slang. But perhaps it is safer simply to mention the alleged slang
and not undertake to decide which of these expressions are slang and
which standard English. For it is no easy matter to trace the line
of cleavage between the legitimate technicality of a given craft or
profession and polite slang. For instance, are _corner_, _bull_,
_bear_ and _slump_, so familiar in financial parlance, mere technical
phraseology or slang? How is one to classify such political terms
as _mugwump_, _buncombe_, _gerrymander_, _scalawag_, _henchman_,
_log-rolling_, _pulling the wires_, _machine_, _slate_ and _to take the
stump_? If these are mere technical terms, surely _boycott_, _cab_,
_humbug_, _boom_ and _blizzard_ have passed beyond the narrow bounds of
technicality and are verging on that dubious borderland between slang
and standard English. Furthermore, are _swell_, _fad_, _crank_, _spook_
and _stogy_ to be considered slang or good English? Each of these terms
is supported by the authority of some of our best writers. _Swell_, to
cite only one example, is bolstered up by the authority of Thackeray,
who in his “Adventures of Philip” writes: “They narrate to him the
advent and departure of the lady in the swell carriage, the mother of
the young swell with the flower in his buttonhole.” Again, how is one
to regard _fake_, _splurge_, _sand_, _swagger_, _blooming_ (idiot), _to
go it blind_, _to catch on_, and that vast host of similar racy and
vivid phrases which, if slang, still do duty for classic English in
common parlance?
A glance at some of our slang idioms shows that they are borrowed
from the cant of various crafts and callings. Some are borrowed from
the technical vocabulary of the stage, some are taken over from the
phraseology of sporting life, while some bear the stamp of various
other vocations. Take as an illustration _fake_, or, better still,
_greenhorn_, which has forced its way to recognition in standard
English. At first _greenhorn_ was applied figuratively to a cow or
deer or other horned animal when its horns are immature. In the
“Towneley Mysteries” it is applied to an ox, for example. Later it was
extended to signify an inexperienced person, or one who, from lack of
acquaintance with the ways of the world, is easily imposed upon. The
former application where the term was used in allusion to an immature
horned animal is a legitimate metaphor. The latter use when applied
to an inexperienced person was doubtless recognized as an extension
of the metaphor and as slang. But the word filled a need in the
vocabulary and was at length admitted into the guild of good usage.
Another illustration is furnished by _mascot_, a recent importation
from the French. This word originated in gambler’s cant and signified
a talisman, a fetish, something designed to bestow good luck upon its
possessor. The term, despite its unsavory association, somehow has
commended itself to popular favor and now seems not to offend the
most refined taste. _Slump_, though not so hackneyed, may serve as an
example in point also. As a provincialism this word denotes soft swampy
ground, or melting snow and slush. Later by transferred meaning it came
to characterize in the financial world the melting away of prices, as
a slump in the market--a vivid picture which is more interesting as a
linguistic phenomenon than as an actual fact.
The history of slang teaches that words, like people, may be divided
into two general classes, high and low, or refined and uncouth. “In
language as in life,” as Professor Dowden puts it, “there is, so to
speak, an aristocracy and a commonalty, words with a heritage of
dignity, words which have been ennobled, and a rabble of words which
are excluded from positions of honor and trust.” Now, some writers
select only the choice and noble words to convey their ideas, leaving
the coarse and vulgar words, terms without a pedigree, as it were, in
the bottom of the inkhorn, for those who desire them. Other writers
again have less cultured tastes and do not scruple to employ now and
then plebeian words, to set forth their thoughts and feelings.
