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Talking Out Loud and Saying Nothing

by SecretsAdmin   ::   posted on Aug. 23, 2005 - 11:00pm

Whaazzzaahhp?! It erupted from my niece with as much guttural bass as a five-year-old could muster, accompanied by a grin and a vigorous shake of the head. When asked if she heard that at school, she began hopping around the living room. “Everyone’s saying it!” she said. “The big kids are saying it, the little kids are saying it—everyone!”

This was several years ago (that catchphrase from a beer ad, you might recall, peaked at the millennium), but while reading Leslie Savan’s new book — Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever — I realized that my niece had defined what Savan calls “pop language.” It wasn’t just that “everyone” was saying “Whaazzzaahhp?!”; it was also her exuberance at being part of a large phenomenon, one that involved “the big kids.” That transcendence is a major factor in making a word or phrase go pop, says Savan. Its usage has to spread like wildfire, crossing boundaries of age, class, race, and ethnicity, until even the naysayers are drawn, almost involuntarily, to say it (probably with a slightly contemptuous inflection).

Having been exiled to the island of cast-off catch phrases, “Whaazzzaahhp?!” now dwells with the likes of “Show me the money!” and “Talk to the hand” (one hopes that “Don’t go there” is en route). But, of course, potential popisms are bubbling continuously into the collective consciousness, auditioning for their moment in the spotlight. They have varying life spans, just like celebrities. So, rather than creating a compendium of zeitgeist-y verbiage, one that would become dated faster than The Preppy Handbook, Savan aimed to give her book a longer shelf life (oops) by examining the whys and wherefores of pop language.

The main characteristic that distinguishes pop language from mere slang or jargon is widespread popularity. The corollary: Pop is often slang or jargon that has jumped out of its niche. Savan devotes a sizable chapter to showing how, from “bogus” to “411,” slang that was coined or popularized by African-Americans is “all over mainstream pop talk like white on rice.” Once it ascends to pop status, a phrase can pass through several stages, according to Savan. The crest of its popularity is inevitably “followed by a period of soft ridicule for overuse.” Then there’s the irony stage—people will say it, but only knowingly. After that, if it’s still around, the phrase becomes “like a Raid-resistant roach—and it sheds the irony and begins to seem as indispensable as, say, Do the math or 24/7.” Not all pop language makes it that far, but if it does (consider “awesome”), then it has attained the status of “a thought—or more accurately, a stand-in for a thought.”

Although that might sound like the definition of “cliché,” pop is also distinct from those linguistic shortcuts. The two can overlap, however; “fifteen minutes of fame” is both pop and cliché, Savan says, though as a “senior pop phrase” it has more “jolt” than its cliché siblings (“by the skin of his teeth”). That jolt is essential to pop language—maybe adults don’t hop around when they say “Fuhgedaboudit,” but it does provide a feeling of power, or at least iconoclasm, in the face of dehumanizing cubicle farms, telephone labyrinths, and big-box retailers. It shows that the speaker is in the know, up to speed, down with things.

Not that you have to be down with the history of a given word, even if Savan’s tracing the evolution of various pop terms, including “Yesss!,” makes for some of the most interesting parts of Slam Dunks. In the real world, etymology is for losers. Like, who cares that “fifteen minutes of fame” comes from one of Andy Warhol’s prophecies, or that pearls come from grains of sand? What matters is their lustrous allure, and what they say about you. Except that pop language doesn’t have to say much of anything—which makes it, like pearls, suitable for just about any occasion.

By way of a long but interesting digression into the structure, forms, and rhythms of sitcoms, Savan makes the point that, just as these shows are designed to flatter and excite audiences rather than challenge them, we translate those forms into pop language to flatter and excite each other. She describes pop phrases as “verbal viruses” with the “ability to flash-freeze thought and stun our imaginations with commercial confetti.”

