Joe Tharakan | Dank memes as a second language

Cup O' Joe | The slang we use has meaning behind it

By Joe Tharakan 03/22/16 10:39pm

I’ve only recently recognized how dependent I am on slang. Words like “dope,” “fire” or “swag” have replaced “awesome” in my vocabulary. Words like “lit” have replaced “exciting.” Words like “classic” have replaced “of course.” I can still convey my ideas using normal language, yet I prefer to speak in slang.

Here is a message I texted to my friend, while planning an outing to eat at Zesto’s Pizzeria:

“Bruh this pizza is lit lets bounce fam”

Here is that sentence translated:

“[Male friend] this pizza is [good] let’s [leave] [friend]”

Why do I overuse these words so much? How did I start colloquially speaking in a dialect that barely resembles English?

This is my best answer: People around me who were funny used slang liberally and, at least from my perspective, they were funny in part because they used slang. So I copied them. I got a lot of positive feedback that implied the usage of these words is good. I never thought about the etymology of what I was saying. All I really understood was that these words were funny.

If I say “That class is good and interesting,” that is a pretty generic statement. If I say “That class is fire, fam” it’s a funny statement. Why? Who cares! I said it, people laughed, so I kept using slang. Now it is an entrenched habit of mine.

On one hand, this tendency has served me well. It accomplished its goal of making others laugh. The phrase “humorous images” might not evoke a response, but the phrase “dank memes” gets a hearty chuckle, even though they mean the same thing. Using these words has helped me connect with my peers. Speaking the same meme-fueled dialect lets me relate to them better.

On the other hand, automatically repeating slang has led to some awful conversations. In my middle school and high school, gay slurs were interchangeable with more-or-less anything we didn’t like. “That guy is a fag” could take on dozens of different negative meanings. The word “gay” itself became a slang term synonymous with something stupid or irritating. We could say “This homework is so gay,” and everyone understood what it meant, and the consequences of how others might perceive it never crossed our minds.

At Vassar College, the school I transferred from this fall, using “gay” in that context was completely unacceptable and I quickly dropped the habit. However, I have heard such words at Penn, albeit infrequently, without the immediate condemnation from others so typical at Vassar. Does that mean Penn is full of homophobes and condones hatred against LGBTQ people? I don’t think so. Penn is quite progressive on LGBTQ issues. But I do think it means some Penn students were raised in environments where their peers casually tossed around slurs and, like me, they simply repeated them.

It is our responsibility to consider the ramifications of what we say and the words we use. When we use the word “gay” as a substitute for “bad,” even without any explicit hateful intent, it equates the two. It subtly says “being gay is bad.” This is obviously wrong.

Other words like “retard” fall under the same category of words with troubling connotations that we casually use.

I am not saying slang is bad. That would be pretty hypocritical of me. Most of it, like “chillin” or “lit” is harmless and quite fun. However, mindlessly parroting the slang I heard from other students, at least when I was younger, led to some appalling things coming out of my mouth. The vocabulary we choose to use is learned from our peers, and sometimes it is worth questioning.

In mimicking the language of others, I have unintentionally hurt a lot of people. Callously tossing around slurs because I thought they were funny was, and still is, wrong. I feel guilty in how readily I adopted the use of hate-based slang terms in the past, and how easily I shifted my vocabulary to fit in at Penn today.

I urge everyone to think about the words we use. There will be more pejorative, hate-filled slang created in the future that will catch on, and be quickly picked up by people not considering their meaning. And while using the same slang is fun, it is important that we refuse to spew out bigotry in the name of relating to each other a bit better.

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