language

BAD BUZZWORDS!?

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The 27 Most Annoying Business Buzzwords of 2021

I talked last week to New York-based journalist Zoe Henry about the worst buzzwords of the year so far, and her article for Inc.com follows.

Here, first, are some of the points that came up in our conversation.

‘I think we can and should distinguish between business or corporate buzzwords (like ‘disruption’, ‘digital native’, ‘pivot’), political buzzwords (‘libertarian’, ‘alt-right’, ‘antifa’, ‘fake news’ in the US; ‘brexiteer’, ‘remoaner’, most recently ‘mutineer’ in the UK) and lifestyle buzzwords (‘side-hustle’, ‘woke’, ‘influencers’). There are however some words that overlap these categories: ‘resilience’ is one that is still trending in the UK in 2017, ‘storytelling’ and ‘holistic’ are others. I think it’s especially significant that examples of  political/sociocultural discourse like ‘weaponize’, ‘elite’, ‘toxic’, and slangy terms like  ‘snowflake’, ‘cuck’ or ‘libtard’ have dominated the conversation on both sides of the Atlantic in 2017. These are expressions that both reflect and evoke the unprecedented conflict and division in society that have been witnessed since the US election and the UK’s EU referendum.

Tedious buzztalk has increasingly involved generational or generationalist categorisation, conflict or prejudice: ‘Generation Z’, ‘parennials’, ‘centennials’ – ‘snowflakes’ again – are examples of the terms in use: opinion pieces listing millennials’ supposed failings or misdeeds are commonplace. This kind of language is evidence of commerce, politicians and the media trying to stage and exploit imagined or real ‘disconnects’ between babyboomers, millennials and the intervening Generation X, not for the common good but for their own devious purposes.

A word like ’empathy’ – an existing word and concept which suddenly starts trending -may be annoying when it’s over-used but points to something important happening in society. In this case the need to refocus on this quality in a divided, hypercompetitive and often uncaring environment.

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Nearly all buzzwords follow the same trajectory:

  1. A buzzword appears and catches on because it defines some important innovation (‘AI’ for example or ‘fintech’, ‘blockchain’, ‘cryptocurrency’, ‘algorithm’ or ‘internet of things’) – a new device, process, way of behaving, a fashion or fashion item or fad. The ‘buzz’ comes about naturally if the new concept is truly significant, or artificially because it is hyped by the media.
  2. People who want to appear up-to-date or ‘cool’ adopt the buzzword (whether they fully understand it or not – ‘digital’ or ‘mindfulness’ are often cited, ‘portability’ is another offender) in order to impress – or if they are part of the corporate sphere, to assert their power, to dominate. The user of the jargon presents themselves as an informed progressive insider: those who don’t use the jargon are excluded or subordinated.
  3. The buzzword is over-used and becomes a cliche: the phrase ‘reach out’ and the word ‘craft’ are cases in point. It may be ridiculed and mocked  by sophisticates, castigated by self-appointed guardians of traditional language (but some people will go on using it nevertheless).
  4. Buzzwords eventually fall out of favour but this doesn’t happen quickly. Terms like ‘think outside the box’, often singled out in surveys as a recent irritant have actually been ‘on trend’ for a decade. ‘Frictionless’ has been around for some time but is just now at peak popularity, while one of Macmillan’s Dictionary’s words of 2017, ‘maximalism’ featured in Shoot the Puppy, my dictionary of buzzwords published in 2006, (which also listed the by-then-ten-year-old metaphorical meaning of ‘bandwidth’, on Zoe Henry’s hitlist and discussed today by Merriam Webster’s word-watchers: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-is-the-new-meaning-of-bandwidth)’

(On a personal note I must admit that there are some labels or catchphrases that, however contentious or ludicrous they are, don’t especially upset me: both ‘centrist dad’, coined in the UK to deride middle-aged males who are too liberal either to embrace the left or attack the right, and ‘hand-wringing metropolitan elitist’, a slur beloved of conservatives, if I’m honest seem to describe me perfectly.)

Here, then is Zoe’s article, with her own selection of 2017’s worst buzzwords:

https://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/worst-buzzwords-2017.html

…And here is my earlier piece on the same subject from The Conversation in which I try to make the point that buzzwords may not always merit only condemnation:

https://theconversation.com/translated-the-baffling-world-of-business-jargon-52795

…Coincidentally, 24 hours after the above was posted, Andre Spicer, castigator of ‘business bullshit’, writes in The Guardian. He makes the rarely made historical connection between jargon and the terminology of therapy, but his condemnation of all ‘management speak’ is not nuanced enough to my mind:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/23/from-inboxing-to-thought-showers-how-business-bullshit-took-over

…Evidence here, from CBS News, that it’s political buzzwords which have dominated this year:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2017-contenders-for-word-of-the-year/

An update from February 2020: the anti-jargon polemics continue, unabated and tediously repetitive. This is a little more detailed, more thought-provoking piece from Molly Young at Vulture:

https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/spread-of-corporate-speak.html

..which prompted this riposte from Mark Morgioni at Slate:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/02/garbage-language-business-speak-defense.html

…and, four years later, the topic is still trending, here on the BBC website:

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240202-the-animal-instinct-that-drives-workers-to-adopt-corporate-jargon

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STILL BEWITCHED

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In my last post I looked at the names of a range of Hallowe’en creatures and investigated their origins. Let’s now consider, too, the practitioners of magic – whether supernatural or real –  impersonated in today’s festivities.

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The most familiar of these, the witch, derives its modern name, in use since the 16th century,  from the Old English wicce (the feminine form) or wicca (the masculine), first attested as long ago as 890 CE, or perhaps was coined later from the verb to bewitch, descending from Old English wiccian. Many commentators have proposed a prehistoric origin for the English terms, but have not managed to agree on what that origin might be. Middle Low German, the nearest neighbouring language to ours, had wicken and wicheln for bewitch, but there are no other contemporary cognates (provably related words) recorded elsewhere in mediaeval Europe.

Earliest Depiction of a Witch on a Broomstick | Irish Archaeology

Attempts have been made to connect the Germanic witch-words with Indo-European roots denoting contorting (as when shamans are performing incantations), waking (the dead for instance) or casting lots (to determine destiny), but these are unconvincing. There is an unproven but more plausible link with Slav words derived from the Old Slavonic verbs meaning ‘to know’ which use the root ved- or wied-. Female witches were, in English too, described as ‘wise’ women, as in the equivalent Slovenian vedomec, or Polish wiedźma. The modern German name for witch, hexe, is probably, but again not provably, related to English hag, (Old English haegtesse) an ancient word which persisted in use among the superstitious in the United States, who also adopted ‘hex’ in the 19th century from Pennsylvanian German as a synonym for curse.

(Our relatively innocent domestic companion, the cat, could also double as a witch’s evil familiar, and nowadays as a Hallowe’en character in its own right. Its name, catte in Old English, is obviously related to Dutch kat and German Katze and more distantly to the earlier Latin cattus and Greek catta. Intriguingly, though, the word’s origin might not be Indo-European at all but Afro-Asiatic; in the Nubian language it is kadis, for Berbers kaddîska, and in Arabic qitt.)

Wizard History

The witch’s male counterpart, the wizard, certainly does derive his name from wisdom or knowing. Wisard, from Old English wys, wise and the suffix (originally French) -ard meaning person, first described a sage or a philosopher before mutating in the 16th century into the practitioner of magic we nowadays caricature in pointed hat and robe. The synonyms sorcerer or sorceress come from French sorcier, enchanter or magician, itself from Latin sors meaning fate, oracular pronouncement, from an Indo-European root denoting binding and sorting.

Review: 'It' Brings Back Stephen King's Killer Clown - The New York Times

I’m personally highly resistant to clowns in any form, but particularly the grotesque killer clowns that have been running amok in popular literature, cinema and even public places for the last couple of years. Forgive me, then, if I limit myself to etymology. The noun clowne (cloyne was a variant that has since disappeared) appeared in English in the 1560s, the verb form in 1600. The word originally signified a rustic, a clumsy peasant or simpleton. It is not clear exactly where it came from – some eminent authorities have tried to link it to the Latin colonnus, a farmer or settler, but it seems to others – and to me – that it’s no coincidence that similar-sounding words existed in Scandinavian and Low German usage, all related to our own ‘clod’ and ‘clump’ and evoking something lumpy, dense and crude. English dialects and the English of the tavern often adopted colloquialisms from other parts of Northwest Europe in the Early Modern period. Clown was first used to describe a costumed and painted circus performer in the 1720s and other languages including Welsh, French, Swedish and Slovenian subsequently borrowed the English word in this sense.

...for 2017’s festival, Marketing Week gave us a snapshot of the commercial implications:

https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/10/27/why-halloween-is-now-crucial-to-some-uk-brands/?cmpid=em~newsletter~weekly_news~n~n&utm_medium=em&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly_news&eid=4232955&sid=MW0001&adg=E5AE84A1-4595-4F7C-B654-36202215BA19

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HALLOWE’EN CREATURES – ORIGINS AND ETYMOLOGIES

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What is a creature of the night? What are some? - Quora

The reanimated (it had virtually disappeared in Britain until revived in the 1980s in its American incarnation) festival of Hallowe’en draws ever nearer, and its ghastly avatars begin to assemble in the darkness. Wearyingly familiar though their images have become, thanks to commercialisation, the origins of these bugbears’ names are not always straightforward. The lurid orange pumpkin has mutated, its modern name an alteration of ‘pompone’ and ‘pumpion’ which could designate either melon or pumpkin in the 1540s. The English word was adopted from French pompon, from Latin peponem, meaning only melon, from the earlier Greek pepon. The ‘-kin’ suffix, meaning little or cute, was borrowed from Middle Dutch, the ‘pom/pum/pep’ component probably an example of prehistoric sound symbolism whereby the puffing required to say the words imitates the inflation of the bulbous object itself.

In fact it was more often the turnip that was hollowed out and illuminated in England, Scotland (where they are known as ‘tumshies’) and Ireland until recently, pumpkins being an American favourite. But there is a very odd connection between two of Hallowe’en’s most potent symbols in a 19th-century report by the Slovene folklorist Wiesthaler who writes that superstitious Balkan Gypsies believed that pumpkins (and watermelons too) could become possessed and exhibit vampiric characteristics.

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Hobgoblin (the ‘hob-‘ is a familiarising nickname, from Hobbe, a variant form of Robbe or Robin) or goblin appeared in English in the 14th century with the sense of mischievous ugly devil or fairy. It was probably borrowed from 12th century French gobelin which is thought to be related to mediaeval German kobold, a household or subterranean sprite, and possibly to the older Greek kobalos which denoted an impudent rogue. Sprite, incidentally, is a modern pronunciation of the Middle English ‘sprit’, a shortened form of spirit, while spook, borrowed by Americans from Dutch in the early 19th century has cognates in German, Swedish and Norwegian and probably comes from an ancient Germanic term for wizardry. Imp has meant little devil since the later 16th century, from the notion of a being that was the ‘offspring of satan’. In Old English ‘impa’ referred to a graft or shoot from a plant, coming to us via Latin impotus, from Greek emphytos, implant, ultimately from a presumed IndoEuropean word *bheu, grow.

Image result for goblins, sprites and imps victorian halloween postcards

Ghosts* are named from Old English gast which meant spirit or soul and could also mean breath. The ‘h’ was added in the 15th century, probably by printers influenced by the Flemish or Middle Dutch form of the word, gheest. Both are related to German geist, spirit, which comes from the presumed proto-Germanic *gaistaz, itself from a presumed Indo-European root *gheis– used to form terms conveying amazement and/or fright. In the same category are the phantom, from Greek phantasma (unreal image, apparition) which became Old French fantosme before being borrowed by English, the spectre retains the French form of a Latin word for an apparition,  spectrum, from the verb specere, to see. Wraith, on the other hand, is a Scottish word, recorded in the 15th century but of unknown provenance. It has been suggested that it is related to writhe or to wrath, or to an Old Norse word, vǫrðr, a guardian spirit or watcher.

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Though its spelling now makes it look like a relative of ghost, ghoul was originally Arabic غول gul, the name of an evil spirit, a desert demon recorded in Islamic folklore and said to haunt cemeteries, devour newly-buried cadavers, abduct children and attack travellers. Its root is a verb meaning to seize and it is probably related to galla, a very ancient Akkadian and Sumerian term for a fiend from the netherworlds. The word was anglicised, first as ‘ghul’, in the late 18th century.

Top Ten Origins: Zombies: The Undead Shuffle | Origins

Zombie, first recorded in English in an 1819 guidebook to Brazil and popularised in movies of the 1930s, comes via the Haitian Creole word zonbi and Caribbean French zombi, denoting an animated corpse, a staple of voodoo folklore, transplanted from zumbi, fetish and n-zumbi, originally the name of a snake god, in the Kumbunu and Kikongo languages of West Africa.

De weerwolf, of wolf-man komt uit de Europese folklore. In het Frans ook wel bekend als loup-garou. Eigenlijk werden de verhalen later pas bekend, maar er zijn wel kleine aanwijzingen te vinden van verhalen rond (of voor) 1200.

The werewolf combines the ancient name of the ravenous animal – wulf, later wolf – with the Old English wer, man, which shares an origin with Latin vir (from which we get virile, manly). In the 13th century wer fell out of usage, but the compound expression survived, as it did in other Germanic languages.

For me, though, because I have studied it, and because it is the most complex, the most protean of these beings, it is the vampire whose attributes and incarnations are the most fascinating. The bat was, in Old English, until the 14th century, the bakke, related to Old Scandinavian words such as natbakka, literally ‘nightflapper.’ By 1570, however, ‘bat’, a country dialect alternative, had become the preferred form.

The bat, however, is only one version of the protean vampire. That monster’s many other incarnations are discussed elsewhere on this site.

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The venerable ancestors of our modern shapeshifters, from the classical era, are discussed in this two-part blog by Sententiae Antiquae:

Halloween is Next Week: Time for Werewolves!

The Child-Killing Lamia: What’s Really Scary on Halloween is Misogyny

Possibly the most monstrous Hallowe’en disguise of 2017 was revealed by The Poke:

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2017/10/26/british-kids-dressing-donald-trump-halloween/#.WfHT-Gpw0jA.twitter

*One more avatar, the ghost emoji is decoded here by John Kelly:

https://blog.emojipedia.org/emojiology-ghost/

In 2022 Tim Dowling assessed the arrival and impact of Hallowe’en for the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/27/its-become-a-real-monster-how-britain-fell-for-halloween

PIRATICAL PATTER

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It’s September 19 again, which means that it’s international TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY. If you would like to take part in this facetious, frivolous parody of a spoof, here is invaluable assistance in the form of a Pirate glossary and Pirate translations…

Piracy at the Old Bailey — The Public Domain Review

Some of the expressions heard in the Pirate era and still in use are easy to understand – (see my earlier account https://tonythorneglobal.wordpress.com/?s=Pirate+talk ) – but in other cases they may need to be explained:

Above board = visible on deck

The devil to pay = a difficult seam to be sealed, on the ship’s outer hull

Between the devil and the deep blue sea = hanging dangerously on the lower hull

The bitter end = the end of a cable attached to a ‘bitt’ or post

By and large = sailing into the wind and slightly with the wind

A clean slate = used by the lookout to record progress and wiped clean after each watch

Chock-a-block = when rigging blocks are tightened to the maximum

Cross the line = ceremonial crossing of the Equator

Cut and run = slash off surplus equipment to make a quick escape

Distinguishing mark = identifying flag

Feeling groggy = from grog, or diluted rum

Fend off = stop the boat hitting the dockside or another vessel

Footloose = the unfastened bottom of a sail blowing in the wind

Hand over fist = gripping as a sailor climbing a mast

Hard and fast = completely stuck

In the doldrums = a zone of calm seas in the tropics

Copper-bottomed = strong as a sailing ship with a copper-covered hull

Iron-clad = like a steam warship with metal hull

Leeway = the amount a ship is driven in the direction of the prevailing wind

At Loggerheads = fighting with a heavy iron ball on a stick, used for caulking

Overreaching = holding the same course for too long

Over a barrel = positioned for flogging

Overhaul = pull ropes carefully over the sails

Pooped = swamped by a big wave

Slush fund = money from illicitly selling surplus cooking fat ashore

Take soundings = measure sea depth

Taken aback = with the sails filled dangerously with a reverse wind

Tide over = take on provisions until next sailing

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On a much more frivolous note…here are some translations of modern terminology into Pirate-talk:

PIRATE TRANSLATIONS

Selfie = a very likeness, made by my own hand

YOLO = every pirate for himself (and devil take the hindmost) – or EPFH (ADTTH)

= risk all for the moment, me hearties

= all aboard – for death or glory!  – or FDOG

Hashtag = pennant

= marker buoy

= banner (with a strange device)

= Jolly Roger

= X marks the spot

Trending = on the lips of all and sundry

= borne on the trade winds

= carried on the tide

Viral = spreading abroad like a pestilence

= pestilential

= contagious as the pox

Blog = log

= Captain’s log

= ship’s log

= an account of me dastardly deeds, committed to paper in me  own scrawl

Flash mob = confederacy of rogues

= villainous crew

= rampaging ne’er do-wells

Timeline = a full account of me wickedness

= dastardly doings (doggedly detailed)

= chart of the voyage

Check-in = assemble at the gangplank

= muster on the quayside

= scrawl yer mark on this ‘ere manifest!

Status = condition

= estate (eg in fine estate)

= where and what ‘e be

Follow Friday (FF) = recommending to all me shipmates

= nautical nudge – or NN

Throwback Thursday (TT) = dredgin’ up the past

= evil deeds best forgotten

= memories of me misspent youth  – or MMMY

Apps = diabolical devices, tricks and subterfuges

Like = stamp with my seal

= bestow my approval

= add my endorsement

= take to my bosom

Share = divide up the loot

= give to each his part of the booty

= pass on to me shipmates

LOL = Yo Ho Ho  – or YHH

Retweet = pass on the scuttlebutt

= re-tell the old yarns

Snapchat = vanishing mirage

= fleeting vision of curiosities

= glimpse of fascinations (out of reach)

The Cloud = the firmament

= the great archipelago (where all ships vanish)

Instagram it = make a picture and convey it (to me)

= seal the likeness in a bottle and send it on the next  tide

And one or two others:

Portal = porthole

IPad = IPatch

Platform = plank

= deck

Talk to the hook

Ebay = Botany Bay

Swag = swagger

Windows = portholes

Blocked = scuttled

Twitter = twit-aarrrr!

= the damned squabbling of parakeets

OMG = stap me vitals!

Epic fail = damnable blunder

Email = message in a bottle

and just by the by…

(A pirate with no arms and legs, thrown overboard: Cap’n Bob

A pirate lying in the doorway: Cap’n Mat

A pirate hiding in a pile of leaves: Cap’n Russell)

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POSH?!

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Image result for posh

In November 2002 the Sun newspaper reported that footballer’s wife ‘Posh Spice’ Victoria Beckham had launched a legal bid to stop second division football club Peterborough United from registering its nickname Posh as a trademark. The former Spice Girl claimed the word had become synonymous with her. ‘Sun readers, the paper affirmed, ‘back the club, which has used the name for eighty years.’ This little word epitomises both the English obsession with status distinctions and the jokey tone in which such a contentious subject is often addressed.

Fictional characters in the novel Diary of a Nobody, published in 1892 and the musical Lady Madcap, playing in London in 1904, sported the name Posh, and in a 1918 Punch cartoon a young swell is seen explaining that it is ‘slang for swish’. The first use of the word in the Times newspaper was in a crime report from May 1923, headlined ‘The Taxicab Murder’. ‘A walking stick was left at the scene of the crime, which the murderer left behind after shooting the driver, which belonged to his friend Eddie Vivian. He said…that he went out with Eddie’s stick because he wanted to be ‘posh’.’ In 1935 in the same paper the use of the word, which still appeared between quotation marks, was excused as ‘inevitably the idiom of the younger generation creeps in’.

What did wealthy people in the Victorian era wear? - Quora

The popular derivation, from the initial letters of ‘Port Out, Starboard Home’ allegedly affixed to the cabin doors of first-class passengers on P&O Orient Line steamships, is certainly false, as demonstrated by, among others, word-buff Michael Quinion in his 2005 book which took the phrase as its title. Posh seems to have been used in low-life slang for some time before it was first recorded in a dictionary of 1889 with the principal meaning ‘money’ and the subsidiary sense of ‘dandy’. It may be the same word, in the form ‘push’, meaning ‘swanky, showy’, that featured in Edwardian upper-class student slang (‘quite the most push thing at Cambridge’ was P.G Wodehouse’s description of a fancy waistcoat, from 1903). The ultimate origin, then, is obscure: in the Romany language which was a rich source of pre-20th century argot, posh could mean ‘half’, often referring to half a shilling/crown/sovereign, etc. so may have come to denote money in general, then the trappings of wealth.

