Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (2 page)

The general ‘flattening out' of a hierarchical society and the relaxation of linguistic prejudices mean that slang may be seen not as something inherently substandard, but as an option among many available linguistic styles. At the same time there must always be a set of words and phrases which is beyond the reach of most speakers, that is always ‘deviant', ‘transgressive' and opaque. This slang must renew itself, not just in implied contrast with ‘standard' language, but with earlier versions of itself. So novel and exotic slang words will continue to sprout, to metamorphose, to wither and disappear or else to spread and fertilise the common ground of language. This process may now be more visible and familiar, the crossover into wider informal use may happen much faster nowadays (given the complicity of the media), and the shock value of the terms themselves may be lessened (the invention and use of slang does risk becoming locked into familiarity and cliché, like the tired, repetitive gestures of rock,
rap
, conceptual art and fashion), but the process is very unlikely ever to stop.

Slang has moved over the past three decades from being a taboo subject, or at least something virtually ignored by academics and the media, to becoming a popular topic for pop-culture discussion and more serious public debate (most members of the academic community, in the UK at least, continue to shun it). Much of that debate has concerned language used by young people and the associated fears of a decline in levels of literacy.

In September 2010 actress Emma Thompson was headline news after speaking out on language standards. ‘I went to give a talk at my old school and the girls were all doing their
likes
and
innit
and
it ain'ts
, which drives me insane,' she said. ‘I told them: Just don't do it, because it makes you sound stupid.' Not long after this actor Ralph Fiennes accused Twitter of debasing the language of Shakespeare by reducing it to tweets. A couple of years earlier micro-celebrity Peaches Geldof had added her voice to the debate, in a micro-tirade against sloppy ‘journalese': ‘I have respect for broadsheet journalists because they haven't succumbed to degrading themselves, to
writing pidgin English with all these terrible colloquialisms, the phrasing of which is just, like, embarrassing.'

Also in 2010 one Jean Gross, described as a ‘communications czar' who advises the Government on children's speech, was widely reported as claiming that teenagers were becoming unemployable because they had a vocabulary of just 800 words. The reality is that typical teenagers actually develop a vocabulary of around 40,000 words by the time they reach 16, but one linguist mentioned by Ms Gross had found that many choose to limit themselves to a much smaller range in regular conversation, and on a daily basis could use as few as 800. It goes without saying, too, that the abbreviated codes used on phones and computers, just like those once employed for telegrams, air traffic control or CB-radio, deliberately and unproblematically use only a very limited vocabulary.

In 2008, Manchester Academy in the Moss-side district where, the head teacher stipulated, ‘There are 64 languages spoken at the school and 80 per cent of pupils are from ethnic minority backgrounds,' prohibited the use of slang by its students and reported improved examination results. In 2012, Sheffield's Springs Academy banned students from using slang on school premises and promoted the use of ‘standard English' among its pupils, saying the new policy was to help students improve their chances of getting good jobs. British journalist and ‘hip hop intellectual' Lindsay Johns, mentoring unemployed youths in Peckham after the urban riots of summer 2011, also advocated a zero tolerance policy towards ‘street talk' or what he called ‘ghetto grammar', a restrictive language that is more for performance than reflection, instead asking his charges to learn by heart words such as ‘ephemeral' or ‘ubiquitous'.

An important subset of the slang vocabulary is made up of slurs, the most contentious of which are based on ethnicity, gender or disability. It was partly to highlight and eradicate hurtful language of this kind that so-called ‘political correctness' was developed. Much derided, the movement nonetheless was motivated by a sense of fairness and compassion for minorities and the excluded. Disablist slang terms such as
retard
and
spaz
were condemned in a campaign by Nicky Clark, a disability rights campaigner and mother of two children with disabilities in June 2011, while in the USA in May a public service broadcast featured
Glee
star Lauren Potter urging viewers to abandon the r-word. In October of the same year, after being criticised for frequently using the insult
mong
– short for mongol(oid), a highly derogatory term for people with Down's syndrome – comedian Ricky Gervais reacted by tweeting the word endlessly, complete with photographs of himself pulling ‘mong faces'. The resulting debates usefully highlighted how crass disablism is no longer acceptable even in informal settings and how our tweets are very accountably in the public domain.

