Living language: portmanteau and slang

The first of many in an occasional series examining words, usage, grammar, punctuation, slang, and other aspects of this living thing we call English.

A dictionary is obsolete the day it’s published (yes, this includes the OED) for the simple reason that language is not static; it is a living, breathing organism that adds and subtracts new words as the culture of a given country changes. These changes generally occur in one of two ways: the more forced introduction of a word to the culture by simple misuse, a method made so famous by Alexander Haig through his habit of inappropriate verbing that, at least here in DC, you can say that something has been “haiged into the language,” (I’m just waiting for Bush’s “misunderestimate” to creep into common parlance because it does, oddly, have a certain logic to it) or these changes can be a more natural evolution, such as the rise in prominence of hip-hop culture and the accompanying spread of slang typically used by inner-city, African American teenagers. A third way in which language can change is by the mutation of a trademarked name into a commonly used word (Xerox^® for photocopy and Kleenex^® for facial tissue are two common examples of this). I’ve been interested lately in two words that represent examples of these last two categories.

Wigger – according to most sources a combination of either white or wannabe and nigger¹ usually emphasizing that the term is both pejorative and most often refers to well-to-do white kids from the suburbs who act “black” with their peers and “white” around adults – isn’t a new word. In an article about the television show “Whoopi” in The New York Times Baz Dreisinger wrote, “One of the earliest mainstream uses of the term ‘wigger’ came in 1993, when two white hip-hop fans in Indiana faced school suspension and even death threats because their style was deemed too ‘black.’ (They lived to tell their tale on ‘Oprah.’)”² Dreisinger’s article makes some salient points about why the use of what is becoming a common stereotype is both funny and discomfiting by talking about cultural theft, racial hybridization, and the disparities in treatment based on race that truly exist in America. What Dreisinger doesn’t talk about is how the concept of reclaiming a pejorative word and that word moving back into the mainstream can change that reclamation.

It’s virtually impossible to avoid hearing the word nigger if you ride public transportation in Washington DC; indeed, black teenagers throw it around with such ease that I’ve often wondered if they truly grasp the pejorative connotations, or if their children will as its power mutates and it turns completely to youth slang. As well, I’m forced to wonder how long it will be before wigger moves into the mainstream completely (Comedy Central is already allowing it in promos before 10pm for “The Mind of Mencia”) as people lose the knowledge of the term’s origins.

Another term that has me fascinated of late is podcasting. Podcasting, like wigger, is a portmanteau, in this case of the terms broadcasting and iPod^®. Podcasting is a bit of a misnomer, though, in that it refers to a method of publishing audio content via the internet access to which requires neither an iPod^® specifically or any portable player at all.

Podcasting has moved fairly rapidly into the mainstream in the United States. A Google search for the term yields over 30 million results including several paid advertisements that are of most interest. Ads from Fox television and NPR, and the use of the term without quotation marks by The New York Times, seem to indicate that this term has easily integrated into U.S. English. What’s surprising to me about this is that the term conflates a common word with a trademark. In an era when the Virgin Group Ltd. is trying to restrict the use of the word virgin and not only are federal judges hearing the case but the Senate is considering passing a bill that would gum up the courts by opening the door for a stampede of ridiculous lawsuits (who owns the word tea Lipton or Nestle?), Apple is simply letting this term propagate without lifting a finger. Perhaps the company looks at it as free publicity. After all, according to very recent market research, Apple has 71.5% of the global market in “hard-disk based player segment,” so why shouldn’t the term “iPod” become synonymous with “portable MP3 player?”

In our next issue: commonly confused words and why their misuse pisses me off so much.

Notes:

1. Urban Dictionary: Wigger see also Wikipedia: Wigger
2. The Whitest Black Girl on TV, Baz Dreisinger, The New York Times, September 28, 2003 via “Whoopi and Rita,” site of William Washbaugh of Dept. of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee