NAMED AND SHAMED

February 20, 2023March 13, 2023 / TT / Leave a comment

When proper names become slurs – and Karen, Ben and Chad can rest assured, it’s nothing new

I spoke last week to Ellie Muir of the Independent about the way in which certain given names have recently been appropriated in popular culture and the media for use as labels, catch-all stereotypes – or slurs. One focus of Ellie’s piece is the use of the name Karen on social media and as a meme to evoke an over-assertive, unreasonably demanding or hypercritical white woman (memorably epitomised as ‘an antivaxxer soccer mom with speak-to-the-manager hair’). Karen is a Danish version of Katherine dating from the Middle Ages and adopted by English speakers from the 1940s. Originally a Black US nickname for a stereotypical white woman perceived as overbearing and entitled, Karen was most popular as a baby name in 1965 in the US, so would typically denote a Generation X female, it went viral in 2017.

Ellie’s article is here…

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/ben-stage-karen-meme-b2284528.html

In the USA in the early 80s Valley Girls and college students used to refer to their sporty, macho ‘jock’ contemporaries as biftads, inspired by the fact that many of them were nicknamed ‘Biff’ or ‘Tad’. Much more recently the online incel community of frustrated, embittered, uncharismatic males has used Chad to denote a successful alpha male who is popular with women (his black counterpart would be Tyrone).

In the UK names like Sharon, Tracy and Mandy were earlier employed to evoke stereotypical working class, vulgar females or chavs (notably in the sitcom Birds of a Feather and in Viz comic), while from the 70s through to the early 90s, Rupert, Tarquin and Nigel were used to mock supposed toffs or ‘posho’ males and are sometimes still heard today. Kevins or Kevs were uncouth, uncultured young British males from the end of the 70s until the end of the 90s, causing much amusement when the same name became cool and fashionable in the US and France in the 80s. Wayne was used in the same way. Around the same time London youths looking for dates referred to girls as Becks (this was pre ‘Posh and Becks’ as nicknames of a Spice Girl and her footballer escort by the way) because so many North London Jewish girls were called Rebecca or Becky. In the mid-2000s teenage girls thought to be too earnest, awkward or just unpopular were dismissed as Megs, the name possibly inspired by the daughter of the same name in the TV animated comedy Family Guy. Some older London males nicknamed middle-aged females, especially if deemed to be frumpish or charmless, Noras or Dorises.

LANGUAGE, ‘AESTHETICS’ AND INNOVATION IN 2022 – THE ROLE OF GEN Z

January 3, 2023February 25, 2023 / TT / Leave a comment

Fads, Fashions, Lifestyles and Vibes – thirty years on

During 2022 I wrote several times about the new terminology that has been generated by younger generations’ (younger Millennials and so-called Gen Z or Zoomers) online celebration of an accelerated series of Fads, Fashions and Cults (the title of my book on the same topic published back in 1993). I was bemused, but not surprised that my articles and posts received little attention. Those over 40, even if active online or otherwise in touch with the wider culture, seem to pay no attention to what their children and grandchildren are saying, or perhaps just view their activities on social media as trivial, frivolous and ephemeral*. It’s slightly absurd that someone of my advanced age should be trying to record and comment on youth-based popular culture, but, just as back in the nineties, only a few fashionistas and influencers and a handful of style journalists manage to achieve any sort of critical perspective on the high-speed succession of poses, performances and pastiches that plays out on 21^st century cyberspaces (and incidentally in teenagers’ bedrooms and college dorms too).

At the end of the year, however, I was asked to contribute to a major press review of these same phenomena, and discussed them with the MailOnline’s science reporter, Fiona Jackson. Fiona had picked up on recent mutations in slang and online jargon, in the novel use of emoji and punctuation, and changes, too, in the accents and intonations used on platforms such as TikTok – in particular the voice affectation known as ‘vocal fry.’

It’s interesting that Gen Z is seen as having a particularly exotic or impenetrable vocabulary, baffling and irritating parents, teachers, journalists and anyone too old to keep up. Inventing new words and changing the meanings of old ones, though, is something that each generation does (see UK millennials with their MLE – Multiethnic London English) and is a natural part of language. Accent is another essential component in curating and projecting one’s identity. ‘Vocal fry’ or ‘creaky voice’ first got noticed and was fiercely debated in the USA in 2015. The low, raspy growling voice tone favoured by female US celebrities has since been imitated by some younger people in the UK, and by British ‘influencers’ online, but not to the same extent. What I have noticed is not specifically vocal fry but something newer and more complex: a UK accent favoured by fashionable younger females which mixes a sort of high-pitched, lisping breathless ‘girly’ delivery with a lower-pitched drawl that can slide in and out of American intonations. Something like this is now prevalent, particularly on TikTok which is where Gen Z goes to influence and be influenced.

In the US now 63% of people aged 13 to 17 use TikTok weekly, a rate that now tops both Snapchat and Instagram. TikTok is also the go-to environment for the celebration of youth fads, fashions and lifestyle trends, not to mention the parodies, mash-ups, spoofs and in-jokes which are central to its video performances. Older people trying to keep up or simply to comprehend what is happening on TikTok or understand what Gen Z is saying and messaging should however beware: I have a suspicion, shared by a few other commentators, that many of the fads, fashions and trends they celebrate (they call them ‘vibes’ or ‘aesthetics’) are not really taken seriously at all by most of them, are passing fancies or simply spoofs perhaps designed to mock the tedious concerns of outdated millennials. Fashionable new ‘looks’ like so-called ‘goblin-mode’ which has, unusually, been noticed and publicised in the mainstream, have been appearing and disappearing on Gen Z platforms with a bewildering speed (see ‘cottagecore’, ‘blokecore’, ‘hag chic’, ‘frazzled English woman’, etc.).

The MailOnline article is here…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11541685/How-Generation-Z-changed-communicate.html

…and my articles from 2022 are here…

https://language-and-innovation.com/2022/05/16/tick-tock-tiktok/

https://language-and-innovation.com/2022/04/27/do-try-to-keep-up/

Gen Z, as they come of age and begin to access power and influence in mainstream society, will inevitably affect the way we collectively behave and of course communicate. But there is an interesting phenomenon that those like me who try to track slang and new language have to face up to. That is that it’s quite impossible to predict exactly how language is going change. No so-called linguistic authorities have ever been able to guess how technology and society is going to mutate, or how fast, or which aspects of human behaviour will come to predominate in the future – even in the near-future. Gen Z may settle down into family life and work and become distracted by adult responsibilities, just as we once-radical Boomers, muted, tortured Gen X and much misunderstood millennials have done before them. Or perhaps they will not, and will manage to realise the boomers’ dream of staying radical, innovative and young forever? How their destiny plays out will dictate what they say and how they say it (and they will have to find ways to negotiate their obsessions and describe their changing environments), but I, for one, don’t dare to hazard any more than that.

*She’s much younger than 40, but journalist Marie le Conte struck a contrarian note in the New Statesman, suggesting that we shouldn’t be interested in Gen Z’s predilections…

Its finger still on the pulse of the zeitgeist, the Mail followed up with a warning to older generations that Gen Z disapprove not only of their language and their emoji use, but of their gesturing too (unsurprisingly the hand-signals castigated are all part of my own sad repertoire)…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11627655/Generation-Z-reveal-hand-gestures-cool.html

Last summer the Daily Mash had issued another (spoof) warning to the middle-aged, this time of Gen Z‘s behaviour in the workplace…

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/work/the-middle-aged-guide-to-fitting-in-with-gen-z-work-colleagues-20220704222915

At the end of January I talked to Karyn Hay of Radio New Zealand about Generation Zed (the preferred term in Wellington and Auckland), their language and online activities…

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2018875098/tony-thorne-gen-z-communication

In February 2023 King’s College London Faculty of Arts and Humanities, host to my Slang and New Language Archive, featured my activities in their Net Gains series…

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/is-tiktok-a-breeding-ground-for-a-mutation-of-culture

Tick Tock, TikTok

May 16, 2022July 19, 2022 / TT / 1 Comment

Earlier in May I talked to Dillon Thompson of Yahoo News about slang and its online incarnations. Dillon was exploring the ways in which slang and new language both affect the way we interact in an accelerated digital age, and the way in which digital environments such as TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and the internet-based rituals, gestures and poses embraced by Generation Z in turn might influence the sort of language we – or some of us – are creating, adopting and using.

Dillon’s article, with new insights and with contributions by me and from US linguists Sunn m’Cheaux and Daniel Hieber is here…

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/internet-changing-think-slang-133422776.html

More on how internet culture has displaced ‘pop culture’, from Günseli Yalcinkaya for Dazed magazine…

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/56571/1/pop-culture-is-dead-dime-square-microtrends-tiktok-web3?utm_source=Dazed%20Digital%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dazed%20Daily%20%7C%2018th%20July%20%28Uvq9AQ%29&_kx=VqOlbvI-XfM1UZnIHgww3HUoHkUNg3Z5eyYSN8HS5iw%3D.YsDqRL

DO TRY TO KEEP UP

April 27, 2022January 24, 2023 / TT / 1 Comment

Following fashions is an exhausting task. And has become more exhausting still.

