Watch Your Mouth

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Wow!  Here we are in the year 2017 – maybe a few years shy of Huxley’s Brave New World, but definitely beyond the setting for 2001 A Space Odyssey.  It was such fun to be with you once again at the beach when the calendar turned.  I always enjoy our time together then, seeing how you’ve changed and what your current interests are….creating all sorts of memories on which to build for the new year.  

And, inevitably, I get introduced to a new game – your mom and dad are so good at finding games that we all can play – especially ones that get us so tickled, we can hardly continue.  This time it was Watch Your Mouth and I giggle all over again at the thought of everybody with their mouths stretched so wide by the plastic retainers that their lips couldn’t touch, making it almost impossible to say the words on the cards they drew.  And….trying to guess what was being said….. my goodness…I truly had to empty my bladder before the game started!

After we left you, Captain and I drove South, first to Aunt Bee’s and then on to Florida and, as we made our way, I reminisced about the week  - and Watch Your Mouth kept popping up in my head……which interestingly enough started a whole stream of consciousness exercise about “words”…..their meaning and significance….how important it is to use the right ones in order to convey what you intend….how biting or soothing they can be; both weapon for wounding and bandage for a wound…..how some of the meekest, like “I’m sorry,” can be the most powerful….how some of the most declarative, like “I’m the greatest,” are merely a cover for insecurities.  And then, I went down the mental rabbit hole of my foremost pet peeve – the deterioration of the English language because of the proliferation of slang acronyms and abbreviations used in communication through social media and texting.  

As a person who fancies herself a “writer” (as in composer of words), I am appalled at the creeping epidemic of laziness that is overtaking us. Emails now supplant pen and paper - along with the thoughtfulness and dedication needed to create a handwritten letter to be folded, slipped into an envelope and posted with a stamp.  Texting has a lexicon all its own, eliminating the need to know how to spell correctly or properly constitute a sentence.  We are becoming pea brains who think OMG FYI BFF LOL truly says “I just wanted you to know that you are my best friend and, my goodness, how happy that makes me.” Heavens to Betsy…….children don’t even have to learn cursive anymore!  At some point, every signature will be an “X”….no longer denoting illiteracy, but a universal symbol of the unnecessary.

I can, however, take some comfort in knowing that I do not bare this concern alone, nor is it confined to current day.  Your quadruple-great grandfather, Joseph B. Cottrell, wrote about it way back in the 1880’s.  I want to share with you his words…..and, in doing so, register just how meager the expressiveness of my complaint is compared to his…..no doubt because of the several generations of deterioration of the language since his words were penned.

New Words and Slang Words

By J.B Cottrell, D.D.

A western contemporary has compiled a list of slang phrases used by many Americans in familiar and business conversation to illustrate the extent to which new words are making their way into the language.  The extent to which these phrases are used in colloquial English, however, is happily not conclusive proof either of their worthiness or of their permanent existence.  Many of them are ephemeral, springing into life from some temporary circumstances or public mood, and passing into oblivion as quickly as they are born.  A large proportion even of those which survive are fortunately never admitted into respectable society, but are forced to keep company with the disreputable “thieves’ Latin” described by Sir Walter Raleigh in “Red Gauntlet.”

It must be admitted, however, that too many of this doubtful brood make their way into polite circles and among the current coin of conversation in places where we would least expect.  Many slang phrases are unquestionably very expressive, and many of them, in course of time, prove their right to naturalization and pass into the language to enrich and strengthen it.  A language must grow and acquire new words to express new ideas or to describe new conditions or circumstances and when it ceases to do so, it becomes a dead one.

As Mr. Brander Matthews well expressed it in a magazine article on the subject some months ago, “it is the function of certain sorts of slang to be feeders of the vocabulary.  Words get threadbare and dried up; they come to be like evaporated fruit, juiceless and tasteless.  It is the duty of slang to provide substitutes for the good words and true which are worn out by hard service.”

But these substitutes ought to be words which are not merely fresher than the old ones, but which command themselves to the general intelligence by their clearness, appropriateness and vigor.  Anybody is at liberty to coin words, but if they are to have any right to become part of the permanent circulation, they must embody an idea and, with the exception of technical and scientific terms, an idea that speaks plainly to the word.  Otherwise they are counterfeit and spurious issue and will not be long employed.  Apt expressions establish their right to existence sooner or later, and by the law of the survival of the fittest, hold their places after their weaker and unworthier brethren have disappeared.

Unfortunately, there is even less discrimination in the manner in which verbal candidates for admission to conversational usage are received by the young and thoughtless than is shown by our immigration laws in the matter of the admission of aliens into this country.  Apparently, to lapse into the slang of the day, everything of this sort “goes” with those whose ears are tickled by a new phrase or who mistake a new word for a new idea.

If the use of a slang were confined to men and boys, thoughtful people could bear it with a certain degree of fortitude, knowing the tendency of the male nature to barbarous habits.  But, unhappily, the slangy young woman and girl are also abroad in the land, and lips that were meant only for the diamonds and pearls of speech are constantly pouring out, if not the toads and snakes of slang, verbal monstrosities that are as shocking to good taste as they are repugnant to true delicacy and refinement.  A slangy girl or woman departs in language almost as far from the higher feminine ideals and standards as the one who chews tobacco or smokes cigarettes.  Many school girls and alleged society young women delight in the use of slang expressions, totally ignorant of the meaning of some of them, and unconscious that others which spring flippantly to their lips originated in the slums and still possess an undertone of coarseness.  A lady should not recognize a doubtful word by her own use of it until it has been properly introduced into society and vouched for by respectable and authoritative sponsors, when, of course, it ceases to be doubtful. 

As there is no court of verbal naturalization before which new words can be required to prove their title to the privileges of linguistic citizenship, everyone must be a law to him or herself in their use.  It would be a good rule, however, for everyone, but especially girls and young women, on whose lips slang sounds even worse than those of men and boys to omit words and phrases of this character altogether from their conversation, and to vitalize and enlarge their vocabularies from the large and excellent stock of words to be found in standard dictionaries and in the words of good authors.  There are really quite a number of good, vigorous and expressive words in the English language already if people become acquainted with them, and verbal street gamins and gutter words can, in general, safely be left to the sphere in which they originated.