[lit-ideas] Re: Like, way out
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:24:06 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
I heard a discussion recently on the way the language is evolving. It seems
that "like" is now passe too. Let's see if I can do this. Old: I said to
him, like, let's [whatever]. New: I'm all, let's [whatever]. Apparently, the
younger ones don't even know like anymore. Makes me, like, sad, especially
since I can't quite get the cadence of "all". It seems too that the language
is generally dumbing down, which we all knew. Pardon me. The language is all
dumbing down. The distinction between the written language and spoken language
is now gone, evaporated along with Patrician English, last used by FDR and his
ilk. Apparently the kids who are now using "all" don't even see it as slang.
They see it as a helper verb. I wonder how long before it enters the grammar
books.
Given that I'm just now catching on to "cool", this is very depressing news.
Radically, or "Rad",
Andy Amago
With a day off but still with a mountain of work
-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Aug 27, 2004 3:03 AM
To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Like, way out
BOSTON (Reuters) - Are you feeling screwed, blued and tattooed because the man
slipped it to
you? Like, stay loose, hit the pad and share a thumb with your pash.
Huh? If that made no sense to you, check out "The Hippie Dictionary" by John
McCleary. Using
the new book to translate, readers come up with the more conventional: Are you
feeling
mistreated by the authorities? Relax, go home to bed and share a very large
marijuana
cigarette with your significant other." Those expecting the dictionary,
published by Ten
Speed Press, to be a stodgy reference work are in for a jolt. McCleary's book
is chock-full
of pointed editorialising, slang and swear words culled from the vernacular of
the 1960s and
1970s hippie youth, who questioned authority and created their own
counterculture.
McCleary said he wouldn't have it any other way. "In order to be truthful to
the era, I had
to put every term that I could remember in the dictionary," McCleary, who spent
eight years
writing and compiling the 700-page tome, said in an interview. Hence, among the
book's
entries are such gems as "absofuckinglutely" (without a doubt), "hey man" (the
most
prevalent greeting of the era) and "swacked" (high on drugs or alcohol). One of
the more
amusing entries is found under "like," which McCleary calls an unnecessary word
that along
with "you know" and "I mean" has come to dominate U.S. speech. "What is strange
about these
exclamations is that, even though they have no real bearing on the
conversation, they
indicate a desire ... to communicate with clarity and understanding."
'INTELLECTUAL RENAISSANCE'
The vocabulary of the hippie era came in large part from the beat generation,
jazz and blues
music, African-American culture, Eastern religion and the British musical
invasion of the
early 1960s, McCleary said. As part of their countercultural thinking, he
noted, hippies
tended to imbue words and phrases with new meanings. Many of these new meanings
related to
drugs and sexuality -- topics "The Hippie Dictionary" does not shirk. Despite
his focus on
such terms, McCleary feels strongly that the hippie era marked the "intellectual
renaissance" of the 20th century. "If the hippies had been listened to (then)
9/11 would not
have happened," he added. "Had the hippie ideals been followed, we would be in
a different
world altogether right now." In fact, the book's entry for the term "hippie"
says, "The true
hippie believes in and works for truth, generosity, peace, love and tolerance.
The
messengers of sanity in a world filled with greed, intolerance and war." If
McCleary sounds
enamoured with the era, it's because he is. A self-described ageing hippie, he
experienced
an epiphany at the age of 24 -- during 1967's "summer of love." "I saw Janis
Joplin sing
'Ball and Chain' at the Monterey Pop Festival' and it changed my life," he
said. After that,
he took to sporting striped bell-bottoms, experimenting with drugs and sex and
hitting
hippie haunts around the world. McCleary, now 61 and working as a part-time
carpenter from
his home in Monterey, California, said he has no regrets. "Everything I did,
including the
sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, I'm proud of because it was an experimentation, a
statement of
joy," he said.
'NO APOLOGIES'
Just as he voiced no regrets over his behaviour, McCleary has no apologies for
expressing
highly subjective views in what is ostensibly a reference book. In his entry on
President
John F. Kennedy's assassination, he wrote, "It is interesting to note that
liberals are the
ones who are killed in their prime, and conservatives die old in their soft
beds. This world
would be a better place in which to live if John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and
Martin Luther
King, Jr., had lived to die in their soft beds." McCleary said his
editorialising is
necessary because the hippie era was a very opinionated period and some of the
themes he
touches on help illustrate the hippie philosophy. By the same token, McCleary
said omitting
crude language or references to hard drugs would be academically incorrect. "I
will not
defend the vulgarity or naivete of the era, except to say that we were
experimenting and
learning what might work in the future for human beings," he wrote.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
