Communication Beyond Words
Slang is the sign of a continuously evolving language. Some words make their way into common, everyday language while other words die off. I hear some form of “we’re locked [in]” or “we’re cooked” every other day, especially in my AP Physics C class, and I use it so often that it feels natural now. What would I replace those words with? We’re focused? We’re screwed? It doesn’t feel the same.
Essence
Language, at its simplest, is a tool for communication and expression, but in practice, it conveys much more than just the words spoken. Paralanguage—tone, pitch, volume—is what allows us to communicate beyond literal meanings. Pragmatics is the context that contributes to language, and it can communicate a surprising amount. For example, “Do you know where James is?” is a sentence that relies heavily on both pragmatics and paralanguage. “You” is an indexical—a word whose meaning depends on the context; in this case, it refers to the person being addressed. Context includes people the sender and receiver are familiar with, and their current situation. The sentence wouldn’t make sense if both people are familiar with more than one James, and the Jameses are both relevant to their current situation. Paralanguage adds another layer onto the message; it would convey very different things if it was spoken in a languid tone or a panicked tone.
Another interesting thing to consider is prosody (a subset of paralanguage), which Oxford Languages defines as “the patterns of stress and intonation in a language”. Prosody is the essence of irony and sarcasm. Without a “sarcastic tone”, distinguishing between an honest statement and a sarcastic one becomes much more difficult. Prosodic stress is something we use all the time. Not to be confused with word stress (e.g. per-MIT versus PER-mit), prosody stress gives additional meaning to basic sentences based on what word is stressed. The sentence “I didn’t accuse you” can take on different meanings depending on if “I”, “accuse”, or “you” is stressed (Someone else accused you / I did something else to you / I accused someone else).
Judgement
However, slang communicates meaning in a different way. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to social factors, and how someone speaks can subconsciously affect your view of them, including your perception of their intelligence, competence, prestige, and even trustworthiness.1 For example, if you were to picture an aristocrat or someone of nobility, would they more likely speak in a British accent or a Southern accent? The English accent with the most “prestige” or standardization is Received Pronunciation (RP), which is used by the British Royal Family and the BBC. Analogously, some of the more prestigious dialects of Chinese include putonghua (普通话) and Cantonese (广东话, guangdonghua) depending on the region.
Slang carries so much social meaning that we don’t consciously think about. Much of it comes from marginalized or niche communities using a word or phrase that, with some time, may become mainstream. Its main purpose is to establish a sense of identity and belonging; if you use certain slang, you get associated with a certain group, and if you don’t, you get excluded from said group. African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a prime example—many words originally associated with AAVE have made their way into modern American English. Words such as “cool”, “chill”, “fit”, or even the usage of “-ass” as an intensifier (“are we deadass?”) all come from AAVE. Other examples include “choke” and “clutch” from baseball or “valid” from internet culture.
But there’s been a drastic increase in slang due to the advent of social media and the internet. This increased communication speed allows words to come into usage or develop new meanings so much more quickly than was ever possible. Language is evolving extremely quickly, and slang associated with Gen Z and Gen Alpha is becoming ever so common. At its essence, this new slang is still just a way to communicate, to mark one’s identity, and to include or exclude people. Yet it has such a negative impression due to how it spreads.
Short-form content is a different issue entirely, but it’s been used as a medium that allows slang to become viral. “Six seven” is one of the more recent phenomena, taking over the internet by storm. It’s yet another slang term that’s been associated with brainrot—overstimulating short videos, declining attention spans, and a variety of other trends. This term, along with many other “brainrot slang” terms, are nonsensical, often used ironically rather than literally. Six seven has no literal meaning; while it has associations with a song and a basketball player, it’s usually used sarcastically or for the sake of annoying someone (in my experience). Unlike slang from AAVE or other communities, brainrot slang isn’t used seriously enough to seep into our actual vocabulary, often remaining a joke that eventually dies out.
Perspective
My AP Microeconomics teacher, Mr. Wind had some thoughts on the matter. He said that while language is constantly evolving alongside technology, there haven’t been any revolutionary ideas (not technology, but ideas and thoughts) from the past few decades. I thought this was interesting. One thing that came to mind was the simulation hypothesis proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom, the idea that if a civilization is developed enough to create its own simulations, then those simulations can become complex enough to create their own, and so on. The conclusions that arise from this idea are that either civilizations can’t/don’t create such simulations, or if they do, then we are almost certainly living in a simulation.
I’m not sure if there actually has been a decline in so-called “revolutionary ideas”, but if you look back even just 100 years, 200 years, or a few thousand years (admittedly a much larger period than a few decades), you’ll find many revolutionary ideas from many brilliant minds. But one thing is certain—language was always changing, and communication was always more than just words. This new era of technology changes how we communicate, but many things remain the same.
So maybe, our language isn’t cooked. Maybe, we can try to adapt to this ever-changing language, and as long as the main purposes—communication and expression—don’t get lost, then we’ll be just fine.
Life Update!
This week has been a slog of essays and scholarship applications. This blog is probably coming out late because of that, but oh well; I don’t want to sacrifice quality for the sake of rushing and producing some sloppy posts. Science Olympiad regionals is in one week, and Science Bowl regionals is in two weeks. (It’s on the same day as MIT decisions.) I have plenty to look forward to, I suppose, but I can’t say I’m particularly excited or nervous.
Another thing—I’m slowly fixing my sleep schedule (as in, getting 6.5 to 7 hours rather than getting less than 6) but I’m still wasting so much time every day binging YouTube ever since deleting Instagram. I still have to work on that.
I started getting into Animal Crossing! I got New Leaf (the Japanese version) and I named my village さくら村 (help I lack creativity). I really enjoy the calm, stress-free nature of the game; it’s really relaxing. But why do the characters speak in different formalities? It’s so difficult to keep up sometimes! I’ll get used to it eventually.
1. Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of experimental social psychology, 46(6), 1093–1096. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.025 ↩
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