One might suppose on first blush that the dictionary ought to be a
safe guide in the choice of words. A moment’s reflection, however,
is sufficient to convince one that the dictionary can not be relied
upon always for this desired knowledge. It is the lexicographer’s
office to make a complete register of the vocabulary of the language;
and so, to make his work exhaustive, he frequently records many slang
words in his dictionary. Yet the practise of our dictionary-makers,
it must be admitted, varies widely in this respect, some being far
more exclusive than others. Our former lexicographers, as for instance
Doctor Johnson, exercised a stricter censorship than is the custom
at present. But it is not correct always to infer, in the case of an
unrecorded word of questionable usage, that the author excluded it of
set purpose. It may possibly be omitted from oversight. It seems to be
the custom of our lexicographers now to make as complete a record as
possible of all polite slang, but to brand it “slang.” This plan is, of
course, altogether distasteful to the pedants and pedagogues who make
a fruitless effort to curb and check the vocabulary of a language by
rejecting all words of questionable usage. Whatever is not in harmony
with established usage, whatever is not authorized by standard speech,
the pedants and half-educated utterly reject. Now, heretofore our
dictionary-makers have not been entirely above and beyond this narrow
and circumscribed view. It was this fact that prompted Lowell, in the
preface to his famous “Biglow Papers,” to express himself in these
vigorous words: “There is death in the dictionary; and where language
is too strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to
grow in is limited also, and we get a _potted_ literature--Chinese
dwarfs instead of healthy trees.”
The truth is, it does not fall legitimately within the province of the
lexicographer to settle the question whether a polite slang term of
recognized fitness and utility should be deemed good English or not. No
man, however competent a scholar he may be, has the right to determine
the growth and development of our language. Yet such a practise means
this in the last analysis. There are not a few words and idioms in
English that have neither logic nor reason to commend them, but are the
product of analogy, as _it_, _its_ and _you_, instead of the strictly
correct _hit_, _his_ and _ye_, to use a familiar example; and yet
these analogical formations, which at first were mere slang, long ago
drove our proper pronouns from the field. This change took place in
the last two or three centuries, and that, too, in the very face of
the vaunted authority of Shakespeare and the King James Version. No
doubt the pedants and purists opposed this change as utterly illogical
and contrary to the natural order of development and growth of our
English speech; but they were gradually borne down. It is the vast body
of those who use the language, the people, not the lexicographers and
scholars solely or chiefly, who are the final arbiters in a matter of
this kind. It is the law of speech as registered in the usage of those
who employ the language that decides ultimately whether a given phrase
shall survive or perish; and this is done so unconsciously withal that
the people are not aware that they are sealing the destiny of some
particular vocable. This silent, indefinable, resistless force we call
the genius of the language.
It is hoped that the spirit of this paper will not be misunderstood.
The article, let it be distinctly and emphatically stated, is not
intended as a brief for slang--far from it. It is written simply to
call attention anew to the fact that slang is not to be absolutely
condemned as the main source of corruption of our speech, as some
assert, but that, contrariwise, it is an important factor in the growth
of our vernacular and serves--at least, the best of it--a useful
purpose in repairing the resulting waste which necessarily occurs in
English as in every spoken language.
STANDARD ENGLISH--HOW IT AROSE AND HOW IT IS MAINTAINED.
Much is said and written nowadays as to the prevalence of slang and bad
English. It is a matter of common regret both in academic circles and
elsewhere that our English tongue is not now spoken and written with
its traditional purity and propriety. As to the truth of this complaint
there is probably some ground for doubt, but it is not proposed here
to discuss this question. The mere fact of the existence of slang and
bad English implies that there is a norm, a standard of propriety of
English speech, to which polite usage ever aims to conform. It is this
standard that ratifies a given idiom or locution and stamps it with
the hall-mark of propriety, thus establishing its usage as approved.
Any signal departure from this standard is at once branded a solecism
and consequently recognized as a provincialism, or slang. It is here
proposed to inquire what constitutes standard English, how it arose,
how it is maintained.