I have been recording the fads, fashions, cults and trends that energise popular culture, and the labels by which they register themselves on our collective consciousness, for more than thirty years. With the advent of the Internet and messaging the lifestyle innovations, aesthetic novelties and personal badges of allegiance are nowadays free to go viral, go global, and in many cases to disappear, virtually instantaneously. I talked to Olive Pometsey of The Face magazine (itself an iconic vehicle for the propagation of new ideas and images) about the latest, accelerated, overheated iterations of micro and macro-identities competing on online platforms. The equally frenzied quality of much comment and analysis is perhaps conveyed by the notes I made before we spoke…

Olive’s excellent article is here…

https://theface.com/culture/namecore-goblin-mode-night-luxe-twee-feral-girl-internet-trends-subcultures-slang-language-coining-names?x-craft-preview=Cb8SIDUAfe&token=Zz41Wnaa0M8_C0A1Ft1oOIHAgmZRrJCr

A crowdsourced, online, free-for-all, 24/7 source of slang, catchphrases and new terminology is my friend Aaron Peckham‘s Urban Dictionary. As the Face article was going to press this was its phrase of the day…

vibe shift

Coined by trend forecaster Sean Monahan, a vibe shift describes the emergence of a “new era of cool.”

Fashion is a realm that experiences frequent vibe shifts, especially with the arrival of a new decade. Gone are the days when frosted tips and low-rise jeans and Abercrombie & Fitch were in.

We’re in the midst of a vibe shift right now with the widespread lifting of Covid-19 protocols and restrictions. We’re going out again and adapting in new ways to our environment; some will survive the shifting tides, and some won’t.

Yeah I’m in my vibe shift right now. You won’t catch me in the club now that things are opening back up again. I’m all about going to the Home Depot, renovating my home and hearth, yknow? Once I tried topless gardening things changed a lot for me.

by bruhdisease April 24, 2022

Those once-thriving subjects, Cultural Studies and Media Studies, which I used to teach in the 1990s, are nowhere to be found in today’s educational landscape, and the cultural practices we used to analyse are these days ignored by most commentators, the subcultures (and microniches, hyperlocal communities) if they are mentioned at all are dismissed by older cohorts as trivial, frivolous and ephemeral. I doggedly persist, in solidarity with The Face, Wire, Dazed, i-D, TikTok, nanoinfluencers and microcelebrities, in finding them fascinating and significant.

Just a few days after the Face article appeared, the Mail Online announced the latest look for Summer 2022…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10782439/Why-blokecore-set-biggest-trend-summer.html

And if you want a comprehensive list of currently trending aesthetic genres, it’s here…

https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Special:AllPages

A November update from the Guardian features one influential fashion website, and more of the latest terminology (‘auntwave‘)…

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2022/nov/09/blackbird-spyplane-newsletter-jonah-weiner-interview?CMP=share_btn_tw

…But then, in January 2023 Vice revealed the trend beyond all trends – (and beyond my understanding at first sight)…

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnmeq/corecore-tiktok-trend-explained

FAMILECT AGAIN

October 19, 2021August 10, 2022 / TT / Leave a comment

DOMESTIC DIALECT FEATURES FAMILY FIXATIONS

Families and Older Generations Stock Vector - Illustration of grandparents, seniors: 114207016

In 2016 I wrote about so-called familect, the ‘microdialect’ originating in the home*. Also known as ‘family slang’ and ‘kitchen table lingo’, this is one of those underappreciated, under-researched varieties of ‘in-group’ language which, like slang and jargon, make use of the same techniques (metaphor, irony, analogy – alliteration, rhyme, assonance, reduplication) as poetry and literature and at the same time offer a window into the private worlds of ordinary people: their preoccupations, pleasures and ways of bonding. Familect can also be a sharing ritual within the household whereby humour and creativity and inventiveness are enjoyed across generations. Kids are adept in creating new words from an early age and at playing with existing language to create new and colourful expressions, while older family members have their own ways of coining expressions and recycling or reworking the language of their youth, so the home is also a laboratory in which to cultivate new literacies.

Just recently the cApStAn Translation Team reviewed the topic and provided a useful link-fest and bibliography…

New words and phrases generated via a collective experience can either unite or sow divisions: the case of “Familects”

Today another article, by my friend Connie Chang, featuring interviews with specialists in the field, was published in the National Geographic…

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/family/article/why-your-familys-secret-language-is-good-for-kids?loggedin=true

Familect can provide a useful subject for research and field work as part of exploring word creation and language innovation for school or college projects. Its users can be encouraged to look more carefully at the words and phrases they have invented themselves or shared or just heard, and asked to consider…

Why was the expression invented? (usually because the object, idea or feeling described is precious or important or super-familiar. Sometimes because there isn’t an existing word or a memorable word to describe it in standard English)
What is it that makes these words funny, understandable, memorable? Is it that they sound like something else, remind you of something already familiar? Or is it the spelling and sound of them itself that makes them amusing?