In 1966 Michael Aspel was carpeted by the BBC for selling records of elocution lessons featuring his voice and that of  Jean Metcalfe (whose obituary in 2000 noted her ‘deep, cultivated voice’, the ads for which implied, the corporation said, that broadcasting required a posh voice. Like class-consciousness itself, and like the assertively upper-class accents it often described, the word posh seemed to fall out of fashion after the end of the 1960s,  only to reassert itself at the new millennium. At the end of the ‘noughties’, it took on a renewed importance with David Cameron’s accession to the leadership of the Tory party and fellow Old Etonian Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s election as London mayor. As a literal synonym of privileged/wealthy/upmarket it is usefully inoffensive. Very frequently, however, it is used ironically, as in references to ‘posh nosh’ (typically very expensive sausages), and what online gossip site Popbitch dubs the ‘too-posh-to-push brigade’ – pampered mothers who opt for caesareans at private hospitals rather than natural births.

Reviewing Joanna Lumley mocking her own accent in a 2005 TV commercial, the Independent on Sunday commented, ‘In the 1960s, After Eights, Harvey’s Sherry and Cockburn’s Port were sold to Mrs Bucket’s everywhere on class – the idea that posh people bought them…if you want to do posh now it has to be spoofy and retro.’

In pop culture contexts posh has proved to be handy as an antonym of chav, especially in the numerous test-yourself quizzes in tabloids and online claiming to assess the underclass/toff-factor. From around 2000, ‘posho’ in UK campus slang has denoted a fellow-student perceived as from a wealthy or privileged background, while the litigious Victoria Beckham should note that in the same circles ‘Posh ‘n Becks’ is rhyming slang for sex.

Where accents are concerned the tide has seemed to flow in only one direction: in 2013 another broadcaster, the Radio 4 announcer Charlotte Green, accepted voluntary redundancy, declaring ‘received pronunciation, or accent-less accent [sic], is on the wane. The BBC’s days of employing people who sound like me are more or less over.’ She had once been voted the most attractive female voice on radio, that voice described as ‘a marvel, something to make one feel safe and secure, like being tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle.’ These days Cameron and Johnson play down their patrician tones to some extent, but fellow OE Jacob Rees Mogg incorporates a mannered, punctilious accent into his repertoire of self-presentation, adding to what the Sun terms ‘his ultra-posh exterior’ (the p-word is routinely applied to him by all sections of the media) and signalling to some the resurgence of a fogeyism that is either picturesque or (‘Please-Flog’ was one of the least offensive nicknames suggested in a Twitter poll) unsettlingly sinister.

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SLANG, ‘PATOIS’ AND – ONCE AGAIN – THE CASE OF ‘MLE’

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Image result for multiethnic London youth

To coincide with this year’s Notting Hill Carnival I was interviewed by Sanjana Varghese and her excellent article in the New Statesman is here: 

http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/08/big-mle-origins-londons-21st-century-slang

Developing further some of the ideas in Sanjana’s article, and based on our exchanges, here are some more thoughts on the subject of multiethnic language, in a ‘question-and-answer’ format:

1.  What exactly is ‘MLE’?

The term MLE, coined in connection with Paul Kerswill and Jenny Cheshire’s research on dialect in 2004, describes a ‘social dialect’, ‘sociolect’ or informal spoken style of UK English used initially by ‘younger’ speakers and first identified in and first associated with London. This way of speaking is characterised by a vocabulary reflecting a high degree of ‘black’ (Caribbean English, terms possibly coined by afrocaribbean speakers in the UK, to a lesser extent US black ‘street’ language and hip hop terminology) influences and by intonation patterns and certain pronunciations which differ markedly from standard UK English and differ also from ‘traditional white working class’ accents although they retain some features such as glottal stops and ‘f’ instead of ‘th’. In lay terms, MLE appears to have a ‘lilting’, more regular intonation, resembling Caribbean and also South Asian speech, with some noticeable ‘cockney’ elements too. Its structure and syntax (‘grammar’) may display ‘deviations’ from traditionally ‘correct’ taught forms and the prestige dialects of ‘standard’ English and RP (received pronunciation). In terms of vocabulary, samples I have collected can contain up to 80% of Caribbean (so-called ‘patois’, but this is a slightly contentious term; it can be used dismissively by whites, though is happily employed by Jamaicans themselves) or other BAME lexis such as Somali, South Asian and in some isolated cases a few Turkish and Polish terms.

The designation MLE is well-known and widely used but, especially since this kind of speech (it is still largely a spoken variety of language, though increasingly appearing in writing in music lyrics and TV scripts and online forums and messaging) is no longer restricted to London and the core vocabulary in particular has spread to speakers all across the UK, some linguists prefer to call it Urban British English (UBE) or Urban Vernacular(s) or refer to it as a ‘multiethnolect’. It is now understood that mixed varieties of the same type have appeared in other European centres, and those in Germany (influenced by Turkish), France (influenced by North African and Arabic language)  and Scandinavia (Turkish, Arabic, Somali) in particular are the subject of research. These forms of language tend to include a high level of what can also be termed ‘slang’, ie very informal and deliberately opaque codes generated by peer groups, gangs and ‘microniches’ such as gamers, skaters, cosplayers.

2. How has it managed to pervade British youth culture?

In the 60s and 70s Caribbean English was only encountered in subcultures and popular culture via Calypso and Ska and Reggae music. Younger black speakers tended to be ‘ghettoised’ and tended to reinforce their own exclusivity by not mixing much with other subcultures – even the mods and skinheads who admired their music, so there was little spreading of black language. This began to change with the Two-Tone movement of the early 1980s, while in school playgrounds, on the street and in clubs, black speech began to gain social – at least subcultural – prestige, with young black males seen as the most resistant to the dominant culture. By the 1990s this tendency had combined with the rise of breakdancing, rap and its associated style displays (headgear, footwear, ‘bling’, etc.) USA to make it an overriding fashionable ‘wave’ carrying with it its own terminology. At street level in London I recorded white working class schoolkids in the 1990s using more and more ‘Jafaican’ (horrible pejorative term though it is) – crossing and codeswitching with what teachers called ‘creole’, ‘recreolised lexis’ or ‘patois’ in their conversations. By the later 1990s Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Ali G was satirising this speech and the poses and style affectations that went with it. In the 2000s the ascent of UK Grime music along with influences and buzzwords from US hip hop reinforced the same tendencies, while in subsequent years social media and showbiz played a part, though the essential language was still coming from the street, particularly in London from gang culture and spreading by word of mouth. Although the tabloid press and broadcast has picked up on the phenomena they have not contributed significantly to actually propagating MLE.

