Adopting slang: Wack or Dope?

2) i'm getting bored with neuromancer baiting us with his intense hatred of the poor.

3) slang is good. the only problem is self- righteous assholes who question your 'permission' to use it. cough.

first, i said to dismiss rap and r&b music in the way you did was to dismiss black culture, and i stand by that, because a huge part of modern black culture is music and the very way in which you dismissed it smacked of racism. you attacked the very institution of rap music, like rhyming, and acted if there was something about rhyming in rap that set it apart from rock. that can only be racially-motivated.

secondly, in any nation where education must be purchased, poverty does equal ignorance. that's simply a fact. and why would me stating that make you hate me if you were black? christ, just leave us alone.

ANYHOW, I think it all depends on how it's being used, the naturality of it and such (is naturality a word?). When me and my friend Vanessa are chatting, we'll say shit like that - "Yo, that bitch was all in my face", ghetto shit. If I'm talking to my boss, I'm not going to say that (though oddly he and a psuedo-partner were embroiled in a discussion a few weeks ago that used the phrase "Are you down with that shit?" several times). In context of the question, ie describing music, I do NOT think they are useful terms - what the hell does "dope beat" describe? Hot beat, cool beat, sure, those make sense, but using slang like that just generally comes across, to me, as posing - and since the people I generally see using them to describe rap songs aren't exactly what I'd call ghetto sorts, I think my impression is right.

It's not to say that you can't use the slang if you aren't from the ghetto or it's not your neighborhood, not at all. But there are certain people, some of the guilty parties might be reading this btw, who ONLY use this style of speaking when they are talking very specifically about rap and hip hop, which just is truly bizarre. It's like, what if I started writing reviews in French, but ONLY when I'm talking about Serge Gainsbourg?

I'm afraid I'm not explaining myself well. I don't want to sound at all reverse-classist here because it's not how I mean it, but I don't know a better way to describe why seeing those terms gives me the creeps from time to time. I don't have a hard time describing rap and dance without resorting to ghetto slang, so maybe I don't understand the question fully.

But to address the question - Sterling, I'm assuming that my comment on that thread is one of those that you're referring to? My whole self-apologetic thing might be tied in with the fact that I'm Canadian. :) It's ingrained. But yes, I can see your point re: it would be nice to have improved communication via breaking down language usuage differences. However, I don't think it's as simple as that. I mean, consider a main purpose of slang in the first place - it tends to develop along the lines of a secret code, a communication device to insulate and strengthen a peer group or community. It's also an excluder by design. I just don't get the sense that the rap world of slang users even *wants* me to understand what they're saying, let alone is hoping that I will magnanamously work their 'secret' code into my lexicon so as to echo back that I *do* get it too. They couldn't give a shit. And I mean that in a good way. Didn't you ever have a well intentioned older person, or at least you are aware of the 'tries too hard' parental stereotype, where they're trying to 'talk on the same level' to a member of the younger generation (the new generation who have developed new words to define THEIR experience from the last generation) and so they throw some perfectly common teen slang into the conversation, and even use it perfectly correctly because they have been paying enough attention to know exactly what it means, but yet, they still come off sounding patronizing and just all wrong. Cue teen eye roll. It seems as if words can almost belong to the group who creates them and they can be perhaps more proprietary about it than you might at first think. What I'm asking really is why, other than for your reasons, do you think that you a) should use language that still 'belongs' to a particular community? b) know that they have even the slightest desire for you to do so?

I don't KNOW any of this is true or untrue. Some of it is based on what friends of mine say on the subject but more of it is based on what they don't say. On occasion I notice that they reserve their own use of slang for other black friends. I guess this says a lot of different things - but surely one of them is a 'this is OUR thing'. Nothing wrong with that. This is just my best guess at why, when appropriating terms willy nilly that I probably *should* feel a bit guilty of patronising, or at least should be aware that I might sound kinda dumb TO THEM. So where would be the point? Anyway... Good question. :)

Have you ever called something "cool" (and not meant its temperature, literally or figuratively)?

GEORDIE + SLANG - ISDT

Tom, your response to his piffle was marvellous. Keep it up.

