers’ informal
conversations outside the classroom than the formal language used in a
classroom setting.14 Jian Zhang, a Chinese international student who
majors in Political Science, says that slang terms at Warren Wilson
College are one of the major language barriers she faces. For
example, when she heard her peers talking about the “Warren Wilson
Bubble,” she did not know the meaning of the term. 15 This is local
collegiate slang used by Warren Wilson students to describe the
relative social isolation experienced by students on campus due to 12 Hummon, 85.13 Hummon, 85.14 “Jian Zhang Interview.” Personal interview by author. November 8, 2013.15 “Jian Zhang Interview.”
Warren Wilson’s remote location and the students’ resulting lack of
outside knowledge and social interaction. Students often blame the
“Warren Wilson Bubble” for their ignorance of current events or
popular culture. There are many terms like this at Warren Wilson
College, and mastering their various standard definitions, social
meanings, and cultural connotations requires an understanding of the
English language that goes beyond mere academic fluency.
Slang use among undergraduate college students can provide
insights into the use of slang as a whole in English-speaking American
society. It ranges from the widespread use of general slang
throughout society (which is neither socially nor geographically
bounded), on to the regional or general subculture slangs that appeals
to the shared interests and experiences of a large subset of
Americans, and culminates in the “highly localized, socially
circumscribed idiographic terms of small-group culture.”16 The
boundaries imposed on different terms and expressions are a major
factor in their use within wider society and acceptance across
cultural, regional, and societal divides.
These different types of slang are far from categorically static
– terminology that is highly localized can rise to general use. The
more interaction a subculture has with the larger society, the more
16 Hummon, 82.
likely that subculture’s distinctive slang use is to reach societal
saturation and become a general slang term. This happens quite
regularly in many world languages. In English, one recent linguistic
phenomenon that recently underwent this social diffusing is the
“because + noun” grammatical structure.
In traditional grammatical use, the word “because” is a
subordinating conjunction, meaning it connects two parts of a sentence
together into one coherent thought.17 However, in this new slang usage
of the word “because,” it instead functions as a preposition. Here is
an example of the use of the “because + noun” form:
I was awake all night last night because finals.
This new use of “because” has only developed in the last three to four
years.18 It just received a name in July 2012, when two linguists both
independently decided to call it “because + noun” and “because NOUN”
structure.19
Linguist Mark Liberman, who first coined the “because NOUN”
terminology for this slang, states that the structure usually carries
the “implication that a referenced line of reasoning is weak.”20 For
example: “The stock market hit a new low this month because Obama.” 17 Garber, Megan. "English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet." The Atlantic. November 19, 2013.18 Whitman, Neal, and Mignon Fogarty. "Because as a Preposition." Grammar Girl (audio blog), October 18, 2013.19 Whitman and Fogarty, 1.20 Liberman, Mark. "Because NOUN." Language Log. July 12, 2012.
The implication in this sentence is that Obama really did not have
much to do with the stock market’s value dropping so low. Instead,
the structure is used to add dramatic effect to a cause-effect
statement.21 This slang grammatical structure originated in the memes
commonly found within the most popular online communities of internet
subculture.22 The internet has a great deal of interaction with
society at large due to social media websites and the sharing of
online information among individuals. This enabled the “because +
noun” structure to reach a wider audience and gain popularity outside
of the subculture which spawned it, becoming a general slang term used
by a wider audience. As writer Stan Carey puts it: “Because X is
fashionably slangy now, diffusing rapidly across communities.”23 Just
as Hummon predicted, it was the accessibility and practicality of the
“because + noun” form which allowed its use to become socially
acceptable among a wider population.24
Racial subcultures are also a source of slang terminology. For
example, the use of the word “yo” can be traced back to the 1940’s,
where it originated in African American communities in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.25 The word first broke into mainstream popular culture 21 Carey, Stan. "'Because' Has Become a Preposition, Because Grammar." Sentence First. November 13, 2013.22 Garber.23 Carey.24 Hummon, 82.25 Robertson.
when it was used in the 1950 film Rio Grande, starring John Wayne.26 A
decade later, the character Goober Pyle (of the popular sitcom The Andy
Griffith Show) used the term regularly, exposing even more of the
population to “yo.”27 However, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the
term really gained popularity via the Rocky movies, and in the 1990’s
it was incorporated as a common word in urban music and rap songs.28
Since then, “yo” has been a commonly used term in colloquial American
English, with many different meanings depending on the situation.
