I realize that reading and writing are the major focus here, but the whole discussion of fluidity, change, and social practice hijacked my brain and I couldn't stop thinking about the use of slang. Every generation has its own particular words and phrases and I find it fascinating to think about how words change. Who decides what words will mean and how does the new usage spread so quickly? Andrew Clements' Middle Grade novel, Frindle, is a fun story relating to this idea, but slang seems to travel faster than that in real life.
These slang terms are what unite people or separate generations. Sometimes I feel old saying, "Neat!" The word 'cool' is my favorite and it seems to be pretty universal. I still can't say, "Sweet!" It just seems stupid to me. What bothers me most, though, is the overuse of the word 'awesome.' I love that word to mean something that inspires or is truly breathtaking and people use it for the most mundane things. 'Awesome' just isn't awesome anymore and it makes me sad. How personal is that? It seems like such a trivial thing, but words mean something to me and having taught for 29 years, I have witnessed the changing of slang terms in school to be quite interesting.
Maybe we should start a project to bring back 'the bee's knees ' or 'the cat's pajamas.' Maybe we could make up our own and see how far we get! Worth a try!!
Karen, I think your take on slang fits perfectly with written text as well as spoke language. After all, just as the quote suggests, literacy is what is between "thought and text." In my mind that is actually language, preceded by what Vygotsky terms "inner speech"-an internal private speech which makes sense of the outer world. It's about translation from an ethereal thought to an image of a sign to a concrete concept, the spoken word to a written symbol. After all, I'm sure you have encountered the word "awesome" in your students' written work-maybe in the Zines! I also agree that when a word is overused it becomes dull. A friend of ours uses the slang term, "brilliant." Initially, I thought that she was saying that I was exceptionally bright, or I was hoping that's what she meant. As I got to know her better, I heard her use it often and came to learn that it wasn't as "awesome" a word as I thought. She uses it more to mean, "good call," or "very good." I think it more approximates another slang term, "excellent," but we'll have to clarify it with her!
ReplyDeleteLike Kathy, I think this post on slang fits nicely with our work on local literacies. As you (and the authors) say, literacy isn't just reading and writing, but it is "values, attitudes, feelings, and social relationships".
ReplyDeleteI especially see a connection here because slang is so often part of group formation, so it fits in nicely with the discussion of community and socially based literacies. As you note, slang changes (often cyclically I find) with words going in and out of fashion in society in general, but it's also fascinating how different groups use particular words or phrases to mean different things within their group - in a way, it's how they identify members of that group. In this way, people (and not just children, but all groups I think) are using language and literacy to identify themselves and those like-minded people who exist in the same social world as them.
Slang is also interesting because it's one of those parts of language/literacy that is not valued by those in authority. I imagine that when teachers today are designing rubrics for written class assignments, one of the things they consider is that the language should be formal, academic style language; students are not "allowed" in most cases (with the odd exception) to bring these kinds of slang words into their school work, thereby de-valuing one of their unique local literacies.
I have to also confess - I overuse awesome...it's a terrible habit!