In fact the school itself may be a source of similar novelties, as Tabitha McIntosh wrote in the TES this summer…

https://www.tes.com/news/schools-teachers-does-your-classroom-have-its-own-unique-language

Grandparents with Kids are Walker Stock Vector - Illustration of happiness, cute: 153811703

One year on, in August 2022, the Guardian featured the phenomenon in an article by Arwa Mahdawi…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/09/i-am-beshwiggled-and-incatacipated-why-theres-nothing-better-than-family-slang?CMP=share_btn_tw

*https://language-and-innovation.com/2016/07/23/family-language/

SLANG NOW – the Language of UK Youth in 2021

October 1, 2021October 3, 2021 / TT / Leave a comment

At the very end of September this year came another example of a UK school seeking to police its students’ language and to ban the use of slang and colloquialisms. I have been writing about youth slang since 1990 (there are numerous articles on this site, accessible by entering slang, youth or MLE in the search box) and about such interventions for more than a decade: this time I spoke to the Guardian‘s Social Affairs Correspondent Rob Booth and his article is here…*

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/sep/30/oh-my-days-linguists-lament-slang-ban-in-london-school

September 2021 also saw the fruition, or culmination (portentous words) of a long-term project of mine dealing with the same topic: the rich, creative, controversial use of highly informal language by younger speakers. I have collected the multicultural slang, traded among younger people and used especially in urban centres across the UK. I have listed authentic examples of this language variety gathered from conversations, messaging, fieldwork interviews and donations and stored these in the Archive of Slang and New Language which I have curated at King’s College London.

Looking for a way to make this data available to the widest possible readership – whether students, teachers, researchers, fellow lexicographers or simply individuals fascinated by language change and novelty – I decided against traditional publishing in hardcopy in favour of putting the material online and so was gratified when, a year ago, the University of Aston’s Institute for Forensic Linguistics agreed to host an extract from the Archive, an up-to-date Glossary of UK Youth Slang, in its Forensic Linguistics Databank. This lexicon, very modest in its format but unique in the UK and I think in the wider Anglosphere, has just been made accessible. I hope it will be helpful for interested parties and I urge anyone consulting it to comment, criticise and, above all, send me additions for inclusion in future versions (rights to the content are restricted, so please don’t circulate it or republish it without full acknowledgement). I am constantly updating and expanding this and other datasets of nonstandard and socially significant language as well as teaching and broadcasting about them.

The Youth Slang Glossary in question is here…

http://fold.aston.ac.uk/handle/123456789/4

I am very grateful indeed to all the collaborators, colleagues, students, parents, youth workers and many others who have helped me to record and analyse this exciting, inventive, sophisticated and technically innovative language – and to celebrate it rather than decry and stigmatise it in doing so.

* Rob Booth’s Guardian article was rewritten very slightly and republished by the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. I think the last word on my contribution to the subject, and indeed my career, should go to the anonymous poster of a comment following the Mail‘s piece…

ALL THE YOUNG DUDES: CAN KIDS SAFELY LEARN…SLANG??

April 13, 2021April 14, 2021 / TT / Leave a comment

I have been trying to tell the world for a long time that slang is a rich, creative and complex feature of language, and one which has great social and cultural significance. I have argued (again and again) against those who want to ban or censor it and have advocated instead teaching young people about it so that they can judge for themselves its qualities and refine their own usage of it where necessary. What I have hesitated to do is to actually ‘teach slang’ to younger learners, knowing that it is still a controversial (linguists use terms like ‘stigmatised’ and ‘transgressive’) variety which makes many parents, teachers and authority figures uncomfortable. Connie Chang, writing for the National Geographic asked me whether it could ever be possible to teach slang to younger children without risk. In her published article, quoting experts in the field, she describes some interesting developments which suggest a positive answer.

Here is Connie’s article, followed by some further thoughts and some links which illustrate and explore the issues raised. I hope these, along with other articles on this site (put ‘slang‘, ‘MLE‘, ‘youth language‘ into the search box or check the tags at the foot of the page) will help students and teachers, and language-buffs, too, who are ready to explore the language ecosystem in which slang flourishes and operates…

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/family/article/dude-your-kids-slang-isnt-as-bad-as-you-think