The science of language comes to our aid in this inquiry and teaches
us how a language grows and develops. Before the dawn of this new
science it was supposed that the standard speech was determined by
court usage as reflected in the language of the ruling class and the
courtiers. This select body of people was believed to set the fashion
in speech, as in other things, and the educated and cultured of the
country were thought to follow their lead as a matter of course. The
common people, according to this theory, accepted as final the standard
set by the nobility, and all divergences therefrom were held to be
the result of ignorance. Not only was the court dialect regarded as
indicating absolute propriety of usage, but it was supposed to be the
original form of the vernacular speech, which the masses were expected
to imitate as perfectly as they could, in their habits of speaking
and writing. The court itself, likewise holding this view, did not
hesitate to condemn and stigmatize every departure in speech from the
received dialect as a glaring solecism which made for the corruption
and ultimate disintegration of the language.
This is now an exploded theory. Modern philology has demonstrated
beyond a doubt that such an assumption is utterly false and untrue
to nature. For philology teaches us clearly that the urban dialect,
far from being the original tongue of which the rural dialects are
mere corruptions, was itself once only a provincial, barbarous form
of speech,--a lingo just as primitive and just as uncultivated as
any of its fellows,--and that its supremacy is the result, not of
any intrinsic superiority over its rivals, but of the political
predominance of those who employed it as their vernacular. Those who
used the urban dialect, by dint of their own intelligence and skill,
surpassed their rivals in the race for the primacy and were the
first, therefore, to establish the ascendency of their community.
Their supremacy once established, the inhabitants of the more highly
organized community proceeded at once to impose their rule upon their
weaker neighbors. The latter, being unable to resist the more powerful
and resourceful community, soon forfeited their independence and lost
their identity and were gradually absorbed. It is thus that political
pre-eminence of a primitive community over its rivals paves the way for
the growth and development of its speech, which is gradually extended
over the conquered until it finally supplants its fellows and itself
becomes supreme as the accepted language of the victorious and the
vanquished alike.
The philologists explain the several stages of the development of a
language, distinctly marking off each, from the crude local _patois_
to the highly developed and polished speech of a cultured nation. The
primitive tongue of a local tribe is termed a _patois_, a rudimentary
speech ill adapted to the communication of the simplest ideas. If a
_patois_ grows and develops so as to become available in vocabulary
and syntax for the expression of thought, it is called a dialect. When
a local _patois_ advances to the dialect stage, there is a marked
tendency, on the part of those employing it, to crush out its rivals
by conquest and assimilation. Consequently the triumphant dialect then
becomes the only speech of a linguistic province, and is itself perhaps
somewhat modified by the conflict from which it has emerged victorious.
Now, there may be several independent linguistic provinces. If so,
a hard struggle for supremacy follows. Eventually some one of the
provinces succeeds in establishing its political mastery over the
others, and then begins the process of linguistic expansion and
assimilation. Thus the dialect of the most powerful province or
district is at length made the speech of the entire people. In this
manner not only all the local _patois_, but all the competing dialects
also, are either absorbed, or are crushed out by the dialect of the
dominant political community.
A striking illustration of this process is furnished in the history
of the development of the Latin tongue. This dominant language which
still survives, more or less disguised, in the speech of a large part
of Europe, as well as in the speech of Latin America, and which has
so generously enriched our own English tongue, as Whitney tells us in
his “Language and the Study of Language,” was the vernacular less than
twenty-five centuries ago, of an insignificant district in central
Italy, the inhabitants of which at that remote day were but little
above savages. History is silent as to when and how this tribe found
their way into that region of the Italian peninsula. Their speech
was only one of a group of related dialects, “descendants and joint
representatives of an older tongue, spoken by the first immigrants,
which had grown apart by the effect of the usual dissimilating
processes.” There still survive remains of at least two of the rival
dialects, Oscan and Umbrian, which throw a flood of light on the
prehistoric period of Italian speech. The Latin dialect was threatened
on the north by the Etruscan, the vernacular of a civilized people
dwelling beyond the Tiber; and it was likewise menaced on the south
by the Greek language, spoken by the Hellenic colonies, long before
settled in southern Italy and Sicily. Both of these tongues are assumed
to have been superior in intrinsic character to the crude, primitive
dialect of the early Romans. But the rudimentary Latin speech spread
_pari passu_ with the extension of the Roman dominion. As the Roman
arms brought one Italian district after another under Roman sway, the
tongue of that mighty people grew apace and diffused itself throughout
the whole of Italy, gradually absorbing all the rival dialects.
