New-age lingo and Gen Then
Usha Bande

I vividly remember the day I lost my self-confidence. It all started with the caption in one of the daily newspapers, "Wham, Bam, Thank you Glam". That was the moment I was clean bowled because I could not make any sense out of the heading and much less of the text. Baffled at my inability to understand what I thought was English, I read and re-read the piece and finally did not go beyond the fact that it had something to do with rock music known as glam rock. To be sure, at that point I thought I was going nuts. Certainly, how else can you feel when you discover suddenly that you do not know the language you taught for over 35 years?

A couple of days later, another line quickened my pulse: Ever since Gwen Stefani of ‘No Doubt’ hit the scene with her lipstick-daubed, hair-akimbo mix of spa and pop, there have been a conveyor-beltful of girls grring out music. What on earth does that mean, I fumed? A youngster standing nearby smiled and said, "Well. That’s being in ‘wrap rage’. Relax, ma’m." "Relax" — another popular American expression, Wow! GenNow is comfortable with words like cool dude, hot cat, pill-popping stars, playing party-poopers, but they leave others gasping. This is where the thin dividing between the GenNow and the GenThen stands. GenThen, I discover, is their polite way of discarding you as an "old hat". Does the appellation "senior citizen" stand any chance here? I wonder if Shakespeare would like to change his line, Age I abhor thee.

So, right now, I am busy "splashing down under" before the GenNow discovers my shocking unaccomplishment. Let me make a "hip hop" with a "daub" of that new age lingo to my vocabulary so that I "get a fix on" the "flashy" usage and stay in the "fizz and biz" of writing and give "glitz and glamour" to my journalistic ventures. Well, if you comprehend what I mean by all this, hats off to you. But if you can’t, please do not ask me for further explanation. Candidly, I can hardly help you because I too do not. Better be "dictionary friendly" and grope through the pages. I for my part, I wish you luck.

Language is a living tongue with a dynamics of its own and words make a fascinating study. The connotation of language changes with culture and changing times. Samuel Johnson recognised this nature of languages as far back as the 18th century. In 1755 in his preface to A Dictionary of English Language he wrote, "No dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient, that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand."

That is what I am trying to do — grasp the elusive meaning of the language. However, while I could make sense of Jonathan Swift’s essay On Conversation where each paragraph runs into 250 to 300 words without a full stop, and while I could convey it to my students, the string of words used in today’s lingo just leave me clueless. When words and expressions acquire esoteric character, the "feel-good" factor vanishes, particularly if you have to read a line several times. So, I read, re-read and sit back to let "understanding happen"; then go off the tangent and brood, "how can understanding ‘happen’?" It can at best "dawn". These are "happening times", my young niece assures me, and the lexicon is swelling with popular versions like metrosexual, manscaping, security moms, leapling, testosteronic, sandwich generation, toxic bachelor, and a host of coinages that leave one flabbergasted.

With great assiduity, I ransacked many dictionaries. I even flipped through a dictionary of American slang but quickly shut it for it was bursting with pornographic meanings. One of the old, standard dictionaries came to my rescue with its "appendix" of new words. A metrosexual is an urban male with a strong sense of beautifying and decorating himself, security moms are mothers excessively concerned for the safety of their children, particularly after 9/11, a leapling is a person born on February 29 and a testosteronic is an archetypal masculine figure full of brawn but no brain. Sandwich generation is stuck up between their responsibility towards their children and their duties towards the aged. And don’t think that the generation XL is the deluxe model of some car; it is used for overweight young adults.

With the world whirring fast towards a global approach, one cannot be a stickler for the old order. One has "to be a game", as the young generation asserts. I gape wide. Do they mean one has to be a "prey"? The expression of the youngsters tells me that I got it all wrong. "Be game" or "are you game" mean: "are you willing to do something difficult and dangerous?" I know the expression has "other" meaning as well. I had spotted it in the dictionary of slang but I quickly hide my knowledge. Jorge L. Borges gives a new-age mantra, "It is often forgotten that dictionaries are artificial repositories, put together well after the language they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a marginal nature." Though we, the GenThen are at crossroads with our sense of decorum corroding, we must take up the challenge, be "language savvy" lest we turn "lingo-phobes".