Essay: If Slang Is Not a Sin

The classic slang of the '60s is almost a dead language now. In unadulterated form it survives only under the protection of certain purists with long memories, heirs to the medieval tradition of monastic scribes. Their honorary abbot is Phil Donahue.

The '60s-bred clergyman, especially the Episcopalian, is for some reason a wondrous curator of the lingo. He ascends his pulpit. "God doesn't want you on a guilt trip" he begins, inspired. "God's not into guilt. Bad vibes! He knows where you're coming from. God says, 'Guilt, that's a bummer.,' The Lord can be pretty far out about these things, you know." He goes into a wild fugue of nostalgia: "Sock it to me! Outasight! Right on!"

But slang cannot live forever on the past, no matter how magnificent it may have been. Slang needs to be new. Its life is brief, intense and slightly disreputable, like adolescence. Soon it either settles down and goes into the family business of the language (like taxi and cello and hi) or, more likely, slips off into oblivion, dead as Oscan and Manx. The evening news should probably broadcast brief obituaries of slang words that have passed on. The practice would prevent people from embarrassing themselves by saying things like swell or super. "Groovy, descendant of cool and hip, vanished from the language today."

Where is the next generation of slang to come from? Not from Valley Girl, the argot made famous lately by Singer Frank Zappa and his daughter, who is named Moon Unit Zappa. "Val" is really a sort of satire of slang, a goof on language and on the dreamily dumb and self-regarding suburban kids who may actually talk like that. It would come out all wrong if a minister were to compose his sermon in Val. "The Lord is awesome," he would have to begin. "He knows that life can sometimes be, like, grody—grody to the max! Fer shirr!"

Still, slang has deep resources. The French resist barbaric intrusions into the language of Voltaire and Descartes. But American English has traditionally welcomed any bright word that sailed in, no matter how ragged it may have looked on arrival. That Whitmanesque hospitality has given America the richest slang in the world.

An inventory of American slang now, however, can be somewhat disappointing. Slang today seems to lack the playful energy and defiant self-confidence that can send language darting out to make raffish back-alley metaphorical connections and shrewdly teasing inductive games of synonym.

Examine one fairly new item: airhead. It means, of course, a brainless person, someone given to stupid behavior and opinions. But it is a vacuous, dispiriting little effort. The word has no invective force or metaphorical charm. When slang settles for the drearily literal (airhead equals empty head), it is too tired to keep up with the good stuff.