Results are in from the 12-question “new slang” quiz that I shared with you a fortnight ago. Those who were game to try it found that “mid,” which means something like “ordinary,” was the easiest term to identify. (I do hope no one’s Thanksgiving meal was mid, by the way.) The least identifiable term in the quiz was “giving,” which means something like “reminiscent of,” as in “those glasses are giving Elton John.” Here are the complete results:
“mid” = ordinary (87% correct)
“drippy” = stylish (79% correct)
“npc” = an unoriginal person (79% correct)
“rizz” = charm (75% correct)
“cook” = be productive (70% correct)
“touch grass” = return to reality (65% correct)
“dead” = amused (56% correct)
“cap” = fake (55% correct)
“sigma” = independent (45% correct)
“giving” = reminiscent of (34% correct)
This foray into contemporary slang has recalled for me the discussion of the complexity of human communication in Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. Harari notes that one explanation for the emergence of human languages more sophisticated than those of other animals (a genesis that he dates to the “Cognitive Revolution…between 30,000 and 70,000 years ago”) is that they facilitated cooperation. “A green monkey can yell to its comrades, ‘Careful! A lion!’ But a modern human can tell her friends that this morning, near the bend in the river, she saw a lion tracking a herd of bison.” The group can then decide how to “approach the river, chase away the lion, and hunt the bison.” A competing explanation, however, is that human languages emerged to facilitate gossip. “Homo sapiens is primarily a social animal,” writes Harari. “It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who is honest, and who is a cheat”—or, as an MICDS student today might put it, who keeps it 100, and who is lowkey cap.
The exceptional elasticity and power of human language came to my attention again last week—this time relative to its rhetorical more than its conversational uses—in an Economist article warning against the reciprocal perils of euphemism and exaggeration in contemporary discourse. Respecting the former, the writer quotes from George Orwell’s 1946 essay Politics and the English Language: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… [and] consist largely of euphemism… Villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.”
Just as Orwell inveighed against the euphemistic political language of his time, George Packer, writing in the pages of The Atlantic in March of this year, inveighs against the euphemistic “equity language” of ours. Contesting prescribed substitutions like “asylee” in place of “migrant,” “elevate voices” in place of “empower,” and “a day history will remember” in place of “a date which will live in infamy,” Packer does allow that “the rationale for equity-language guides is hard to fault” to the extent that “they seek a world without oppression and injustice.” He also acknowledges that “avoiding slurs, calling attention to inadvertent insults, and speaking to people with dignity are essential things in any decent society.” Packer objects, however, as did Orwell, to the manufacture of sterilized terminology by elites. Equity language euphemisms express “a revolution from above,” he contends. Unlike colloquialisms and slang, “they haven’t emerged organically from the shifting linguistic habits of large numbers of people,” but rather “are handed down in communiqués written by obscure ‘experts’ who purport to speak for vaguely defined ‘communities,’ remaining unanswerable to a public that’s being morally coerced.” As an MICDS student today might put it, the vibe is giving 1984. Touch grass.
“The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts,” Packer writes. “This aversion to reality is its main appeal. Once you acquire the vocabulary, it’s actually easier to say people with limited financial resources than the poor. The first rolls off your tongue without interruption, leaves no aftertaste, arouses no emotion. The second is rudely blunt and bitter, and it might make someone angry or sad. Imprecise language is less likely to offend. Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths.”
By way of example, Packer quotes three sentences from Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a National Book Award winner from 2012:
The One Leg’s given name was Sita. She had fair skin, usually an asset, but the runt leg had smacked down her bride price. Her Hindu parents had taken the single offer they got: poor, unattractive, hard-working, Muslim, old—“half-dead, but who else wanted her,” as her mother had once said with a frown.
Packer then offers a translation of these sentences into present-day euphemisms:
Sita was a person living with a disability. Because she lived in a system that centered whiteness while producing inequities among racial and ethnic groups, her physical appearance conferred an unearned set of privileges and benefits, but her disability lowered her status to potential partners. Her parents, who were Hindu persons, accepted a marriage proposal from a member of a community with limited financial resources, a person whose physical appearance was defined as being different from the traits of the dominant group and resulted in his being set apart for unequal treatment, a person who was considered in the dominant discourse to be “hardworking,” a Muslim person, an older person. In referring to him, Sita’s mother used language that is considered harmful by representatives of historically marginalized communities.
“Equity language fails at what it claims to do,” Packer argues. “This translation doesn’t create more empathy for Sita and her struggles. Just the opposite—it alienates Sita from the reader, placing her at a great distance. A heavy fog of jargon rolls in and hides all that Boo’s short burst of prose makes clear with true understanding, true empathy.”
If our work at MICDS must guard against the impediments to understanding and empathy that euphemistic language risks—remembering the commitments of our Mission to critical thinking and compassion as we do so—it must also guard against the “twin offence,” per the aforementioned Economist article, of exaggeration, and for precisely the same reasons. “Taking what they no doubt believe to be an Orwellian starting point—the danger of being too soft in their language—keyboard warriors cannot resist the temptation to reach for the most inflammatory words available,” notes the article’s writer. “What used to be called chauvinism, then sexism, is now ‘misogyny,’ a word once reserved for actual hatred of women…. As is true of many modern trends, the most extreme words have radiated from America, where ‘communist’ and ‘fascist’ have nothing to do with sickles or swastikas and are sometimes applied to anyone you disagree with. Social media, the ‘great awokening’ on the left, and the MAGAfication of the right have contributed to a verbal crescendo.”
Exaggerated language reflective of this broader hyperbolic context occasionally finds voice at MICDS when challenges arise in our students’ academic, extracurricular, and social lives. In moments of frustration, hurt, or anger, we are all capable of channeling our inner “keyboard warrior,” and I have known members of our community to describe a teacher’s request that a student give others an opportunity to speak as “silencing,” or a mild (and warranted) disciplinary rebuke as “cruelty,” or the presentation of counterarguments as “brainwashing” or “indoctrination.” I have seen one-off instances of insensitive behavior by one student toward another described as “targeting” and “intense bullying,” and the experience of it as “trauma.” The phrase “psychological warfare” has even found its way to my inbox.
I do not mean to minimize the unacceptability of inappropriate behavior in our community, instances of which our administration takes very seriously and responds to deliberately. I only mean to observe that exaggeration pervades human discourse in the world today (OMG literally!!), and that we must be careful not to let it pervade our community’s own. Calling a thing what it is not, whether through understatement (euphemism) or overstatement (exaggeration), does not serve the interests of learning and growth. “What we hear is the quality of our listening.” The musician Robert Fripp once observed this. “What we say is the quality of our speaking.” Let us observe this at MICDS, too.
Always reason, always compassion, always courage. My best wishes to you and your loved ones for a happy weekend.
Jay Rainey
Head of School
This week’s addition to the “Refrains for Rams” playlist: Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) by Marvin Gaye, the ninth and final track on his 1971 record What’s Going On, created in only 10 days, which is cited as one of greatest albums ever recorded by six different music publications, the links to which I will, regrettably, not be providing here today so that I can remain in the good graces of our wonderful Marketing and Communications team, for whom embedding them is quite the last-minute chore 🙂 (Apple Music / Spotify)