The media has moved over the last two decades from excluding slang to incorporating, debating and also celebrating it: in Britain newspapers regularly carry serious or spoof updates on the language of the moment, while youth language has featured in TV dramas such as
Skins
and
The Inbetweeners
, triggering debates about authenticity, and has been parodied by faux-
wigga
Ali G and comedian duo Armstrong and Miller among others. The ‘real' people who feature in reality TV shows pepper their conversations with slang and profanity. In other areas of popular culture
hip hop
, for example, has become increasingly self-conscious, aware of the part language plays. In
rap
, Big L in the USA and Smiley Culture and Dizzee Rascal in the UK, have lyrics in which mainstream language and different slangs are explicitly compared and contrasted. There is, too, a nascent literary genre in which ethnic and mixed slang features. Examples of this kind of fiction include Stephen Kelman's
Pigeon English
, Gautam Malkani's
Londonstani
, Courttia Newland's
Music for the Off-key
, Stephen Thompson's
Toy Soldiers
, Alex Wheatle's
Dirty South
, Karline Smith's
Moss-side Massive
, Tony White's
Foxy-T
and Norman Smith's
Bad Friday
.

Slang again featured in the national conversation when the Museum of London announced in 2012 that cockney rhyming slang was dying out; no longer understood by a majority of Londoners, let alone people elsewhere across the country. The Museum's research suggested, they said, that youth slang,
rap
and
hip hop
lyrics and text-speak have ousted what they call the ‘traditional dialect' of working class Londoners. A majority of the 2000 people who took part in their survey failed to recognise phrases like
brown bread
for ‘dead' and hadn't heard
apples and pears
used for ‘stairs' in the last six months. Fifty per cent, on the other hand, had heard the words
wicked
and
innit
, while forty per cent were familiar with the phrases
OMG
and
LOL
– the abbreviations of ‘Oh My God' and ‘Laugh Out Loud' often used in texting. Intriguingly, two thirds of those questioned still thought rhyming slang was a key part of Londoners' identity and a third said they would be sad if it disappeared for good. In several interesting ways, I think, the Museum was wrong.

Nobody actually talks in ‘cockney dialect' any more and strictly speaking, they probably never did. In connection with a style of speech the word cockney was only recorded in 1859 and after that was used to refer to a distinctive accent, a few colourful turns of phrase and a feisty, jaunty sense of humour. The habit of using rhymes to create slang probably developed in the 19th century, too, but like other quirks of speech which don't get written down until years later, its origins are quite obscure. Historians assume that street traders, hucksters and hustlers invented the rhymes as a secret language to hide their activities from outsiders and the authorities, but this, too, is unproven. If stallholders call their customers
Billies
(from
Billy Bunter
–
punter
) or refer to the till as the
Benny Hill
or
Buffalo Bill
they are using harmless nicknames not sinister code-words. What is sure is that by the 1950s many working-class Londoners, fond of a bit of wordplay, were trading these phrases among themselves, often leaving off the rhyming part so that ‘taking the mickey' is trimmed from the original
Mickey Bliss
, ‘telling porkies' is cut down from
porky pies
, and
boat race
for ‘face' becomes simply, ‘nice
boat
, shame about the
fried eggs
'.