Teen Slang: The Complete Parent's Guide + Infographic | by Netsanity

Experimenting with language and inventing new language begins naturally in children as soon as they move from making noises to uttering more complex sounds. The creation by babies of seemingly meaningful sound combinations and, soon after, approximations of words is known as jargoning. Toddlers will make up words, participate in babytalk and banter and soon join their older siblings and other family members in inventing nicknames for objects in the home – part of the private domestic language known as familect. As young people encounter new experiences in growing up – dating, grappling with parents and teachers, following fashions and admiring celebrities, and experiment with new behaviour – they often feel they need a new language to describe these things and to convey the novel and intense feelings they have. Adults don’t have a vocabulary for ‘jumping up and grabbing someone’s sweater from behind’, (‘glomping’) or ‘coolest boy in the class’, (‘peng-ting’) so kids need to create their own. Young people also don’t want adults to know what they are up to or what they are feeling, hence the online and messaging codes and abbreviations (‘POS’ for ‘parent over shoulder’, ‘FOMO’ for fear of missing out) and the new, exotic and, for parents and teachers, impenetrable language. In the UK and the US there have been many not-entirely-serious guides for parents to help them…

https://www.dove.com/uk/dove-self-esteem-project/help-for-parents/family-friends-and-relationships/a-guide-to-understanding-teenage-language.html

Slang’s power and resonance is that it’s an alternative, subversive language and that for people who don’t understand it, slang can make them uncomfortable and can feel like a violation of social norms. The 19th century US author Ambrose Bierce defined slang in his Devil’s Dictionary as follows: ‘The grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis) with an audible memory. The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.’ He may have been being ironic but this was certainly the view of many at that time, witness this report of a Victorian lecture…

Slang in Victorian London

Strong disapproval of slang continues in the 21st century. Some years ago I debated with Lindsey Johns, at that time campaigning publicly against those like me who he accused of promoting ‘ghetto grammar’ in the UK…

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/ghetto-grammar-robs-the-young-of-a-proper-voice-6433284.html

In the US linguistic conservatism takes many forms…

https://www.eater.com/2014/11/11/7193179/chick-fil-a-manager-bans-unprofessional-teen-slang

Not all recent commentaries are condemnations: here, an interesting take on the significance of slang for young speakers with autism…

https://jtrebat.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/teaching-slang-and-idioms/

WE CAN BE HEROES

September 18, 2020October 19, 2020 / TT / Leave a comment

Medieval Female Scribe - Archaeology Magazine

In 1821 the poet Shelley claimed that poets were – are – ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’ I would not for a moment dispute that, but would add others to the list of unsung heroes, essential to our cultural wellbeing but toiling in obscurity and anonymity. Lexicographers, despite Dr Johnson‘s dismissal of us as ‘harmless drudges’, translators, interpreters, editors all deserve the gratitude of everyone who reads, perhaps even deserve a metaphorical moment in the sun.

I was given another chance to venture into the late summer sunshine by translation specialist and editor Isabella Massardo who asked me about life as a drudge and about other topical issues...

Interview with writer and lexicographer Tony Thorne

I was also interviewed by Marie Billon, UK correspondent for RTL and RFI, about the latest British ‘portmanteau’ acronyms and jargon, now attempting to describe the co-occurrence of the pandemic and the final stages of the Brexit process (my contribution, partly in rusty French, is at 14 minutes in)…

https://www.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/20200916-covid-19-comment-%C3%A9viter-la-deuxi%C3%A8me-vague

There are other hitherto little-known or unknown linguists – teachers, students, language enthusiasts among them – who also deserve our attention. One such, Sameer Merali, interviewed another such – Zobia, a real life user of youth slang – and me for his SLANGuage podcast series…

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-acsvt-eaa191?utm_campaign=i_share_ep&utm_medium=dlink&utm_source=i_share

Mind your language: Here's how you can stop being basic and learn Gen Z slang for a lit experience - art and culture - Hindustan Times

In October I took part in a debate on current language issues, hosted by Cumberland House. The discussion ranged across the language of ethnicity, diversity and inclusion, the language of youth and the notion of ‘political correctness’ and the policing of comedy and creativity…

https://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/read-watch-listen/dialogue-debate-mind-your-language?fbclid=IwAR2A0_WH6AU3SVNvUjDqqhwZYs2ytYnUVvZ-vSG7yuwK6sLqLGRhg9Q6HFA

To return to the poor lexicographer’s standing, or lack of it, an eminent practitioner of the craft, Jeremy Butterfield, sent this resonant quote on the subject…

“Dictionary-making, while it obviously demands high scholarly qualifications, is commonly regarded as the graveyard of academic careers, and it is precisely those who have what it takes to whom we would be most loath to commend such an undertaking.” – Prof. W. Atkinson (1902-1992), Glasgow University 1961

TALKIN’ ‘BOUT MY GENERATION

January 15, 2020March 2, 2023 / TT / Leave a comment

Image result for baby boomers meme

People try to put us d-down (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Just because we g-get around (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-c-cold (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)…

I passed the author of those words in the street the other day. Babyboomer Pete Townshend (of the Who rock group, for younger readers) was looking characteristically mournful. I, only a few years younger than Pete, am feeling characteristically feisty as I mount a one-man fightback against the latest slurs directed at us both. I’m talkin’ ‘bout the current dismissive catchphrase ‘OK Boomer’, imported from the USA along with a barrage of boomer-baiting in social media and in the press*. I fully understand that this is in part a fully understandable backlash by younger people against the relentless criticism and condescension directed at them by their elders for years – vitriolic in the USA, slightly more measured in the UK, where the focus has been more narrowly concentrated on trying to market to ‘youth’, whoever they may be.**

Image result for OK boomer

We boomers have to own the appalling voting record of many of our number, and we have to overcome our passive-aggressive bumptiousness. US humorist P J O’Rourke pioneered the uneasy self-deprecation that for a long time characterised our embarrassment about characterisation: ‘Once the Baby Boom had gone through all of its rudimentary phases of ideological development, from revolutionary pimples to Reaganite hip replacement, the true politics of our generation would be revealed. In America the reasonably well-off and moderately comfortable are the angry masses. It has to do with borrowing Mom’s car.’

Image result for baby boomers meme

Our age demographic has nonetheless been unfairly maligned for far too long. It’s time now to forget the clichés and facile recriminations, move beyond intergenerational strife based on slogans and soundbites and to revisit some of the beliefs that we held to, and the ideas that we explored. I’ll be looking at how this might be achieved in my next post.

I have never really been comfortable with the labels adopted for categorising generations, age-groups and consumer cohorts. But I’ve been guilty of promoting them myself. I only heard today of the sub-division of the babyboom demographic, known in the US as ‘Generation Jones‘***, but back in 2014 I described another, then newly discovered tribe, one that emerged from the consumerist jungle before slipping back into obscurity…

Living life to the full: According to the report, Britain's over-50s are more active and outgoing than ever

‘Trend forecasters The Future Laboratory have promoted the term superboomers to define a new wave of consumers, key players in lifestyle markets. Now forming 24% of the UK population, rising to 33% by 2030, controlling 75% of the nation’s wealth, (with another £3 billion coming soon from pension cash-ins) the over-55 demographic is rebooting, redefining former notions of aging and retirement. Their enthusiasm for digital media, starting up new businesses (as encore entrepreneurs in the jargon), fitness and self-improvement – and later-life dating, too – sets them apart from the pre-babyboomer generations. Enriched by runaway house prices they are juggling their property portfolios in ways that agents struggle to keep up with. In fact, the message for the entire commercial sector is catch on and catch up, since, according to a 2014 survey by High50.com, only 11% of superboomers think brands are interested in them, while 95% are certain that advertising is ignoring them altogether.’

I had been one of the first to record the arrival, belatedly in the UK, of the millennial label. In 2007 I tried to define this new phenomenon for the readers of Business Life magazine…

Image result for tony thorne millennials

‘Millennials are the latest generation of young professionals. We’ve witnessed the rise of babyboomers and yuppies, then of the former slackers known as Generation X. This newest generational label (alternatively Generation Y or the Echo Boomers) refers to youngsters born between 1981 and 1999 and their coming of age has spawned a slew of articles in both specialist journals and popular media. Commentators are detailing how they differ from predecessors in their collective attitudes and describing how to manage them in the workplace. What is provable is that millennials are the most ethnically diverse, as well as the most digitally aware and empowered group yet to emerge. On their other characteristics, though, opinions differ sharply. In the UK some employers have castigated them as work-shy, semi-literate, needy and narcissistic while US behavioural ‘experts’ laud the millennials’ ability to multitask, their skill in balancing work and leisure as well as their supposed respect for elders and leaders, trust in institutions and allegiance to teams.’

Image result for tony thorne millennials

By December 2015 the MTV channel was declaring that Millennial, the term, and Millennials themselves were out of date. It had some novel proposals for the naming of the coming generation…

‘For those millennials looking forward to the day the baby boomers finally give up the ghost and hand over the keys to the world, MTV has some bad news. Millennials, with their social media narcissism and difficulty getting on to the career ladder, are yesterday’s news. The future, it seems, belongs to the next generation, one MTV has hereby decreed shall be dubbed The Founders, a name that, despite being a real word, is somehow very creepy, like the title of a supposed self-actualization men’s group your father would join in an attempt to get over your mother leaving, who before long would mysteriously have power of attorney over him. We can do better than that. Here are 10 better titles for the demographic cohort of tomorrow.

Generation Yawp

According to experts – and by experts, I mean marketing executives assuming expertise based on a desperate need to feel sure about anything in a rapidly evolving culture – post-millennials are driven to rebuild and redefine a society built around broken or corrupt systems of governance, hence (sort of) the name Founders. Unfortunately, these kids have also been plugged into social media since the moment they were born, which means for many of them effecting real and lasting change means posting their complaints in capital letters and retweeting with wild abandon.

