A Linguistic Generation Gap?

I am in a relationship with a guy who is much younger than I am. No, I'm not a sugar daddy to him, and perhaps our relationship is anomalous or bewildering to some people--but that's not my topic for here and now.

I wanted to write about purely linguistic matters. I am a linguist, after all, so any linguistic matter is of interest to me.

Between the two of us I think we exemplify a linguistic generation gap.

It's not news, or a new phenomenon by any means, that younger folks have a different vocabulary, particularly where slang terms are concerned, because slang changes very rapidly. (That's true not only in America; the same thing occurs in other countries.) Language and culture, generally, are closely intertwined. If there is a youth language, it's because there is a youth culture--games, music, movies, things like manga and anime. Their language may serve to deliberately shut out their parents and other adults. I am sure parents hear me here (though I have no children).

Earlier in our relationship my partner would often ask me to define many of the words I use. Now, I find myself turning to him for explanations of newer vocabulary I encounter, frequently online. I guess the online world is presumed to be inhabited by pretty young people. And yes, when it's not convenient to ask him, I may turn to urbandictionary.com.

It's kind of like Jeopardy!, the TV show. I am a big fan of Jeopardy! and like to see what I know that the contestants don't know. If it's topics like movies, pop music, or TV, they definitely beat me: they know that stuff and I don't.

However, when it's a matter of what you might call older knowledge, I know it and they don't. Here is a question I saw come up twice: "This life jacket gets its slang-term name from a 1930s movie sex symbol." Answer: Mae West. Each time, no contestant--that is, out of six contestants, between two episodes of the show--knew it. (And supposedly, people about to appear as Jeopardy! contestants study the questions asked on former episodes of the show.)

So, whether it's Jeopardy! questions or language, older and younger people may have different language and probably live in significantly different worlds.

I collected a recipe from the Internet recently.  It's a pasta dish, with mushrooms, and I found it grounds for two observations. 1) The woman sharing the recipe with us says that the mushrooms can give the dish "a stroganoff vibe." I was struck by that expression. I would never say something like that, using vibe like that. 2) Also, she referred to the mushrooms in the recipe as "'shrooms." Now, what is the reason for that? To save keystrokes? It saves precisely one keystroke! To be cute? I think that's more on target.

Maybe I'm venturing a bit beyond the original subject here, but I feel that some linguistic habits that I see around me are alarming. I feel that verbal habits--speaking and writing--have a lot to do with thinking. If we speak or write fuzzy or confused English, then our thinking is fuzzy or confused. (I don't know which is cause and which is effect but I suspect that's a chicken-and-egg enigma.) The worlds of business and commerce, and the military, encourage--maybe even demand--linguistic habits which I find little short of horrifying. Very long locutions where short ones, even a single word, would suffice. Vagueness, evasiveness, euphemism. The joke has it--and I frankly don't know if this is actually true--that the Army, rather than literally calling a spade a spade (as in the proverb), calls it an "entrenching tool."

Of course all this is not new, and I can't hold all these things up as examples of how the linguistic avant-garde are using (or misusing) the language. George Orwell wrote about all this some 80 years ago (see, for example, his Politics and the English Language).

Copyright © 2018.
Modified November 30, 2018.

A Bit about Getting Older

No, I don't—for those of you with a classical background—aspire to rival Cicero; I haven't even read his De Senectute (On Old Age). So don't accuse me of hubris, or of being a copycat.

Just a few little observations of my own, from experience. I won't go into the usual "Yeah, you get aches and pains, lots of medical conditions," etc., etc. All that may be true, for many of us (I've got my share although I've been spared some of the biggies).

For one thing, your perspective on things is much different from that of a younger person. Young people may talk about doing something "some day." "Sure, I'd like to visit Paris some day." By the time you get to my age, you have probably awakened to the fact that you've got to stop saying "some day," because you no longer have all the time in the world ahead of you. You realize that if you put something off, you may well never get to do it. You may pass away before you do; or at some point your health no longer permits you to do it.

And, of course, it may start to be difficult to remain "hip." (Does anyone still use that word?) Slang is largely the property of the young, and it changes rapidly; so for us old folks, if we try to be hip and with it, it's likely to be a laughable attempt: our hip and with-it slang may be 20 or 30 years out of date! On the other hand, I may deliberately use words I know are pretty old-fashioned, that no one has heard for years. I know lots of words (and names) derived from a culture or a world that's bygone and thus unknown to younger folks.

There are some good sides to being old and/or retired. It's true that at some point in our lives we become more comfortable with ourselves, with living in our own skins. We gain a certain self-acceptance.

And of course there's the freedom of being retired. I say that, aside from paying my taxes and my bills—and feeding myself—there are damned few things I have to do. I can spend my days as I like, planned or unplanned. I can get up when I want, go to bed when I want, eat when I want (the latter a pleasant change from some work environments I unfortunately had to accommodate myself to, where overly-controlling bosses dictated meal times, break times, etc.). Today, for example, I came home from shopping and looked at the clock. It was 11:36. Now, a tough decision: Do I have "elevenses," or an early lunch? I chose the latter. Dug into the rewards of my shopping trip.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein