February 13: Studying Words

Before we get to today's readings I'd like to you take a little quiz. Specifically, the New York Times regional dialect quiz — based on the decade-old work of linguistics researchers Bert Vaux and Scott Golder — which went viral in late 2013 thanks to a novel presentation in a quiz format and some well-constructed heat maps that allowed users to drill down to local variations in speech. Given that we probably have some level of geographic variety in our class composition this should be a good way for you to start thinking about the relative flexibility of day-to-day speech conventions that we take for granted as absolute.

Regional differences in the term used for soft drinks.

That linguistic variability is intimately tied to our sense of English as a uniquely mutable and evolving language, and that's certainly not a new idea, as we discover when reading Walt Whitman's 1885 essay, "Slang in America" [PDF], which extends ideas present in his poetry from the very beginning (recall Whitman published Leaves of Grass with a brief glossary explaining to unfamiliar readers what terms like "pismire," "Paumanok," "Tuckahoe," and "quahog" meant).

This appreciation of regional and temporal variability frequently yields modern-day listicles like the BBC's recent "Lost in Translations: Words with Incredible Meanings," Slate's "The United Slang of America," The Guardian's "Basic Question: Did Sylvia Plath Write Like a 21st-Century Teenager?," "These Words You Use Every Day Have Racist/Prejudiced Pasts, And You Had No Idea" from The Huffington Post, and NPR's "16 'Spiffy' Words College Students Used in 1916," and certainly, pop-cultural pieces like that point us in the right direction of thinking more objectively about the origins and uses of language.

Still, these pieces aren't quite as critically robust as we might wish they were. I'd like to point out two examples of entities doing great ongoing writing about words and their history and use. First, from Slate's excellent "Lexicon Valley" column, here are a few recent articles:

• Jacob Brogan, "What is the F--kboy?" [link]
• Katy Waldman, "The Incredible Shrinking Zeitgeist: How Did This Great Word Lose Its Meaning?" [link]
• Katy Waldman, "Why We Be Loving the Habitual Be" [link]
• Heather Schwedel, "Does Donald Trump Talk Like a Woman?" [link]

Next, NPR's wonderful "Code Switch" column, which explores the "frontiers of race, culture, and ethnicity," has an occasional (and seemingly now-defunct) feature entitled "Word Watch," which offers up well-researched analyses of the racially-charged language we might not even realize surrounds us. A few examples from "Word Watch":

• Gene Denby, "The Secret History Of The Word 'Cracker'" [link]
• Kat Chow, "Running Late? Nah, Just On 'CPT'" [link]
• Lakshmi Gandhi, "What A Thug's Life Looked Like In 19th Century India" [link]
• Kat Chow, "How 'Ching Chong' Became The Go-To Slur For Mocking East Asians" [link]

So how might you try to do this sort of etymological writing on your own? First take stock of the techniques and approaches that the writers above have used — remember, good writers cite their sources so that you can follow their bread crumb trail. Dictionaries — whether hard copy or online; as august an institution as the OED or as wonderfully crass and spontaneous as Urban Dictionary — are your best friends, and even basic Google searches will often reveal the complicated histories and origins of words. Another marvelous tool is Green's Dictionary of Slang, an exhaustive archive of "five hundred years of the vulgar tongue," which is now available free online (after existing solely in a multi-volume print edition costing more than $1000). We'll talk about some other tools that might benefit you in our next class.

Finally, if etymology is your cup of tea, then I wholeheartedly recommend Helen Zaltzman's wonderful podcast, The Allusionist. Subtitled "Small Adventures in Language," this show takes brief, engaging looks into the words and phrases that help shape our world, and is always entertaining.