A slang term refers to a single word or phrase that has different
meaning in a subculture of people speaking a language, but there are
even larger variations in local language use among subcultures. A
dialect is a variety of language shared by a group of speakers.
Instead of just one term, a dialect can differ in many ways, including
word use, phrases, grammar, and pronunciation. Dialects differ
between groups based on a number of characteristics, including one’s
geographic region, group memberships, or socioeconomic status.29 Like
slang terminology, variations in dialects are often geographically
and/or socially bounded. However, unlike slang terms, dialects will
not die out or spread among society based primarily on the social
connectivity of the groups which use them. Linguists are often asked 26 Robertson.27 Robertson.28 Robertson.29 Merriam Webster. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dialect.
if regional dialects will die out because of technological advances
such as television, commercial aviation, or the internet. The answer
is a definite “no.”30 Technological advances may limit the power of
geographic boundaries to preserve dialects, but geographic distance or
isolation is only part of the larger reason dialects emerged and
continue to exist today – after all, there are many different accents
in immense cities like New York. 31 There is no geographic boundary
standing limiting the interaction of these dialects, so why do they
stay distinctive from one another? The reason for different and
unique dialects is actually quite simple. “Our language expresses who
we are: our complex and simultaneous identities as individuals and
members of society… We want to sound like the people we want
to be like, not like other people from other groups.”32 A study of the
Sui ethnic minority located primarily in rural areas of Guizhou in
Mainland China confirms this assertion. “Sui men, women, and children
maintain the dialect features of their home clans to a high degree
throughout their lives, regardless of any later migration or long-term
immersion in other clan dialects.”33 The maintenance of a home clan
dialect among the Sui serves as a linguistic act of clan identity that
30 Fought, Carmen. "Are Dialects Fading?" PBS. 2005.31 Fought.32 Fought.33 Stanford, James N. "Dialect Contact and Identity: A Case Study of ExogamousSui Clans." Diss., Michigan State University, 2007.
helps continually reinforce clan memberships.34 Dialects serve as a
way for individuals to demonstrate their belonging to a certain group.
We want to sound like the other people around us, and we want to
remember our roots.
This doesn’t mean that dialects do not evolve, change, shrink,
and spread across social groups. Even within a single dialect there
is significant variation. No two people use a language in exactly the
same way. In a sense, each individual speaks their own dialect, or
idiolect.35 Dialects evolve over generations by gaining or losing
speakers, or even being replaced by other dialects entirely.36 Within
a population, dialect continually forms through “chains of mutually
intelligible signal schemes” spanning a population.37 The “signal use
change” between dialects is usually different for each individual
chain, forming indistinct boundaries between dialects.38 This
eventually leads to the transitive linking of mutual unintelligible
dialects as well.39 Through this model of dialect change, one can
trace the origins of Spanish, Italian, and French as “dialects” of
34 Stanford, iii.35 Livingstone, Daniel. "The Evolution of Dialect DIversity." In Simulating the
Evolution of Language, by Angelo Cangelosi and Domenico Parisi, 99-118. London: Springer, 2002.
36 Livingstone, 100.37 Livingstone, 100.38 Livingstone, 100.39 Livingstone, 100.
Latin, or find the origins of Modern Greek language in its Ancient
Greek roots.
If one theoretically wanted to predict the future evolutions of
dialect within languages, the best place to look would probably be
among young urban women. Claire Nance, a linguistic lecturer at
Lancaster University, notes that, “Typically, women are trailblazers
in language change and take up innovative features first, then men
start using them later.”40 One can see evidence of this start and
spread of dialect up to the modern day: the modern English language’s
evolution can be seen real-time in the spread (and dislike,
disparagement, and disappointment from elders) of a linguistic trend
known as “vocal fry.”