3. Why has MLE attracted so much attention when other kinds of dialect change are common?

MLE is associated with social unrest, crime and what in the 60s was called transgression and ‘deviancy’, therefore lends itself to sensationalising  (and mockery too) by the media and displays of staged disapproval by representatives of the status quo (see for instance statements – and prohibitions – by educationalists, politicians, conservative journalists). ‘MLE’ is also much more important and pervasive in bestowing subcultural capital than any other instances of dialect change (which tend to operate in the regional margins and away from the attention of metropolitans), so in its own milieux and nationally it has overwhelmed other – relatively minor – changes in the lexicon or in phonology. Other forms of language change which are significant are the abbreviated codes (YOLO, FOMO, smh, obvs, etc.) and US slang (‘slay’, ‘woke’, ‘lit’, ‘(on) fleek’) used by young people on social media, and the faux-fashionable journalese use of jargon (‘Brexit’, ‘yummy-mummy’, ‘silver surfers’, etc.)

4. Is MLE unique to London and to English?

As noted above the same language phenomena are being observed in all global urban environments, most similarly in other diverse European capitals. In the UK MLE-like language is being studied particularly in Manchester (see e.g the work of Dr Rob Drummond and the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies) and Birmingham, but even in rural villages many kids are now familiar with the core terms (‘bare’, ‘peng’, ‘allow it’, ‘hench’ etc). Sadly, too, many entirely innocent British teenagers are familiar with the latest slang names of knives, guns and drugs.

5. Why are the borrowings in MLE overwhelmingly from Jamaica?

The Ali G persona was satirising what were then derided on the street as ‘wannabes’ or ‘wiggas’ (white niggas), pretending to be black, therefore cool. Gautam Malkani’s novel ‘Londonstani’ drew upon hybridity to mock a white boy pretending to be a cool Asian – actually a much rarer occurrence. Although Bhangra and Bhangramuffin music were briefly popular, as were musicians such as Apache Indian,  Asian Dub Foundation and  Jazzy B, South Asian pop culture, music and language has not challenged the domination of Afrocaribbean influence on MLE, hasn’t really crossed over despite Malkani.

The South Asian and Chinese and Japanese communities, Turkish and Somali and Polish communities for example just don’t have the same subcultural glamour and image of resistance and transgression, and therefore linguistic prestige as those with links to the Caribbean. It’s also very important that Caribbean speech is a variety of English, not a ‘foreign’ language, therefore very accessible and closely related, albeit with a very different sound.

6. Can the growth of this kind of multiethnolect be attributed solely to immigration?

The emergence of this type of mixed code, with accompanying informal lexicon and novel pronunciations is also about the dwindling within the UK of traditional social, cultural and linguistic authorities, the conditions of superdiversity in which people live and a new assertion of ‘minority’ identities, new access to media and communication. There are no longer power-groups within society or cultural influencers who have the capability of stemming or proscribing language change or enforcing disapproval of informal, provocative behaviour. Even when particular schools ban the use of slang, they are only momentarily affecting a very small segment of society.

7. Should we be worried by this particular aspect of language change?

 From a purely objective linguistic perspective, language change, variation and innovation is not worrying. It’s a natural process, indeed a fascinating process and worthy of study. For someone like me, a lexicographer collecting slang and new language, new forms and new usages, as in the very dynamic and complex MLE matrix, are illustrations of the established workings of the language – the technical potential of English to create novel forms and combinations, also managing the well-known functions of language – to judge, to categorise, to help bonding and reinforce identities; the stylistic performance of language in terms of rhetoric, irony, poetics, etc.

BUT anything that is seen as part of a culture of crime, violence, drug abuse, family breakdown, even if it is more a product than a cause, will worry many people. Any significant changes in language will disturb and destabilise many people for whom their grasp of and usage of language is a fundamental part of their identity (often seen as something essential and unchanging, even if it isn’t really). For these reasons it’s not enough for linguists (or any liberals, ‘progressives’, descriptivists, etc.) simply to dismiss the concerns of traditionalists and conservatives – and ordinary worried parents, teachers and others.  Given that you can’t legislate against such language, it’s important to study it, debate and discuss it and see it for what it is.

One possible reassurance is that MLE has been seen as a temporary, developmental, transitional practice, just as youth slang has been assumed to be something that young people grow out of once they enter the adult world of work, family and other responsibilities. I have written that the vocabulary of multiethnic slang is inherently unlikely to persist into adulthood, dealing as it does with adolescent concerns: dating, sex, experimentation, illicit practices and managing prestige and competition within teenage gangs for instance. My colleague at King’s College London, sociolinguist and discourse specialist Professor Ben Rampton has, however, shown in small-scale studies that some of the features of MLE, in particular the practice of ‘crossing’ or code-switching between languages in mid conversation, may not be confined to ‘youth’ and may not be discarded in that way*. For me, this possibility most obviously relates to its intonation and pronunciation which I think may well come to have a pervasive influence in many circles in the UK, possibly changing ‘mainstream’ English in years to come. This can already be seen not just in young white and Asian people consciously imitating the sound of Jamaican, but in a new rhythm and emphasis in everyday speech which is shared by a wide variety of young adults, so that if you hear but can’t see the speaker, it’s impossible to determine their ethnicity. This was nicely satirised by the TV comedy series PhoneShop but is now really the case in diverse communities like Croydon, the fictional setting for the show, and a few elements of which are showing up in reality TV abominations like Love Island.

For most linguists the yardsticks by which we judge language are not ‘correctness’ or association with prestige – ‘poshness’ in other words, but just two criteria: ‘intelligibility’ (is it mutually comprehensible?) and more importantly ‘appropriacy’ (is it the right kind of language to fit the social context?). If you apply the notion of appropriacy there’s nothing inherently bad about MLE, or slang, providing it is used in a suitable setting, such as a school playground, club, on the street, in private banter, and not in school essays, exams, job interviews, formal encounters, in front of your Gran, etc.

 

*Some sociolinguists think that focusing on ‘youth language’ itself is discriminatory and is creating false categories. I have been criticised myself, both by conservatives for celebrating ‘ghetto language’ and one or two linguists who accused me of labelling the young and their behaviour. All I can say is that young people I have interviewed have very often referred to multi-ethnic slang as ‘our language’, the language of ‘the youth’.

Image result for youth at Notting Hill carnival

Three years later, in 2020, I talked to Audrey Damier about MLE, slang and London youth.

Her article for The Londoner is here: 

DO YOU SPEAK MLE?

