Use of language as tacit approval.....

This past weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a phone acquaintance. We got to talking about how we all have many beliefs, most of them good and caring, most of them show the innate goodness in all of us.

We all care. I don't doubt this. In all my years of life, I can't say I've ever met anyone who just doesn't care.

We care about the environment. We care about poverty. We care about homelessness. We care about the exploitation of third world countries. We care about health care. All of these things matter.

Some of us are in the trenches, doing what we can. Some of us are what used to be called limousine liberals.

My position on this is that the language we use and the beliefs we support with the things we say is just as much an issue of Right Speech as anything else. What we say matters as much as what we do because certain ways of speaking perpetuate and contribute to the mindset that allows all of these conditions to continue.

One of the examples I cited during our conversation was a simple phrase. "Rule of thumb". How many times do people say this in a week?

The origin of that phrase is from an old law that specifies that a man can beat his wife as long as he uses nothing thicker than his thumb.

Is that the kind of thing anyone wants to be supporting?

A lot of slang feeds into the mindset of scarcity, competition, power-over and consumerism. By using that kind of language, we are creating a oneness with those who support those things. It is group speak and it supports a certain set of values.

I would suggest (for all of us) paying attention for just one day to the values and concepts we support with our tongues.

Think about it. Really.
~*

Too old to say "dude".... ?

Slang never came easily to me, not even in the 60s when there was a slang term for everything. Maybe the comfortable familiarity of it never felt right inside my skin. Perhaps I was just a pretentious idiot. It's probably somewhere in the middle. I was always a bit more on the formal side. Idiomatic speech would have sounded really strange from someone so quiet-natured and on the shy side.

Slang was insider jargon. Those who knew. Those who didn't. Altered words flew around our heads like spit-out olive pits, each one as ill-defined as the one before and very transient. It seemed to change day by day. Words took on new meanings that only the in-group understood.

Some of it was deceitful. .. like "five finger discount" or "Aunt Mary".

Some of it was funny. He's goin' ape, man, so don't have a cow!

I'm from Southern California where there was always plenty of surfer slang. Ankle-biters, amped up, off the wall! This is rippin', dude!

The current slang is disturbing to some of us older folks, just as our slang was disturbing to our parents and elders in the 60s. Parents would get irritated by the slanguage and constantly chide the kids to stop. It never worked and it won't work now. Even though I am getting closer to the end than the beginning of my lifespan, even though I don't know what most of it means (example: MILF - um), it seems important for people to create that sense of insiderness, the community of likeminded others. I never want to be one of those older people who clicks her tongue at youthful speech.

Some of it, I don't like because of the meaning. I do not like hiphop slang. Truly. I just don't care for it. Being a bit of a literalist where language is concerned, the meanings behind the words feel ugly. Prison slang doesn't seem like the highest verbal aspiration and words matter. What we say matters.

Just the same, the right of passage is important and the slang will fade into obscurity eventually, so hey, man, no sense shittin' a brick over it!"

So.. go for it.

Dude.


Peace,

~Chani