Of course, pop language’s sheen begins to tarnish once we’re all spouting stuff that’s largely meaning-free. Continual use of it can apparently transform an average American into someone with “a pastiche of lightly donned identities and a vast knowingness (if often shallow knowledge)”—what Savan calls a “person nouvelle.” (Surprisingly, she doesn’t joke about her own Frenchified coinage, though she does abbreviate it—a very pop practice.) These persons are steeped in pop: “Marketing and media are the amniotic fluid of the Person Nouvelle, providing his knowledge base and cushioning his interpretation of the world … The commercially compatible PN has evolved because we live in an increasingly commercial, transactional culture.” Does that sound like Media Studies 101? In other words—Duh!

That may be a bit mean-spirited, but mean-spiritedness is itself very pop. (Slam Dunks’ lengthiest chapter considers the proliferation of “weaponized pop”—“Duh,” “That’s a non-issue,” “Yeah, right,” “Whatever,” and “Get a life”—in what Savan says is an increasingly contentious, argumentative culture.) In fact, because pop language is utterly dependent on consumer capitalism and its media, from TV, movies, and radio to blogs, MP3s, and instant messaging, Savan is pretty much obligated to revisit some well-worn territory. What is cool, what is hip, what is irony; how these concepts get co-opted by marketing, media, and advertising and sold back to us, thereby forfeiting their cachet for the sake of corporate gain; the paradox of everyone wanting to be edgy and individualist but also part of the crowd; and blah de blah blah blah (more weaponized pop).

If there’s some wrapping of old concepts in new packaging occurring, it only serves to make Savan’s thoughts about linguistics more accessible. Really, who wants to read a dour, academic condemnation of popular speech—a book-length version of your grandmother saying, “Hay is for horses!” Savan doesn’t pretend to be any different from the rest of us, even if her column on advertising, media, and language in the Village Voice was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. On the contrary, she freely acknowledges her own dependence on all things pop, language included. She might even be overstating the case by owning up to not just liking, but being “attracted” to Shrek. (WTF?) Nor is “accessible” code for “dumbed down” in this case. Savan goes beyond the familiar media theories to reveal the strange and subtle habits that evolve when we become more reliant on pop language. For instance, she reports that teenagers have taken to giggling and saying “LOL” instead of merely laughing out loud, an eerie sign of minds melding with computers; elsewhere, she analyzes the differences in usage among product (“masculine and digital”), stuff (“feminine and analogue”), and, in between, “the clangy thing.”

“I don’t think so” is one phrase that Savan counts as pop language, but I haven’t heard it enough for it to become annoying. Could it be that the topography of pop terrain is less flat and homogeneous than she claims? Maybe there are regionalisms to pop language, just as people say “soda” in some parts of the U.S. and “coke” in others? Am I just not getting the recommended daily allowance of certain media forms, or not hanging around with the right people?

In response, Savan might offer her own “I don’t think so,” which she holds up as the new “no.” According to Savan, it and other “pop dismissives have virtually blasted a new neural pathway that we must take whenever we want to respond in the negative.” It’s not enough—or perhaps it’s too much—to offer a plain old “no” these days. Couching negatives in pop terms makes them seem less serious (“Not so much”) or more harsh (“In your dreams”); either way, they’re amplified with drama, and refined for effect.

It’s not just these “weapon words” that have been puffed up. Much pop language, whether it’s lingo from the business world (“win-win”) or make-nice words like “empower” and “community” (which, Savan contends, become more prevalent linguistically as the real thing diminishes), exaggerates the importance of the speaker, the situation at hand, or both. We’ll say, “That’s genius!” about a cheese grater, “That sucks” if a movie’s sold out, or “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist” to turn on a dishwasher. We’ll borrow “Yesss!” from the athlete who scores the game-winning goal, just to acknowledge the victory of finding a good parking spot.

Ultimately, Savan suggests that we are what we speak. The greater our pop language vocabulary and the more frequently we employ it, the more our discourse begins to sound like so much hot air. Granted, pop language is not likely to destroy us—as Slam Dunk points out, it’s been around for centuries. But is there a point where it becomes too much? Savan declines to prescribe solutions (that would make her, like, a total loser), but it would be interesting to imagine a new trend emerging—another kind of pop that pricks holes in pop language balloons. “What are you trying to say?” could become a choice retort when someone gets mired in especially irritating verbal pop. But as snappy comebacks go, does it have a chance of making it into the pop pantheon? As if!