In February 2022 the New Yorker printed an extract describing an expatriate American mother’s discovery of MLE:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/the-common-tongue-of-twenty-first-century-london

And…in June 2022…the news reached the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/14/wagwan-why-are-more-and-more-britons-speaking-multicultural-london-english?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

The Guardian article, and predictably clumsy reactions by the Mail and Telegraph prompted the following, more interesting consideration in iNews:

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/multicultural-london-english-dialect-40-years-old-middle-class-britain-terrified-1690448

In April 2023 Dr Christian Ilbury made freely available (and kindly gave permission for this link to) his hugely important article describing the ‘roadman’ persona as a central feature of MLE:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/recontextualisation-of-multicultural-london-english-stylising-the-roadman/B1D1FCF6EF689FB54ABBA80E8DE722B1

In May 2024 Dr Johanna Gerwin published her analysis of the UK press reporting on MLE and its construction and manipulation of ideologies and identities:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530924000314

EMOJI – one or two thoughts, and a source list

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Image result for emoji evolution

I have been asked by students and colleagues to write, very belatedly perhaps, about emoji. While searching for something novel and meaningful to say about the phenomenon, and looking for a stance to adopt in the (sometimes tedious) ‘is/are emoji a language?’ debate, I thought I would share  some first thoughts and a list of references (a personal selection from the mass of material recently published), to provide a shortcut for anyone else studying the subject…

AN EMOJI TIMELINE

1964 – the smiley face 😊 symbol invented by Harvey Ross Ball

1982 – (11.44am, September 19) Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University in the USA posts the first emoticon:  : – )

1989 – Internet acronyms (such as LOL, LMAO, WTF), having appeared on message-boards and in chatrooms since the mid-80s, spread rapidly across the anglosphere via text-messaging and email

1991 – the Unicode Consortium is founded to develop universal standards for Internet text-processing

1998 – Shigetaka Kurita invents emoji (= ‘picture’ + ‘character’) with 176 examples

2010 – Unicode adopt emoji, add hundreds more 😈

2015 – Unicode 8.0 releases new emoji range with skin tones,

2017 – Facebook processes 6bn messages containing emoji

2018  – 2823 emoji have been approved so far

HOW DO EMOJI FUNCTION?

They insert punctuating ‘mood-breaks’ into conventional sentences😠 in a sort of ‘bimodal codeswitching’

They are to written communication what nonverbal cues – paralinguistic ‘phatic-communion’ (70% of emotion in real-life interactions is communicated nonverbally)– are to spoken communication, occupying the ‘space between word and gesture’, enabling ‘visual small-talk’

They are ‘tone-markers’, introducing irony, sarcasm and emotion/’emotivity’ to otherwise impoverished digital texts😍

They are ‘gestural’, functioning similarly to two categories of physical gesture: ’emblematic’ which, like a thumbs-up or middle finger, are symbolic and culturally specific, and ‘illustrative’ which imitate real objects or movements

They (like graffiti, memes, GIFs), exploit an inherent human need for ‘visuality’, along with a more recent requirement for empathy, cultural allusion, humour and positive play😎 to create a new hybrid or multimodal digital literacy

 DO EMOJI HAVE ANY LASTING SIGNIFICANCE?

Can a hybrid transnational code help to change consciousness?

Do emoji reinforce (hyper)individualism and the establishing of hyperlocal communities of practice/microniches/meganiches?

Or could emoji move us further towards a collective global intelligence, a ‘virtual communal brain’?

Are emoji ‘hegemonic’ in that they reinforce the priorities and power-relationships of consumer capitalism (they have after all already been appropriated by/commodified for marketing, advertising and manufacturing)?

Or are they ‘antihegemonic’/subversive in that they disrupt😈 traditional discourse, empower individuals and new collectivities?

Image result for protest emoji

One of the best histories and overviews of the subject was provided by WIRED magazine earlier this year:

https://www.wired.com/story/guide-emoji/

View at Medium.com

Dictionary.com now have a guide to possible meanings and uses of the most important emoji (click on each): 

https://www.dictionary.com/e/list/emoji/1/

…I’m intrigued by the ‘instabilities’ in emoji meaning and the fact that ’emoji dialects’ have been discerned:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3196583/Can-decipher-emoji-messages-Translators-11-regions-misunderstand-universal-symbols-hilarious-results.html

…and by such insights as these, from a feminist perspective, from Debbie Cameron:

https://debuk.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/are-women-over-emojinal/

…here’s a curiosity, on ‘professional emoji whisperer’ Rachael Tatman:

https://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2017/12/19/meet-rachael-tatman-professional-emoji-whisperer

…from 2018, the first article so far, in the Telegraph, to focus on the committee that chooses new emoji:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/controversial-characters-secretive-committee-choose-new-emojis/

…brands are using emoji on Twitter:

https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/creative-roundup-examples-of-brands-using-emojis-in-their-twitte.html?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=twitter

From February 2019, an unusually negative view on how emoji have mutated, by Ian Bogost:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/how-new-emoji-are-changing-pictorial-language/582400/

This important title by Philip Seargeant appeared in July 2019:

https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/emoji-revolution-how-technology-shaping-future-communication?format=PB

Philip, with whom I have worked, is part of the team which has designed a course in emoji which is offered – free – by the Open University:

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/brief-history-communication-hieroglyphics-emojis/content-section-0?intro=1

…any new thoughts on emoji interpretation, or additional links would be gratefully received! Here are the remaining links from the past year:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/10/03/emojis-in-scholarly-communication-%f0%9f%94%a5-or-%f0%9f%92%a9/

http://ounews.co/arts-social-sciences/art-literature-music/what-emoji-can-teach-us-about-human-civilization/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialSignIn&utm_source=Twitter

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/books/review/wordplay-emoji-slang-puns-language.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170825&nlid=67701160&tntemail0=y

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tTXLuZHYf4&t=4s

 

 

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/11/emoji-language/?__prclt=S8d1uceQ

 

 

https://www.languagemagazine.com/emojis-and-the-language-of-the-internet/

 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-merperson-comes-to-emoji-1495808225

 

 

https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/the-whimsical-world-of-emoji-swearing/

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/emoji-taking-world/

 

 

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/tes-talks-vyvyan-evans

 

 

https://theconversation.com/why-decisions-on-emoji-design-should-be-made-more-inclusive-80912?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1500025713

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2017/jun/23/emoji-dr-vyvyan-evans-language-tech-podcast?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4545752/The-different-factors-influence-emoji-choice.html

 

 

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-linguistic-emojis.html

 

 

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-07/how-emojis-can-help-children-learn-and-communicate/8425482?pfmredir=sm

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/fashion/grindr-gay-emoji-gaymoji-digital.html?_r=0

 

 

http://www.nowherethis.org/story/emoji-linguistics/

 

 

https://theconversation.com/signs-of-our-times-why-emoji-can-be-even-more-powerful-than-words-50893

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2016/09/17/digital/emoji-evolution-emoticons/

https://rightsinfo.org/emoji-global-language-cultures-left/

…in 2018, at long last, we gingers were validated:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/redheads-most-triumphant-reactions-getting-160249172.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb

…and here’s more on the 12.0 release upcoming in 2019:

https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/new-emojis-2019-how-to-use-a4061471.html

The latest on emoji as gesture, from internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch:

https://theconversation.com/emoji-arent-ruining-language-theyre-a-natural-substitute-for-gesture-118689

US language specialist Ben Zimmer‘s son claims that this, the suspension railway, is the least used emoji:

🚟

And in Spanish and Italian, this is the emoji version of the coronavirus:

CrownMicrobe

From July 2021: when the emoji You want doesn’t exist yet:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57848226

And in August 2021 Benjamin Weissman summarises much of the above:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/10/emojis-debasing-language-symbols-communication

In January 2022 a report from Japan considered the range of emotions currently reflected in the emoji repertoire:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2022/02/04/do-emojis-represent-the-whole-gamut-of-human-emotion/

And in August the Emojipedia site was updated:

https://blog.emojipedia.org/new-emojipedia-frontend-features/

In September 2023 the Guardian revealed the role of emoji in ending relationships:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/18/emoji-dumping-how-to-say-its-over-when-you-cant-be-bothered-with-words?CMP=share_btn_tw

And most recently, in July 2024, an analysis of the effect of native language (in this case Japanese) on the choice and sequencing of emoji:

https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41235-024-00571-9

THE ART OF BUSINESS JARGON

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Image result for reinvent the wheel

 

Business jargon – the buzzwords, catchphrases, clichés and mantras of corporate life – manages to be perennially fascinating and endlessly irritating. Many of the better-known expressions have an air of novelty despite being in existence for many years, and survey after survey lists the same serial offenders as the triggers of office rage, headdesking and facepalming. The very latest take on this subject, visualising the metaphors we take for granted, is provided here, courtesy of Citrix ShareFile‘s illustrator David Doran, writer Kevin Hill and by kind permission of Search Laboratory’s Senior Media Specialist Jennie Lindehoff…

 

https://www.sharefile.com/blog/illustrated-business-jargon-by-david-doran/

 

REAL TALK – ‘SLANG’

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Image result

 

 

Of the TV series that have featured Urban Slang (or so-called MLE, ‘Multiethnic London English’) for me none surpassed, in authenticity, ingenuity and hilarity, the sitcom PhoneShop*, broadcast on Channel 4 between 2010 and 2013. Writer and producer of the series, Phil Bowker tells me  ‘Like you, slang’s something that has fascinated me since I was a kid growing up in Liverpool.’  It’s a great privilege to be able to print here, with Phil’s blessing, the script of this sequence intended for his follow-up satire on multicultural Britain for BBC2 The Javone Prince Show**, but never broadcast. Phil explains, ‘I wanted to spoof the kind of BBC London style of hack news reporting but instead of the usual fayre of drugs and knives, I wanted to make it about slang.’ Relish now for the first time this exposé of …Real Talk ‘Slang’…

 

EXT. URBAN STREET

Andrew Milligan (Jason Barnett) is on a walk and talk.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

“Why is my man Parrin’ me?” “Dat Gyal is pengalicious” “Watcha me come and lick off a ya headtop”            Words and phrases that you wouldn’t particularly want to hear coming out of your child’s mouth. But this is an everyday reality for thousands of parents across the Country as unscrupulous dealers are targeting our children at the very place where they’re most vulnerable: The school gate.

We cut to a School sign and then back down to Andrew as he crouches down outside the entrance. The floor is littered with discarded pieces of paper the size of christmas cracker jokes. There are lots of ‘capsules’ around too. He reads a couple of them – sickened at what he sees.

ANDREW

Pagan, Sideman, Sket…. (earnestly) Lovely isn’t it?

CUT TO:

INT.KITCHEN.

A mum (Debra Baker) Is interviewed in her spotless kitchen.

 

CONTINUED:

MUM

My 10 year old comes home, he calls his little brother a beg, calls me a slosher and tells me he’s goin his drum to blaze…’ What can I do about that? I ain’t got a clue what he’s talkin about….

 

Andrew Walk and Talk.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

We’ve all seen them plying their vile trade in pubs and car parks the length and breadth of the Country. The So called slang hawkers. You yourself may have even enjoyed using some casual slang at a dinner party. I’m ashamed to say, I have. I had bare laughs. But where does this slang come from? Who’s selling it, and what is the real cost? To find out, I took to the streets.

 

EXT.STREET. NIGHT

 

CUT TO:

 

 

Shot from a first floor window, we see Andrew making a call from a phonebox.

 

DEALER

(Voice Disguised) What you after?

ANDREW MILLIGAN

I’m looking for a, uh maybe a five pound deal?

 

 

DEALER

Fuck off. (Bleeped) You couldn’t even get a noun for that, you mug.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

What would, say £20 or £25 buy me?

DEALER

A small bag of verbs. Proper, good verbs, I don’t fuck (bleeped) around.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

Sounds good my man, but how can I guarantee the quality of your slang?

DEALER

You heard of swag?

ANDREW MILLIGAN

Yes, Swag. I think I’ve heard Louis Walsh say it.

DEALER

That’s one of mine.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

 

Wow.

Wide shot of Andrew waiting by the telephone box.

ANDREW (V.O)

In less than five minutes one of the dealer’s word soldiers rode by on a stolen mountain bike.

We see a kid riding past on a bike throwing at book at him. Andrew bends down to pick it up (It’s a dictionary) He opens it up to reveal a hollowed out centre with a small baggy in it.     He furtively looks around and then opens the bag, looking at the tiny pieces of paper with words written on them.

 

ANDREW MILLIGAN

(slightly out of breath) The dealer wasn’t lying. There is a potency to this slang that I haven’t seen before. I have to admit, it’s quite thrilling.

 

INT. A STUDY

Talking head of Professor EB Black.

PROFESSOR

This is a massive problem we are sleepwalking into. Slang has been around for ever, but it was always kept at an acceptable level. It was fine for criminals, the working classes and immigrants but what we’re seeing now is a huge middle class uptake – it’s extremely frightening and this government needs to do something about it very quickly.                                I’m reluctant to use the word, but what we’re facing, is an epidemic.

Andrew swings round to camera.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

But what the chickenclart can be done?

 

CUT TO:

 

Hard cut to archive. Police raid on property. Shot of battering ram hitting door.

POLICE

Police!! Put the pens down! Drop the Quills! I repeat, Drop the Quills…

 

We cut to people coming out with their hands on their heads. They are all wearing glasses or visors. They look disorientated.

 

GANG LEADER

I’ll be back out on the streets in half an hour. You fucking rats.

He looks at the camera.

Penelope, get the bail money! It’s in the study underneath Eric Partridge’s Usage and Abusage….

ANDREW MILLIGAN (V.O.)

This slangmaster is facing a long “sentence” in a “pen” of his own making. But there is a way out. If not fi him, fi someone else.

CUT TO:

 

Talking head of reformed slang dealer Christian Gibbs.

CHRISTIAN GIBBS

I was always interested in language. The etymology, the syntax. Other kids would be out kicking a ball against a wall. I’d be indoors with me head in a thesaurus.

Andrew Milligan nods.

I started mucking around with slang. Making my own words up. Giving them away to mates in school. And then I realised. There was money to be made – and it went from there.

Andrew swings around to camera.