It often arises if the slang word is a convenient way of shortening or replacing longer phraseology, or has a new meaning all in itself. Diss is a particularly interesting one because it has both the meaning of dismiss and disrespect rolled up into a much shorter word. Its not hard to see why that will survive.

I think if you use language self consciously then you are not necessarily communicating well. That said I often use anachronistic slang to amuse myself and others - only to find that it becomes a habit and no longer self conscious (a good example of this is the word Crivens - which I used to use as a pisstake and now as a genuine exclaimation. Christ On A Bike springs to mind too).

Interestingly Snoop Dogg has taken to using Nephew instead of Nigga, because he felt the later was just too prevalent to have any real meaning or impact. Mind you, he often forgets his name so...

How many of our readers know/care who Charles Moore is?

Anyway, slang.

We have this thing up here in north east england called "charver" (usually spelled "chava" by charver grafitti artists). This involves talking in a nasal pseudo-mancunian accent, and acting like a petty criminal - drug dealer, small time thief etc. It's fucking horrible, and because of it, I'm somewhat anti-slang at the moment.

translate this (hold your nose, and speak out loud):

aaa, just giz a caaal, an aal sort ye's out wi sum canny tack, man. it's fukin unrEEEEaal, man (etc)

x0x0

Such silliness. How does one expect to be taken seriously using language of this kind?

Your freelance pal, "The Wise Old Man of the Bayous" George Alec Effinger

PS: All beatnik slang didn't die an embarrassing death (check your spelling, btw). Some of us old guys, you know, wow, far-out. As it were. If you catch my drift. If you take my meaning.

I've noticed that early rap records by Grandmaster Flash, Spoonie Gee, Afrika Bambaataa, the Treacherous Three, etc., which were mainly for Blacks and Hispanics in New York City, used a lot less slang than modern hip hop does, though modern hip hop sells to a far greater range of people.

I revived this thread because, to a large extent, it got sidetracked. (Why's it more inviting to try to talk a psychopath out of his pathology than to have an interesting conversation with sane people in which you learn new things?) There are a lot of intellectual distinctions that can be made better outside of standard English, for instance, "y'all" or "you all" as the second person plural; also, the distinction between "I been married" and "I been married," one of which means I was once married and am no longer, the other that I've been married a long time and still am - but unfortunately, since this isn't in my dialect, I'm not sure which is which. As you can imagine, this has caused me great social discomfort, the fact that I can't remember whether I'm still married.

By the way, I think it's cool when Christgau uses hip hop slang, as in (the all too true) "Chuck D is so full of shit Chuck E can dis him: 'You know Public Enemy are punk rockers, 'cause they bitch about rock crits and airwaves so much.'" ("Crits" is suburban Michigan slang for "critters.") I love Christgau. He's so gangsta prissy chicks don't wanna fuck wit' him. He's so gutter ghetto girls fall in love with him.

"I'll be very curious, however, to see if the general populace is still throwing terms like "phat," "whack," "dope," "flow" and "fly" around in thirty years, let alone finishing all pronouncements with "know wh'amsayin', yo?"

I don't get it .. are you suggesting that the relative longevity of word-usage should be a measure of word value? I mean, only if your stance on language/linguistics/science is idealist, and the endpoint of society is one forward-sloping ramp to Utopia ... as if the destination is one perfect, Universal Mind ... and even then, if it was, what harm is some colorful dialogue along the way?

I like Tom's comment about pop ... reductionism never seems to work. Even the universe still seems to be expanding. And you can broaden your scope/lexicon without lowering your standards/delivery. Let's hear it for a bit of relevance for culture-particular colloquialisms, especially in an age where most of the new word- generation comes from technological advancements that know no state boundaries....

that said, I think slang can be useful in the discussion of music. Since slang helps to define an in-group, though, I think it has a narrow usage linked very closely to issues of style and the 'hip' ... I'm thinking of the way Paul Cooper writes about electronica, for instance. On the Kit Clayton review:

"Yup, instead of tweaked breaks ripped from Josh Wink, Clayton's mini- album turns from Berlin- style process dub through to old Chicago jack tracks. "VHS" grooves along like a light- yet- filling DJ Pierre wildpitch joint-– a tumbleweed bassline rolling a bleep- strewn Venusian desert. Similarly, "A Choice of Words" grapples the existential problems that Damon Wild has been pondering and, like Wild, Clayton has decided that in order to answer such questions, you've got to get spikey, acidic, and thoroughly pumped up on synthetic pharmaceuticals."

how much sense would that make to those who aren't music enthusiasts? But for the right crowd, turning an entire genre or trend into a single word or phrase can be useful -- not, of course, in the Freaky Trigger goal of extended examination of a work, but amusing to throw around in small talk and conversation, especially when it contains a hint of gossip.