MTV Presents: The Currently Desirable Demographic

This nickname doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it does get right to the point – namely, that giving each generation a handle is increasingly a cynical attempt to corral young people with disposable income into a singular, easily defined mass for marketing purposes, and in the case of MTV taking it upon themselves to name this crowd also a sad swing at retaining some fading cultural currency. Maybe we’ll shorten it to The MTVCDD?

Virals

Let’s admit that within 10 years the chief connotation of the word “viral” will have nothing to do with biology and will primarily stand for what is steadily becoming the pinnacle of human achievement and state of being that is every post-millennial’s greatest desire.

Adelians

Adele sold almost 4m albums in the last few weeks, so it might be nice to name the next generation in her honor to mark what might be the last occasion that so many people agreed on anything.

Ferals

This name depends on whether literally any one of the current Republican presidential candidates manage to pull out a win next November and become what will surely be the last leader of the free world.

The Atlantians

And this one depends on how the climate change conference currently under way in Paris turns out.

iHosts

This one depends on whether Apple ever works out the kinks in those crummy wristwatches and moves on to what I suspect must be the next stage in their ultimate plan for us all.

The Duck and Cover Kids

Unless someone with political power ever gets it together and does something about the ease with which a deluded maniac can buy a gun and transition into a domestic terrorist.

Netflix/Chillers

For those not in the know, a “Netflix and chill” session means getting together to enjoy some streaming content prior to fornication. Many post-millennials may well be part of the first generation spawned through such a practice.

The HMA

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an old sailor is forced to bear the burden of an albatross he killed at sea by wearing it around his neck. As the Baby Boomers continue to die off, leaving irreversible environmental damage, systematic racism, endless war in the Middle East, and various financial disasters in their wake, post-millennials might want to adopt the slogan that every one of their grandparents deserves to have carved into their tombstone – Hold My Albatross – as a rallying cry. This one is unlikely, but you Baby Boomers … was embracing the Eagles and the Grateful Dead not enough? You couldn’t just ruin music, you had to take the whole world down, too?’

Like superboomers and many others, whether frivolous and facetious, or coined with deadly serious intent (I’ll be listing some in my next post), these labels instantly and ignominiously faded from the radar.

Image result for tony thorne millennials

*The OKBoomer media storm is summarised in an article from November 2019. What interests me especially is how, when zoomers, millennials, centennials and generation z rounded upon the hapless boomers, the cohort which is still dominant – generation x -once again escaped censure…

https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/can-baby-boomers-and-generation-z-be-friends-ok-boomer

** The passing of the OKBoomer memes and hashtags and the surrounding furore was (I think prematurely) announced, also in November 2019…

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/obituary-ok-boomer/602656/

*** members of Generation Jones have been sharing with me, on Twitter, their experiences of being the junior partners of the first boomers…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

…And, one month on, Dr Anna Dixon comments from King’s College London on the intergenerational blame game…

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/blaming-baby-boomers-for-intergenerational-inequality-gets-us-nowhere

In March 2020 Newsweek joined the boomer fightback…

https://www.newsweek.com/2020/03/13/ok-millennial-boomers-are-greatest-generation-history-1490819.html

In the summer of 2021 the Policy Institute subjected generationist debates to statistical scrutiny. Among the resulting press reports was this, from The Conversation…

https://theconversation.com/boomers-vs-millennials-free-yourself-from-the-phoney-generation-wars-167138?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton

In November 2022 the British Psychological Society published this insightful piece by Shaoni Bhattacharya…

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/time-stop-talking-about-my-generation

In February 2023 an unusual cri-de-coeur from a Generation X commentator, decrying and denying the influencer culture embraced by younger millennials and Gen X…

https://cintra.substack.com/p/the-nyt-op-ed-i-just-took-a-kill

One month later, in the New Yorker, the suggestion that the Boomer generation be subdivided into earlier and later cohorts…

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-dazed-and-confused-generation?utm_brand=tny&mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

FAMILY LANGUAGE

July 23, 2016September 21, 2021 / TT / 3 Comments

“STOP PLOITERING AND GRAB THE MELLY!”

I’ve long been interested by the inventive, jokey, sometimes ludicrous expressions that arise within the family and only very occasionally emerge into the speech of the wider community. This variety is sometimes known as family slang or familect, otherwise, by the English Project at Winchester University, as kitchen-table lingo.

The following article gives some examples of these lighthearted, eccentric expressions…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2571693/Fancy-blish-Its-new-slang-nice-cuppa-New-list-gibberish-words-used-families-country-published.html

PR specialist Hamish Thompson has been working on his own glossary of family language and was kind enough to send me his introduction, acknowledgements and a selection of entries:

‘Most families have an invented vocabulary – the words that grow out of mishearing, misspelling, kids’ early attempts at talking or things that you might have seen that have become folkloric.

