Questions at Issue in Our English Speech

by Edwin W. Bowen

WHAT IS SLANG?

To the purist slang is an unmitigated evil which makes for the gradual corruption and decadence of our vernacular. The pedant who is a martinet regards all slang with absolute contempt and abhors its use, because he believes slang spells deterioration for our noble tongue. Such an one takes his self-appointed guardianship of the language very seriously and deems it his bounden duty as a curator of our English speech, not only himself to spurn the use of slang, but also to inveigh against all those who employ it habitually or occasionally. The baneful influence of slang, he tells us, is sweeping like a mighty tidal wave over the English language, debasing it and corrupting its very sources.

Nor is the precisionist alone in entertaining this alarming view. For many others who are not sticklers for strict propriety and correctness of speech share, to some extent, the same opinion, although they feel no special concern as to the final outcome. However, it is reassuring to reflect that the best-informed among us and those whose thorough knowledge entitles them to speak with authority do not take so gloomy and pessimistic a view of the future of the English language. They inform us that the fears of the pedants and pedagogues—the half-educated—are never destined to be realized.

“Strictly speaking,” says Professor Lounsbury, than whom there is no higher authority in America on the history of English, “there is no such thing as a language becoming corrupt. It is an instrument which will be just what those who use it choose to make it. The words that constitute it have no real significance of their own. It is the meaning men put into them that gives them all the efficacy they possess. Language does nothing more than reflect the character and the characteristics of those who speak it. It mirrors their thoughts and feelings, their passions and prejudices, their hopes and aspirations, their aims, whether high or low. In the mouth of the bombastic it will be inflated; in the mouth of the illiterate it will be full of vulgarisms; in the mouth of the precise it will be formal and pedantic. The history of language is the history of corruptions—using that term in the sense in which it is constantly employed by those who are stigmatizing by it the new words and phrases and constructions to which they take exception. Every one of us is to-day employing expressions which either outrage the rules of strict grammar, or disregard the principles of analogy, or belong by their origin to what we now deem the worst sort of vulgarisms. These so-called corruptions are found everywhere in the vocabulary, and in nearly all the parts of speech.”

Yet the feeling of the pedants and purists reflects the traditional attitude of professional men of letters in respect to the so-called corruptions that have been creeping into English during the last few centuries. It may be worth while to give some of the utterances of our representative English authors on this subject, showing how great solicitude they felt for the purity of our language in consequence of the increasing slang introduced into English. But before doing this, let us make a brief digression, in order to discuss what is meant by slang, which appears to be the source of the alleged corruptions of our speech.

In the first place one must differentiate slang from cant. It is evident, on a careful analysis, that much of the reputed slang now current is really cant, not slang, in the proper sense of the term. Both cant and slang are closely allied and have a kindred origin. This is the reason for the confusion of the two in the popular mind.

Cant is the language of a certain class or sect of people. It is the phraseology, the dialect, so to say, of a certain craft or profession and is not readily understood save by the members of the craft concerned. It may be perfectly correct according to the rules of grammar, but it is not perfectly intelligible and is not understood by the people. It is an esoteric language which only the initiated fully comprehend and are familiar with. For example, the jargon of thieves is called cant, as is also the jargon of professional gamblers. Slang, on the other hand, belongs to no particular class. It is a collection of words and phrases, borrowed from whatever source, which everybody is acquainted with and readily understands. It is not uncouth gibberish intelligible only to a few. It is composed of colloquialisms everywhere current, but homely and not refined enough to be admitted into polite speech. Such expressions may be allowed a place in certain departments of literature, as familiar and humorous writing, but they are objectionable in grave and serious composition and speech.

Now, slang is reputed to have had its origin in cant, specifically “thieves’ Latin,” as the cant of this vagabond class is called. Indeed, this appears to have been the only meaning of slang till probably the second quarter of the last century. In “Red Gauntlet,” published in 1824, Scott refers to certain cant words and “thieves’ Latin called slang”; and the great romancer seems to have been fully aware that he was using a rather unknown term which required a gloss. Sometime during the middle of the last century, so Professor Brander Matthews informs us, slang lost this narrow limitation and came to signify a word or phrase used with a meaning not recognized in polite letters, either because it had just been invented or because it had passed out of memory. If it is true that slang had its beginning in the argot of thieves, it soon lost all association with its vulgar source, and polite slang to-day bears hardly a remote suggestion of the lingo of this disreputable class. In so short a period—but little more than a half century—has the word, as well as the thing it signifies, separated itself from its unsavory early association and worked its way up into good society.

Of slang, however, there are several kinds. There is a slang attached to certain different professions and classes of society, such as college slang, political slang and racing slang. But it must be borne in mind that this differentiation has reference to the origin of the slang in the cant of these respective professions. It is of the nature of slang to circulate more or less freely among all classes of society. Yet there are several kinds of slang corresponding to the several classes of society, such as vulgar and polite, to mention only two general classes. Now, it is true of all slang, as a rule, that it is the result of an effort to express an idea in a more vigorous, piquant and terse manner than standard usage ordinarily admits. In proof of this it will suffice to cite awfully for very, employed by every school-girl as “awfully cute”; peach or daisy for something or some one especially attractive or admirable, as “she’s a peach”; a walk-over for any easy victory, a dead cinch for a surety, and the like. But it is not necessary to multiply examples of a mode of expression which is perfectly familiar to all. Every man’s vocabulary contains slang terms and phrases, some more than others. Often the slang consists of words in good social standing which are arbitrarily misapplied. For although much current slang is of vulgar origin and bears upon its face the bend sinister of its vulgarity, still some of it is of good birth and is held in repute by writers and speakers even who are punctilious as to their English. Some slang expressions are of the nature of metaphors, and are highly figurative. Such are to kick the bucket, to pass in your checks, to hold up, to pull the wool over your eyes, to talk through your hat, to fire out, to go back on, to make yourself solid with, to have a jag on, to be loaded, to freeze on to, to freeze out, to bark up the wrong tree, don’t monkey with the buzz-saw, and in the soup. But of the different kinds of slang and of its vivid and picturesque character more anon.

Let us now, after this digression as to what constitutes slang, return to the former question of the historical aspect of slang, which was engaging our consideration. Though the name is modern, slang itself is, in reality, of venerable age, and was recognized in the plebeian speech of Petronius, the Beau Brummel of Nero’s time, whose “Trimalchio’s Dinner” is replete with the choicest slang of the Roman “smart set.” The humorous pages of François Rabelais, also, have a copious sprinkling of slang expressions and invite comparison with the productions of some of our own American humorists, who depend not a little upon the vigorous western slang to enhance the effectiveness of their humor. But it is more to the point to cite historical instances among our English authors, especially those who set themselves the burdensome, yet thankless, task of striving to preserve the primitive purity of our speech.