Posted on 10/09/2005 1:17:12 PM PDT by neverdem
Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English. They seem to be greater in number, wider in diffusion and more frequent in application than ever before. Why - or even whether - this is true, Leslie Savan does not tell us in her book on the subject. Savan doesn't so much as bother to survey the range of catchphrases in currency. I am a middle-aged man living in rural New Hampshire without cable or D.S.L. I didn't learn any fresh ripostes, topical quashers or new verbal conveniences from "Slam Dunks and No-Brainers" except "What is the dilio?" I take this to mean "What is transpiring here?" I tried it on my children. They looked at me blankly.
"Slam Dunks" is neither prescriptive nor descriptive, nor is it in fact about language at all. It is about Leslie Savan's opinions of language: "from the high-strung Hel-lo?! to the laidback hey, from the withering whatever to the triumphant Yesss!, an army of brave new words is occupying our social life. . . . The catchwords, phrases, inflections and quickie concepts that Americans seem unable to communicate without have grown into a verbal kudzu." Opinions of language are as interesting as opinions of arithmetic.
A little information makes any book about language a pleasure. Very little information is found in "Slam Dunks." Much effort is expended citing the use of catchphrases. Not much effort is expended discovering their sources or tracing their disseminations. Savan quotes from Charles Mackay's brief chapter on slang in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," but she doesn't seem to have read it. Certainly she didn't absorb Mackay's sense of how "the favorite slang phrase . . . throws a dash of fun and frolicsomeness over the existence of squalid poverty and ill-requited labour." Savan is apparently ignorant of...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Advertising critic for the Village Voice? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
Leslie Savan = idiot savante.
Most of it is pollution of a great language. It's sad you can't turn on th tv without hearing "bling bling" and playa and all the rest of the gutter language of hip hop, etc.
two words:
so what.
It never takes long for a professional bohemian to whine about the sneaky effectiveness of advertising. Pure jealousy.
"Where you at ?"
(To which my husband replaies: "I at here")
That makes me cringe every time I hear it. Too much of a good Catholic school education will do that to you.
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