Let me find something better, though, because I'm enjoying this topic ... from his review of some V2 compilation: "Once again DJ Geoffe's flow dips deeply into dullness for Only Paradise's "You Got the Way" and Raffen's "Undertone": both pretend to the glory of tech- house, but with the allure of melamine flatware."

and from his Deep Dish review: "Thus, they follow up this track with the Chris Rea-meets-Dido-at-Twilo filler "Back When We Was Attached" by Jori Hulkkonen. Hulkkonen's lackluster blend of progressive house, Zen piano sprinkles and mullet-moving MOR guitar hooks makes this track primed for the Californian boutique market. Expect to hear it in a highly dramatic coupling scene in a forthcoming episode of "Six Feet Under!"

of course, these are neologisms that work better in print than verbally, which is the original sense of slang we were talking about. but you can't dismiss-it-with-a-smirk better than just summarizing someone's style with a few words -- it means they're trite, or unoriginal, or derivative. and that has a similar origin as the competitive aggressiveness of hip-hop slang ..

neuromancer, that's who! He still posts here regularly but under a different name and slightly "reinvented" persona. Oddly enough, he swears *all the time* now but is generally less of a "nuissance."

This really amused me. Individuality? Choosing one group over another isn't any more original, perhaps less, if you really get caught up in the group mentality/image. You can by quite original by saying something that's actually original, rather than adopting marginal one-word summations of things. Any my description of a "good mind" isn't something I made up. It's conceptual reality/survival skills; you are making "maps" of your world. Also, the issue of "good map making skills" is something that regularly pops up 'round here, for instance, when people correct other people like pedantic doodoo heads. Shit. Fuck. I'm a hypocrite. Or, perhaps I am just taken far too seriously when I only half-commit to anything.

See, the thing is, you can lose an argument and lose no dignity. And when I say "you", I mean myself as well. Opinions don't express the whole of a person, especially on such frivolous things discussed on ILX boards and especially when it's a toss-off. And sometimes, you don't lose an argument. You just stop.

But WTF is all that neuromancer/nude spock shoite?

Plus, I got a jolt from the post by George Alec Effinger. He died just last year.

The interweb is spooky.

Like, Omigod, this is so groovy! :-)

Bare? Bumbleclart? Nang??

I don't think I could ever feel truly comfortable saying these in company. I'm sure I'm going to start saying 'lol' out loud anytime soon.

But I retain an affection for 'rad', and particularly 'homeslice' :)

Well then.

Sup baddas?

Music slang usually doesn’t bother me, but this “bop” business really grates, for some reason (“It’s a bop!,” etc.).

this thread title rules

The opening discussion is a hella bummer, dude

Music slang usually doesn’t bother me, but this “bop” business really grates, for some reason (“It’s a bop!,” etc.).

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Wednesday, May 30, 2018 6:09 AM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry but if you aren't gay you really aren't allowed to have an opinion on it

I didn’t realize it had that association; I just see kids using it online. Mea culpa, though, if that’s the case.

It's actually AAVE, like so many terms mainstreamed via the gheys.

I try not to adopt any new slang because nearly 100% of it originates in AAVE and I’m white.

Dud.

Slangs a dud cuz it excludes people

And makes you feel like you’re in your own cool castle but it’s a ducking dud

As agf said “how about being uncool”

Trying to be cool is dud as fuck. Either you’re cool or you’re not. Can’t learn
It

Slang is CLASSIC.

*finds 50 examples of Ross inanely using slang on ILX from the last 24 hours alone*

Don't be such a lamestain, LJ.