 

ANDREW MILLIGAN

Christian became so successful, within a year of selling his slang words illegally, he managed to buy his parents a new house, and was engaged to a Countdown semi-finalist. But things quickly went wrong.

CHRISTIAN GIBBS

I got greedy. I started mixing with the wrong people. I got too big too quick. At one point, I was running three or four terraced houses full of young academics twenty-four hours a day. I was effectively controlling most of the slang that was being sold in London. And then it all caught up with me.

 

EXT OF URBAN BASKETBALL COURT.

Christian is helping some young people to ‘lay up’

ANDREW MILLIGAN

After a spell at her majesty’s pleasure, Christian dedicated his life to helping the very people who once did his bidding in his urban slang factories.

 

CUT TO:

 

We see the trad shot of guys having fun. High 5ing etc

CUT TO:

 

Andrew Walk and Talk down an alley.

 

 

ANDREW MILLIGAN (cont’d)

Tragically, a few hours after that lay up we learnt that Christian’s past had finally caught up with him and he was ambushed by a gang of rival wordsmiths in a back alley Scrabble game.

 

 

He arrives at the taped off crime scene. There’s an abandoned Scrabble board and associated paraphernalia. He crouches down

ANDREW MILLIGAN (cont’d)

The last words he spelt out on the Scrabble board was a fitting testament to his memory: YOLO/ Gubati/Gggdedjs/

Andrew gets up and continues his Walk and Talk.

ANDREW MILLIGAN (cont’d)

So the next time you’re at a dinner party or even a simple kitchen supper and somebody decides it might be ‘fun’ to pass the ‘slang’ around, remember the real cost and just say no.

 

 

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/phoneshop

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063hcgz

 

 

 

The ‘M’ in ‘MLE’ – Youth Slang’s Origins

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Much of the vocabulary of MLE, the speech variety known as Multiethnic or Multicultural London English, derives (not always straightforwardly) from Caribbean or Black British usages, or from London’s white ‘working class’, often dubbed ‘Cockney,’ argot. There are, however, a number of slang expressions, used in the school playground and on the street by younger speakers, which come from elsewhere in the UK’s language matrix, even from archaic or foreign sources. Here are some examples…

Image result for Multi Ethnic youth

Feen (n)

Means: a male person

Usage: “Who’s the feen over by the gate?”

The proper names for Yoofspeak, so linguists tell us, are MLE (multi-ethnic or multicultural London English) or UBE (urban British English, with ‘vernacular’ sometimes substituted for English), but not all playground language emanates from the larger cities and ethnic or ‘cultural’ doesn’t only mean Afrocarribean or Asian.

One term that’s widely used around the UK is rarely if ever heard in the Smoke, but belongs to a 300 year-old tradition. Feen, also spelled fein, has been borrowed from the slang of Travellers, the argot formerly used by Tinkers and known as Shelta, itself deriving mainly from Irish Gaelic. In Irish feen simply means “man” but in slang it sometimes has the extra senses of “stranger” or “rogue”. Don’t confuse this with the verb “to feen” (sometimes “feem”), a modern import from US street-talk, which is an alteration of ‘fiend’ and means craving for, or obsessing over, as in “I’m feenin’ for some weed” or “he’s feenin’ over that new girl.”

Group Of Young People Laughing Watching A Joke Or A, Stock Photo | Crushpixel

Hollage (n)

 Means: something hilarious

 Usage: “Have you seen Charlotte’s latest outfit? Très hollage!”

 Posher teens have their own version of yoofspeak, their own mix of would-be street slang, babytalk and invented expressions, typically in the form of girly yells of approval (by both sexes) and squeals of delight (ditto).

When the denizens of the middle-class playground are trading witticisms a favourite trick is to insert touches of French – the odd real word (“quelle disaster”, “beaucoup trouble”) and Franglais pronunciations. “Rummage” (sex), and “bummage” (enthusiasm) have been frenchified, but current favourite is “hollage”, meaning huge amusement or hugely amusing, pronounced to rhyme with English “college” or like French “collage”, or, some young purists insist, as three-syllable “holla-age”.

It looks as if the little sophisticates have adapted “holla”, (the hip-hop version of “holler”, meaning to yell), one of cool Yoof’s iconic expressions from the noughties, and slightly misunderstood it in the process, since it originally described phoning, praising or seducing rather than braying with laughter. In the US the very similar-looking “holla-age” has indeed been used to describe “the appropriate way to acknowledge or compliment a female.”

🤦 Person Facepalming Emoji 😀😂👌❤️😍

Dinlo (n)

Means: an idiot

Usage: “You can tell Callum anything and he’ll believe it, he’s a right dinlo.”

Some linguists are claiming that far from dying out, regional dialects – and that includes local slang terms – are being helped by messaging, chatting and tweeting on social media sites, as well as old-fashioned word of mouth – to spread further across the UK. A probable example of this is yet another term for a complete dope, or dupe, (in practice nearly always male) which originated in Romany (and not in Cantonese as claimed on Urban Dictionary) as dinilo and has long been in use from the New Forest, via Portsmouth’s ‘Pompey – slang’ to East Anglia. Dinlo(w) is the usual form, although “dinler”, “dindler” and “dingle” have also been recorded. Yoof elsewhere have now added these to their already rich lexicon of insults, sometimes abbreviating to “dinny” or just “din”.

Image result for exhausted teens

Trek (v,n)

Means: (to go on) a long and tedious journey

Usage: “Man we been trekkin’ for hours!” “From her endz to ours is a trek.”

Researchers into Yoofspeak will know that in nearly every batch of new expressions offered up as the latest teen lingo, there are one or two which are not really slang at all. This is because most of the younger generation are not familiar with them and don’t realise that they are standard English: also, to be fair, because they sound and look exotic, possibly subversive to the uninitiated. “Trek”, used more or less in its original sense is a popular feature of playground complaints – the moaners probably don’t know much Afrikaans (from which we got the word), and even Star Trek the Prequel is a distant memory. More recently the word, or the variant “treks!” can be an exclamation, declaring that something, not necessarily a journey, is too tiring or boring to bother with or to finish, but one post on Urban Dictionary defines it much more specifically – and perhaps just slightly more positively – as a “4-10-mile” walk undertaken to counteract the effects of drugs or alcohol.

Examples of the same phenomenon are “luka” or “lookah”, used by some London kids to mean money, which seems like Multiethnic dialect but is really the picturesque old phrase ‘filthy lucre’ after a makeover. (Oddly, in the US, the Slavonic boy’s name Luka seems to have been conflated with the colloquial “looker” to denote an attractive male.) “Burly”, which one user explained as a blend of “beautiful” and “gnarly”, expresses admiration for a tough-looking male, and “reek” as in “Ben’s room really reeks” is also considered a really cool novelty. (Incidentally and tangentially, adult informants tell me that for them “reek” mainly registers these days as the name of a character in TV fantasy Game of Thrones, or as a mistyping of ‘wreak.’)

(These terms were first recorded in my Youthspeak column in the TES)