Finally all the dialects of Italy were forced to acknowledge the
predominance of the speech of the conquering city on the Tiber,--from
the uncultivated Gaulish of the north to the facile and polished Greek
of the south. Thus all Italy came at last to have one uniform language,
to wit, Latin.
Yet there did not result, after all, absolute uniformity of speech
throughout the whole of Italy. For though the rival dialects had one
by one given place to the triumphant advance of the all-absorbing
Latin, still in the remote rural districts relics of the native local
dialects tenaciously maintained their foothold in the popular speech;
and like paganism before the advance of Christianity, the local
dialects were loth to relinquish their strongholds in the inaccessible
country districts. Traces of the vanquished tongues were still to be
discerned in the varying local dialects throughout the remote parts of
the Italian peninsula. Nor was the common speech of Italy everywhere
current the pure classic Latin of Cicero and Vergil. On the contrary,
the vernacular of the ancient Romans, by and large, was a far less
polished and graceful idiom, “containing already the germs of many
of the changes exhibited by the modern Italian and the other Romanic
tongues.”
A second shining example is found in the history of the rise of the
French language. This marvelously lucid tongue had its origin in a
little island in the Seine, at present the heart of the great city of
Paris. The language of the inhabitants of that tiny isle, to be sure,
was at first a rude lingo no whit superior to the various _patois_ of
Romanized Gaul. But the inhabitants of that vigorous district soon
gained the political ascendency over their neighbors and gradually
extended their speech throughout the whole of _Ile-de-France_. The
upshot was that the numerous local _patois_ speedily lost caste,
sinking to a lower and lower level, till they all finally disappeared,
and the dialect of Paris came to be recognized as the official language
of the entire central part of France. But there were also other
provinces of France besides that of _Ile-de-France_. Normandy, Provence
and Burgundy had meantime risen to marked political distinction, and
the speech of each of these provinces in due course attained to the
dignity of a dialect with a considerable body of literature. But no
one dialect was supreme. However, in the process of time the people
of central France established their pre-eminence, extending their
dominion over the entire country. Thus the sister provinces were,
in turn, brought under the sway of the predominant _Ile-de-France_
which imposed its dialect upon its subdued rivals. In this manner the
Parisian dialect spread over the whole of France and was destined
speedily to become the accepted speech of the country. Naturally
enough, as the Parisian dialect gained the ascendency, the Provençal,
the Norman and the Burgundian dialect each fell into decay and finally
ceased to exist as a spoken dialect, being preserved only in certain
literary monuments.
Now, the Parisian dialect did not attain to the honor of the standard
language of France without a long and hard struggle. During this
struggle the language was in process of development and underwent some
changes by attrition and contact with its strenuous rivals. In the
conflict the Parisian dialect sloughed off some of its unessentials,
its eccentricities of speech in the form of inflexions and syntax and
came forth somewhat simplified in its grammar. At the same time it
borrowed not a few idioms and phrases from its defeated rivals, thus
enriching its vocabulary and simplifying its syntax by contact with the
decadent dialects.
Thus arose modern French--a language beautifully transparent and
precise and almost as untrammeled by inflections as English is and as
admirably adapted for the conveyance of nice distinctions and fine
shades of thought. It appears, then, that modern French is developed
from one of the pristine provincial dialects which probably enjoyed
no superior advantage over its sister dialects, but which owes its
success as a literary medium to the happy circumstance that it was the
vernacular of the most important political province. Furthermore, it
is manifest that the Provençal, Norman and Burgundian dialects are in
no sense a corrupt form of the standard speech. They are rather kindred
dialects which by sheer force of political conditions were outstripped
in the race for the distinction of being chosen as the national
language.
Let us now consider the history of the English language. The
development of the English tongue is quite similar, if not, indeed,
parallel, to the story of Latin and French. It is in order to give here
a brief survey of the origin and development of the English speech.