Among young, upwardly-mobile women, “vocal fry” is becoming more
and more common. This term refers to the low, raspy voices that young
women have developed in recent years. Vocal fry has gotten a lot of
press lately, and a great deal of it is negative. The distinctive
sound is caused by compressing one’s vocal chords, which reduces the
airflow through the larynx and decreases the frequency of vibrations,
resulting in speech that sounds “rattled” or “creaky” compared to
normally-spoken English.41 Many influential young women in pop culture40 Hogenboom, Melissa. "More Men Speaking in Girls' 'Dialect', Study Shows." BBC News. December 5, 2013.41 Arana, Gabriel. "Creaky Voice: Yet Another Example of Young Women's Linguistic Ingenuity." The Atlantic. January 10, 2013.
have used or still use vocal fry, including Zooey Deschanel, Kim
Kardashian, and Britney Spears.42
Often, these new linguistic trends in dialects are viewed
negatively by older generations using previously established
linguistic dialects. NPR’s Bob Garfield called the phenomenon of
vocal fry “vulgar,” “repulsive,” “mindless,” “annoying,” and “really
annoying” over the course of a single 26-minute podcast on the topic.43
Despite this rather harsh reaction, the widespread annoyance of
certain demographics is doing little to stem the tide of vocal fry in
the voice patterns of young women. Amanda Hess writes, “Young women
could work to flatten their speech patterns to conform to Garfield’s
own NPRish affectation… So why do we instead insist on speaking in
ways that old men find so objectionable?”44 In the end, the answer
boils down to one simple fact: young women don’t care what old men
think of their speech patterns. The way it is perceived among their
peer circles is far more important.
The 21st century’s reluctance towards vocal fry has been likened
to the reception of another linguistic phenomenon which is only mere
decades old: “uptalk” or the “valley girl” dialect. This speech
42 Arana.43 Vuolo, Mike. "Lexicon Valley Discusses the Rise of Creaky Voice or Vocal Fry Among Young American Women." Slate.com. January 2013.
44 Hess, Amanda. "Why Old Men Find Young Women's Voices So Annoying." Slate.com. January 7, 2013.
pattern first rose to prominence in the 1980’s and also received
negative reactions from many language purists.45 “Uptalk” is
characterized by a rise in pitch at the end of sentences, similar to
the rise in tone denoting a question rather than a statement. It is
difficult to know exactly where and when the “valley girl” dialect
started, but Professor Amalia Arvanti of the University of Kent
hypothesizes that the origins may lay in a pitch pattern found in many
different varieties of English, used when the speaker is
simultaneously making a statement and indirectly asking the listener
to confirm if they are “with you” in the conversation.46 Non-speakers
of the dialect typically seem to assume a speaker who uses uptalk is
“insecure, shallow, or slightly dim.”47 Laurie Fendrich admits that
the “Valley-Girl Lift,” as she names it, is a speech pattern she
reviles: “In general, I find that turning declarative statements into
questions reveals an unexplainable lack of confidence in one’s
opinions and a radical uncertainty about one’s place in the world.”48
Despite the hand-wringing of language purists, uptalk spread far and
wide. Over the course of multiple decades, the fear, bewilderment,
and sometimes even hatred surrounding the presence of uptalk in a
person’s speech patterns seemed to abate. Mike Vuolo asserts that “we45 Vuolo.46 Arana.47 Arana.48 Fendrich, Laurie. "The Valley-Girl Lift." Brainstorm. March 12, 2010.
somehow managed to endure that frightful fad and beat back the
apocalypse,” referring to the spread and adoption of uptalk by more
English speakers in our society. But there is an issue with Mr.
Vuolo’s statement about uptalk – it is very, very wrong. In fact,
uptalk is still spreading throughout the English-speaking world today.
Recent evidence shows that even though the uptalk phenomenon
hasn’t been making news, this way of speaking is still winning over
new and varied speakers. In fact, a recent study by the Acoustical
Society of America found evidence that uptalk is still spreading
rapidly among younger generations in Southern California, where it
originated.49 At its inception, the “valley girl” dialect was
typically associated with young females from California or Australia.
Nowadays, uptalk is becoming increasingly frequent among men from
these areas as well.50 Amanda Ritchart, a linguist at the University
of California who led the research, stated that “We found use of
uptalk in all of our speakers, despite their diverse backgrounds in
socioeconomic status, ethnicity, bilingualism and gender.”51 Rather
than sounding dim or ditzy to younger generations, uptalk seems to
denote that a speaker is seeking agreement or empathy on a
conversational topic, and that use has resonated with young English
49 Arana.50 Arana.51 Arana.
speakers. Inklings of uptalk speech patterns and word use have
disbursed far and wide, away from the dialect’s roots in Southern
California. Even President George W. Bush and televangelist Pat
Robertson sometimes uses vocal patterns derived from uptalk. One
common instance of this is the near-constant use of the word “like”
throughout statements, even without a comparison or simile. For
example, Pat Robertson once said, “I really believe I'm hearing from
the Lord it's going to be, like, a blowout election in 2004.”52 Uptalk
has quietly seeped into American dialects and speech patterns across
all American social demographics. It likely won’t be leaving our
collective linguistic process any time soon, and by the time it does,
something even more offensive to the older generations will have taken
its place.
