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Blog 4 – Slang-ish?
Back in the years of middle school, I had a final oral presentation that essentially dictated whether or not I moved onto the high school English class that I wanted. The only real guideline for the speech was that I teach about what I was passionate about. So partially as a small desperate preteen attempt to be “different” and partially because of the majority of my movie and music tastes at the time, I chose to write a passion speech about the 1990s.
The fact that I didn’t actually grow up in the 90s however proved to be challenging in terms of content, so I had to go off of the knowledge I gained from my nights of cheesy feel good movies on heartbroken Thursdays and preach about shit like Pablo Honey and how it was actually one of the most underrated albums ever.
Anyway, before I even knew what linguistics was, I picked up on some pretty cool things from watching some of my favorite movies, like how popular language, or “slang”, was so much different circa 1998 compared to the late 00s.
One of my favorite films like… ever, ended up being quintessence of mid 90s language.
Clueless fans eat your heart out. Here is a list of famous quotes and terminology from the movie. I thought it was kind of fun to think about the equivalents we have nowadays for what the words meant back then.
An eloquent demonstration and the language in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf7MT1p1VNI
Here’s just a general example of 90s slang, too, if the whole valley girl thing doesn’t suffice.
http://www.theawl.com/2012/05/express-street-verbage
In lieu of this assignment, I thought maybe it’d be a good idea to date back a little further; what was slang like in the 80s? The internet did not disappoint.
http://www.liketotally80s.com/2009/05/80s-slang/
“Bag your face.” Priceless.
The movie “Heathers” also has some hilarious execution of popular language in the late 80s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LkFNZauk90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2AxfjxwFxw (probably NSFW)
Now, veering away from slang in a decade type setting, I thought it might be cool to consider how slang differs (kind of how we learned earlier in the semester) by region… and what I came most frequently across was British vs American slang. So here’s that.
Some of this stuff is cringe worthy by the way, so brace yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XxnlQEDgVI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmHcJnd5j9U
Australian vs American Challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMLQ9V-2f3A
General Australian Slang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcAIr2-tCeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqM64TCr6pU
LFL: Order out of Chaos
About Me
(Matrix Reloaded using an actual exploit)
I have to find out “the hard way”. I’m a former psychonaut not by choice. People I look up to are hackers, chemists and professors.
My Language
(representation of Indra’s net)
I’m a Caucasian from San Diego, California. I’m a yellow belt in Shaolin Kempo. I have friends that I’ve met online that I’ve spoken to through free (for us) conference lines. When I’m discussing philosophy with a friend I find I can convey the concepts best through metaphors like Indra’s Net when discussing the interconnectedness of reality. I also use language differently depending on who can hear within the range of my voice.
Favorite Movies
( from Nausicaa)
The Matrix – Wachowski siblings
Gozu – Takashi Miike
Nausicaa – Hayao Miyazaki
Favorite Word
Puppet is my favorite word and I love to use it around people whose only source of news comes filtered through fox or msnbc and its related affiliates. Puppet is such a childlike concept that can induce such rage in someone deeply amuses me.
Here’s an example, The US government went to Central and South America and destabilized governments through various coup d’état in which they installed a Puppet dictator whose strings could be pulled by the CIA in Washington.
Sanskrit Adventure
(character is called “aum”)
(is said to be the sound of the first utterance of the universe)
My ideal linguistic adventure would consist of a Brahmin fluent in Sanskrit who would break down the words into morphemes so that with his guidance we could could form phonemes giving me access to ancient texts which contain a well’s worth of wisdom and knowledge. Eventually after studying with him for many years my phonology would pick up the words near fluency.
Pinecone
(a computer model representation of the pineal gland)
Linguistics is like a pinecone because it’s strength lies at the foundation like that of the language families similar to a tree. These trees can be found in linguistics like the “Indo-European” family which breaks down at least partially into the Germanic branch. The pinecone also represents the pineal gland within the sphere of linguistics in addition to a lot of interdisciplinary studies which try to define its one specific use but like linguistics its not entirely fleshed out and to say it is would place limitations on it. There is even the pinecone looking quite similar physically to the pineal gland or as Descartes’ put it “the seat of the soul”.
D5 Creation