Word: slang
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Where is the next generation of slang to come from? Not from Valley Girl, the argot made famous lately by Singer Frank Zappa and his daughter, who is named Moon Unit Zappa. "Val" is really a sort of satire of slang, a goof on language and on the dreamily dumb and self-regarding suburban kids who may actually talk like that. It would come out all wrong if a minister were to compose his sermon in Val. "The Lord is awesome," he would have to begin. "He knows that life can sometimes be, like, grody-grody...
...Still, slang has deep resources. The French resist barbaric intrusions into the language of Voltaire and Descartes. But American English has traditionally welcomed any bright word that sailed in, no matter how ragged it may have looked on arrival. That Whitmanesque hospitality has given America the richest slang in the world...
...inventory of American slang now, however, can be somewhat disappointing. Slang today seems to lack the playful energy and defiant self-confidence that can send language darting out to make raffish back-alley metaphorical connections and shrewdly teasing inductive games of synonym...
Examine one fairly new item: airhead. It means, of course, a brainless person, someone given to stupid behavior and opinions. But it is a vacuous, dispiriting little effort. The word has no invective force or metaphorical charm. When slang settles for the drearily literal (airhead equals empty head), it is too tired to keep up with the good stuff...
...Much new slang originates with people who have to be in by 8. Junior high and even grade school are unexpectedly productive sources. Sometimes children simply take ordinary words and hold them up to the light at a slightly different angle, an old trick of slang. The ten-year-old will pronounce something "excellent" in the brisk, earnest manner of an Army colonel who has just inspected his regiment. (Primo means the same thing.) The movie E. T. has contributed penis breath, an aggressively weird phrase in perfect harmony with the aggressively weird psyche of the eight-year...