In the earliest period of our language it is assumed that there were
numerous _patois_ spoken by the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons who
had settled in Britain as rovers and adventurers. True, we have no
record preserved of these several _patois_; but philology warrants the
inference that they existed. In the earliest stage of the Anglo-Saxon
speech of which history furnishes a record, these various _patois_ had
already given rise to some three or four distinct dialects commonly
designated, according to their respective geographical positions,
Kentish, Southern, Midland, and Northern. There are documents extant of
each of these early English dialects which constitute our Anglo-Saxon
literature. Now, each of these dialects (if Kentish is included
in the Southern dialect) marks a separate period in the political
history of Teutonic England. In the northern part of England, then
known as Northumbria, where the Angles settled after migrating from
the Continent, the Anglian dialect was first pre-eminent as the
literary language. This was during the eighth century when the leading
writers in that dialect were Caedmon and the Venerable Bede. In those
early times the Angles appear to have extended their control over
Mercia, too, even down to the northern banks of the Thames. However,
this district later had a local dialect of its own, apart from the
Northumbrian, and its chief literary monuments are a translation of the
Psalter and a version of Matthew’s Gospel designated the “Rushworth.”
The part of Britain south of the Thames and lying toward the west was
settled by the Saxons. Their dialect which scholars call the West-Saxon
was quite unlike the Anglian dialect; and it is distinguished above its
fellows as the dialect in which the bulk of our earliest literature
is written. The West-Saxon, therefore, from the grammatical point
of view is by far the most important of our early English dialects,
and is recognized by scholars as the standard for inflection and
idiom. But the pre-eminence of West-Saxon was of later date than that
of the Northumbrian dialect. From the death of Bede in 734 to the
accession of King Alfred in 871, it is interesting to note that no
one of the English dialects seems to have been supreme. However, from
the accession of Ecgberht in 802 the West-Saxon had been gradually
gaining its ascendency which was of course completed in the days of
King Alfred. This good king signalized his reign by a great revival of
learning, in which he himself was the leading figure. He summoned to
his court an earnest and enthusiastic body of scholars from various
parts of the world, and himself set them a worthy example of industry
and scholarship by translating into the vernacular Pope Gregory’s
“Pastoral Care,” Boethius’s “Consolations of Philosophy” and Orosius’s
“Chronicle.”
After the death of King Alfred there was a sad decline in literature.
But the prowess and overlordship of Wessex had made the West-Saxon
dialect the standard literary language of England; and it continued
so till the Norman Conquest destroyed the political prestige of that
kingdom and consequently deprived that dialect of its evident advantage
as the official language. While the West-Saxon dialect was recognized,
it is true, as the literary language, still it did not entirely
supplant the Anglian and the Mercian, both of which continued to be
spoken and, to some extent, also written. But it is a significant fact
that the earlier Northumbrian poetry was translated into this southern
speech and is preserved to us only in the West-Saxon version.
West-Saxon lost its supremacy as the standard language when, as a
result of the Conquest, Norman French was adopted by the ruling class
as the cultivated speech of the realm. Still, “the native tongue,” to
quote Professor Lounsbury (History of the English Language), “continued
to be spoken by the great majority of the population, but it went
out of use as the language of high culture. The educated classes,
whether lay or ecclesiastical, preferred to write either in Latin
or French--the latter steadily tending to become more and more the
language of literature as well as of polite society.” The result was
that West-Saxon, being supplanted as the literary language by Norman
French, lost prestige and was reduced ultimately to the level of its
sister dialects, Anglian and Mercian. After the loss of West-Saxon
ascendency no one dialect was again pre-eminent in England till the
fourteenth century. For two centuries prior to that date the several
provincial dialects were employed in their respective territories;
and each had an equal chance of becoming standard English. An author,
therefore, was free to use his own local speech. To be sure, French was
the accepted language at court and in high society; but this foreign
tongue at no time enjoyed such a commanding position as to threaten the
extinction of the native dialects.