Evidence shows that younger generations – and women in particular
– are most likely to detect and begin using new linguistic dialect
patterns like uptalk or vocal fry. In the case of the latter, creaky
voices have already broken into the American pop culture scene where
young people make up the majority consumer demographic. Like the Sui
minority of Mainland China, young people may be using vocal fry as a
cue denoting their membership within a certain social or cultural
52 Hess.
group – in this case, membership of the millennial generation in the
United States.53
Nassima Abdelli-Beruh, a speech scientist and co-author of the
study on vocal fry done at Long Island University, notes that often
hears vocal fry in radio hosts on “Top 40” pop radio stations aimed at
younger listeners, but not on NPR, which tends to appeal to an older
audience.54 Abdelli-Beruh says that young people tend to use a creaky
voice more often when they are speaking with their peers, leading to
the conclusion that vocal fry is used by young women to indirectly
declare themselves as part of a specific social group using vocal fry
speech patterns.55 Statistics from the study she co-authored, which
quantify usage rates of vocal fry among young women, seem to endorse
her communication theory; more than two-thirds of the research
subjects in the study used vocal fry during their recorded readings.56
They are also more likely to recognize the positive social cues hidden
within those dialects, as one comparison of speech with and without
vocal fry showed:
One study recorded a college-aged woman’s voice while speaking inan even tone, and then again when employing the creak. When both
53 Fessenden, Marissa. "'Vocal Fry' Creeping into U.S. Speech." Science Magazine. December 9, 2011.54 Fessenden.55 Fessenden.56 Wolk, Lesley, Nassima B. Abdelli-Beruh, and Diane Slavin. "Habitual Use of Vocal Fry in Young Adult Female Speakers." Journal of Voice 26, no. 3 (May 2012): E111-116.
samples were played for students in Berkeley and Iowa, those peers viewed the affectation as “a prestigious characteristic of contemporary female speech,” characterizing the creaky woman as “professional,” “urban,” “looking for her career,” and most tellingly: “not yet a professional, but on her way there.”57
However, the conclusions that can be drawn from this study are
limited, as the researchers only looked at female college students who
spoke Standard American English.58 Nonetheless, Abdelli-Beruh still
believes the results of the study show that “Maybe this is a social
link between members of a group.”59 If this is the case, older nay-
sayers like Garfield may dislike newer speech patterns among the
younger generations “because it represents the downfall of his own
mode of communication, which is swiftly being replaced by the patterns
and preferences of 11-year-old girls.”60
The evolution of slang terms and language dialects is a never-
ending process, and by extension a never-ending battle between
language adapters and language purists. This linguistic battle is far
from new. An article titled “In Defense of Slang” appears in the
Literary Digest from May 18, 1901, over a century ago. It reads:
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. If we paused for a moment to examine the cheapest cant phrases that pass our lips every day, we should find that they are as rich and suggestive as so many sonnets. To take a single instance: we speak of a man in English social relations ‘breaking the ice.’ If
57 Vuolo.58 Wolk, Lesley, Nassima B. Abdelli-Beruh, and Diane Slavin.59 Fessenden.60 Hess.
this were expanded into a sonnet, we should have before us a darkand sublime picture of an ocean of everlasting ice, the somber and baffling mirror of the northern nature, over which men walkedand danced and skated easily, but under which the living waters roared and toiled fathoms below. The world of slang is a kind oftopsy-turvydom of poetry, full of blue moons and white elephants,of men losing their heads and having their tongues run away with them – a whole chaos of fairy tales.61
Evolving slang and changing dialects may be disconcerting to
those who are not a part of the in-group using a certain term or
pattern of speech, but those individuals need only remember that they
too, at some point, were part of the in-group using a newly-minted
word or phrase. Subcultures create new dialects and slang, young
people adopt them, and society embraces or balks at the terms and
patterns as it sees fit – until it doesn’t. This is how our language
evolves and grows and it will continue to do so long after we are
finished our short lives. The reality is that the “Valley-Girl Lift”
will most likely outlive us all, and that isn’t a bad thing. It’s
just one more step in the never-ending process that is linguistic
evolution.
61 "In Defense of Slang." The Literary Digest 22, no. 20 (May 18, 1901): 603.
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