By the 1970s non-cockneys were getting in on the game of
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
or
Lemon Meringue
: musicians picked up the lingo from their roadies and electricians, advertising executives and journalists from messengers and drivers, and Mockneys everywhere from TV series like
The Sweeney
and
Minder
. From the 1980s students, too, took up the cause, updating the cultural references with terms like
Ayrton Senna
for a ‘tenner',
Melvyn Bragg
, a
fag
(and sometimes another rhyme beginning with sh-') or
Chicken Jalfrezi
for crazy. In college circles the old
Turkish bath
or
bubble bath
for ‘(having) a laugh' was replaced by
bobble
(
hat and scarf
), trainers became
Claire Rayners
or
Claires
and
Tony Blairs
were the flared trousers flapping above their ankles.
Posh ‘n Becks
could stand either for sex or for the decks – turntables – used by DJs. Typical exchanges include
furry muff
for ‘fair enough', in shorter rhymes oriental students are
ornamentals
, cash dispensers
drink-links
. In the same spirit a drink of Stella (Artois lager) has mutated through
Yuri (Geller)
and
Nelson (Mandela)
to
Paul (Weller)
. Conversations end with
baked potato
–'see you later'. Language naturally evolves and adapts to the times and rhyming slang is no exception. Listen out today and you stand a chance of coming across
Andy (McNab)
for a kebab, and
Johnny (Vaughan)
for yawn – and porn.
Britneys
is the universal code for beers. Being on the dole used to be
(on the) rock n' roll
, now it's
on the Cheryl (Cole)
.

The other key point that the survey misses out on is that rhyming slang is not necessarily meant to be understood, at least not immediately or by everyone who hears it. It isn't a shared dialect, it's an ever-changing dynamic word game, improvising references and puns and challenging listeners to make sense of them. The technique now belongs to everybody and anybody and lots of current rhyming slang occurs inside the home, with family members competing to declare that they ‘haven't a
Scooby
' (
Doo
– clue), drying themselves not with a towel but a
Simon (Cowell)
before putting on their
Baracks
(pyjamas of course).

There are some indicators, though, that the Museum of London's fears for the future of rhyming slang may be justified. It's certainly the case that at the moment it isn't at the forefront of
cool
. Members of the white working class, if that term still means anything – ‘white van man', taxi-drivers, builders and decorators,
sparks
and
chippies
– may still invent new rhymes, but white working class pop culture is far from fashionable.
Chav
dom has given it a bad name and the heyday of the ‘
geezer
chic' of London gangster movies like
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
is a thing of the fast-receding past. The cliques who occupy the high ground of cool these days – at least in their own minds – are the urban
hipsters
of Shoreditch and Hackney, the patois-speaking street gangs and their imitators, Lady Gaga and Nicky Minaj-fixated teens, and their gloomy
EMO
counterparts. These social groups all have one thing in common: they completely lack humour, and rhyming slang is of course above all a joke, a feature of a mindset for which cheerful irony, back-and-forth banter and self-mockery are mainstays. Texting abbreviations,
fashionista
jargon and pseudo-Afro-Caribbean
Jafaican
may be in the ascendant now but will make way for other language fads in due course. Maybe when and if the terminally hip and the genuinely pubescent grow up, stop posing and acquire a sense of fun, they too will embrace the enduring rhyming game.

‘The
sesh
was
gout
– a
sausage-fest
of
keeners
and
Brendans
!' Translation: ‘That seminar was awful – an all-male gathering of
swots
and unattractive losers. As founder of the Slang Archive at King's College London I have been collecting and analysing examples of another interesting category of slang, of campus-talk, for two decades now, but the further my undergraduate days recede into dim memory, the more I rely on the latest generation of students to give me samples of authentic argot. Look on the websites of some UK universities and you will find slang ‘dictionaries', aimed at translating the insider jargon of the campus for the benefit of incoming students or visitors. The content of these sites falls into two categories: at Durham and Cambridge, for example, the lists are made up of nicknames for the places on and off campus where students congregate, plus some terms for rules, regulations and rituals peculiar to that institution. Virtually all of Leicester's student terms, though, are not campus-specific but are well known items of general slang and ‘rude words' in use by most age groups. A couple of years ago Oxford graduate Lucy Tobin published
Pimp Your Vocab
which claimed to explain student slang to bemused and baffled parents. The title was actually crammed with secondary school teenager-talk like
flossing
,
butters
and
peng
.