One of my kids coined the term ‘argubating’, which means arguing a point in a self-indulgent, unproductive way. We also have ‘wookthack’, which for complicated reasons means ‘a rucksack from Derbyshire’.

And then there’s ‘scrapey’, which is a disappointing texture, named for the moment that my daughter, aged about 5, jumped the fence at the Postman Pat Village at Longleat to touch Mrs Goggins’ hair.

I asked people on Facebook last week whether they had any words that were part of their family vocabulary and I got some lovely responses.

I like the idea of a new dictionary, which I’m going to call ‘Famguage’ (thanks Alex Johnson). I heard my son talking to his girlfriend about some of our words the other day. Clanguage is something that you’re eventually introduced to when you really enter a family.

I’d love to hear yours and add them to this list. Tweet me at @HamishMThompson or email me at hthompson@houstonpr.co.uk and I’ll add them here. Acknowledgements below.’

‪Alligator – a moving staircase.

‪Angipodes – crawly insect

‪Apogetic – opposite of energetic

‪Argubating – self indulgent row

‪Bantry – basement pantry

‪Bisgusting – poor personal habits

‪Bishee bishee Barnarbee – ladybird

Bleenger – someone who keeps losing something

‪Bonger – TV remote control)

‪Boop and bamwhiches – nutritious lunch

Cake Out – a stake out with bought cakes

‪Calm chowder – popular meal for kids in New England

‪Cat-flap – have a big panic or over fussy reaction to something

‪Chish and fips – Fish and Chips

Cluckston – generic term for chicken, hen, rooster, cockrell etc. “It’s some kind of cluckston.” See also, crucially, ‘Quackston’

‪Complify – opposite of simplify

‪Daddy’s soda – beer

‪Dinger- TV remote control

‪Embuggery – embroidery

‪Fi (pronounced like hi) plural of foxes

‪Forgettabox. Floatycoat. Windy man (fart)

‪Goggy for the favorite blankets the boys used when they were little.

‪Graunch – the scraping of furniture on a wooden floor when moving it improperly.

Gruncle and Graunt – great uncle and aunt

‪Gruntled – happy

Hairochopter – helicopter

‪Hangry – annoyed because of lack of food.

‪’Have you forgotten how to English?’

Iforloafer – falling over

In a little minute – buying a bit more time before bed

‪Industriocity – busy / va va voom “hoy lad, it’s time you showed a bit of industriocity”

‪Marshmellons – soft sweet

‪Merangutans – Meringues

‪Miseratating – so constantly miserable you are irritating

Nicknames – Lewie, Boogle, Doodie, Moomin

Nommelin – omelette

‪Nonk – milk

‪On the roof – imminent danger

Ploitering about – piddling about and loitering

‪Pokey pola – Coca-cola

Quackston – a duck (see also ‘cluckston’)

Scrapey – unpleasant texture (after jumping the fence at the Longleat Postman Pat Village to touch Mrs Goggins’ hair)

‪Sidey the table – sit around the table for dinner

Sluggerbaths – kids that dawdle in the bath until the water gets cold

‪Smaggy – horrible

Spudy – a spare bedroom that doubles as a study

‪Stinging lentils – weeds to be avoided

‪Swimpamool – the place you go for a swim in the summer

Tahairnairhair – proximity of a friend called Tahir

‪The Feli – two Felixes – my son and his best friend

‪The Ho Ho Hos – the seven dwarves

‪Till donk – the thing supermarkets use to separate your shopping from another customer on the conveyor at the register.

Tootles – toilets

Tryer trick – trousers falling down to a point that makes walking difficult

‪Veggybubbles – veg

Voulez-vous – vol au vent.

Wice – wood lice

‪Wish dosher – a machine for cleaning crockery

Wookthack – rucksack from Derbyshire

“Yes then!” – exclamation when receiving good news or when a cunning plan is formed

‪Yippers – indoor footwear

With thanks (so far) to: Kellie Evans, Nicola Texeira, Tamzin Benjamin, Shaun Andrews, David Johnson, Clare Corbet, Vanessa Potts, Michael Cullen, Nick Higham, Michael Moran, Rene Wright, Lynne Clark, Cam Ross, Steve Dring, Alex Johnson, Dawn Murray, Chris Winstanley, Helen Hobbs, Jean Harbilas, Tracey Holmes-Reynolds, Elizabeth Varley, Jenny Hodge, Caroline Lavelle, Andy Ravenscroft, Vivien Patterson, Sharon Rasker, Leroy Bingham, Alex Thomson, Donal McCabe, Duncan Wisbey, Gina Jones, Jim Boulden, Joanna Oliver, Peppi Wilson, Mark Webb, Susanna Voyle, MoiOfRa, Jane Symons, Tyler Massie, Rebecca McKie, Dr Decadence Marple.