Oh, those fads in modern English speech. (1 Viewer)

[Tony Whalen]

Oh I'm up for that one! Na-nu na-nu!

 

[Nate Anderson]

I concur, although I find myself doing it from time to time, but I try to watch it.

One that really gets on my nerves is "That is so GAY!" Do people not realize that this is very offensive to other people?

 

[BrianW]

Sock it to me.

No, really. I mean it.

 

[Vlad D]

This thread is off the hook!

I also still use "cool," and every once in a while a "dude" will slip out, which makes me feel very 80's.

I remember "Cool beans" and "my bad" from my college days.

I first heard "Betty" in the movie Clueless.



True dat!

 

[Jack Briggs]

Actually, what I was trying to get at with this thread concerned crutch phrases in speaking that are fads.

Slang is one thing. It's a given. Slang comes and goes and sometimes comes again. "Groovy" was hip in 1967; say it today and it dates you. But slang was not my point here.

What moved me to post was the current vogue, "makes-me-sound-smart" use of the phrase "on the ground."

As far as I can tell, its (over)use started at the time of the Iraq invasion — "the situation on the ground in Falluja is chaotic and deadly."

Then, in no time, the phrase (and variants thereof) was being applied by lazy journalists and pundits to everything. "The situation on the ground at Cannes is mania about Michael Moore."

Since when have we ever concerned ourselves with what the "situation on the ground" is at something like a film festival. Do pundits expect the attendees to be seated on helium-inflated chairs that float in the air?

Still in vogue is that utterly overused preface remark, "having said that" (or "that having been said" or "that said").

What's wrong with the word "therefore"?

Nope, it's just that the chattering classes (now that's a phrase coming into crutch-like overuse) who love to hear the sound of their voices think they are giving the impression of sage-like wisdom to their audiences.

And the editor in me just cringes at all this nonsense.

So, that being said, I'll return my focus to the situation on the ground here at HTF.

 

[Seth Paxton]

In a rare case of me actually saying it shorter than someone else, Jack just basically said...



Jack, you're the editor, I'm the long winded writer, WTF happened!?!

Actually I do understand that you wanted to clarify what your main point was since we drifted off to general slang discussion. I think journalism is especially guilty of the sort of thing you are discussing, though obviously business-speak is also full of it.

Gee, 2 areas where you often have person speaking about something that they really don't have enough knowledge and/or content to fill up the discussion time. I'm shocked that there could be a connection.



I am a strong defender of the "that is so gay" or "that's gay" as a term for silly or lame. Since I don't happen to think that being homosexual (or maybe you meant "rather happy") necessarily has anything to do with a person being or doing something silly or lame (odds are the same as they are with the hetero oriented), I don't find it offensive.

I also find any aggrevated uproar over the usage to itself be pretty gay.

 

[RobertR]

Another fad term that began to annoy me was the use of the term "gravitas". It seemed like members of the media decided almost overnight that "gravitas" was an extremely important thing for a political candidate to have and for them to discuss. The herd mentality made it seem as if they were afraid they'd be lacking in it if they didn't use it.

 

[Zen Butler]

Jack, I see similar in sports. Whenever a final matchup is upon us.

"It's clutch time"
It's whoever wants it more"
"It's now or never"
"It's time to step up"
"Come together as a team"
"110 percent"

Are these written? I assume these work well with the emotional, forehead beer-can crushing fan who leap out of their lawn chairs to high-five and bump chests. I see this in sports writing now more frequently. Especially, a certain Orange County hack that treats his readers like they're in grade school and he just won't go away.

 

[BrianW]

Ah, crutch phrases.

Check.

How could I have missed the big picture? It was as plain as the nose on my face, but I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Next time, I'll look before I leap.

My bad.

 

[Jason GT]

Zen, you know we at HTF just have to do our thing, play as a team, play within ourselves. We've gotta be careful and do the little things. We can't beat ourselves -- let the game come to us.

Jack:

regarding "that said" and "therefore". I do use "that said" occasionally but IMO there is a slight difference between the two.

I've always considered "therefore" to be part of a logical structure -

Mikey screwed up, therefore he's an idiot.

Conversely, I tend to use "that said" in a contradictory sense (the correct terminology for this construction escapes me at present) -

Mikey did a brilliant job. That said, he's still an idiot.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

It doesn't have the same meaning though. "That said..." is commonly used when you're making a point but have to concede an alternate point of view - even if only slighly.

For example...

"Every SUV is just a gas guzelling behemoth, driven by a mobile-phone yapping idiot with less road sense than the average hedgehog. That said, I reackon it'd be nice to drive above most of the other traffic and be able to go over speed humps at more than 10mph."

 

[Ricardo C]

"Therefore" means "hence..." or "because of...". "That said" and its siblings are generally used as another form of "However..." or "In spite of that...". It's essentially a preface to an exception to whatever statement the speaker just made.

 

[Mark Shannon]

I agree with you. With me still being in high school, and with many immature students around me, whenever I do something they don't approve of, I'm always told "that's gay" or "you're gay". I just don't get where that came from. It's not as if whatever I did had anything to do with being a homosexual ("not that there's anything wrong with it"). I think perhaps it's meant mainly of a derogatory term because of what it implies. It's known (to me at least) that homosexuals among males are not usually accepted as easily (please no flaming, this is just my opinion), so to call someone gay, I believe it simply refers to one standing out, or not fitting in. I have never heard a female call someone else 'gay'.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Now you all are getting it! Look at BrianW's post, for example.

Even better, you're picking apart my own arguments. I like that! See how Rob has pointed out the flaws in some of what I am saying.

I have no problem with slang. I love it, in fact.

When I took linguistics in school, I developed a new appreciation of how dynamic language is. It is not static, but is ever-changing. That's normal and healthy, because language informs thought.

So, even words will change in meaning over time, as part of language's own evolutionary process.

What I don't like, however, is when language changes due to the laziness of its speakers. Which is where these crutch phrases come in. They catch on like Southern California wildfires, and once all the fuel is consumed, the phrases either enter the vernacular or they die off.

Too often, they become vernacular.

RobertR is right on about the term "gravitas." You started hearing it a lot in the wake of Sept. 11. The president was said to have assumed a new gravitas in his office as a result of the attacks. Then, of course, you start seeing the term pop up everywhere.

Yes, Zen, sports reporting is rife with these sorts of phrases. Mercifully, they often stay within the domain of sports writing. On the other hand, they sometimes don't. And beat reporters are told not to incorporate sports terms or analogies in their writing. All the time.

But you will see a lot of news stories that contain such tripe as, "Now that the presidential campaign gears up for its stretch run."

Yes, a national campaign described as one would the world of Major League Baseball in the month of September.

 

[Zen Butler]

Boy, what a functional sentence.

 

[Dave Simpson]

I'm in complete agreement with Ricardo on this one. Shoot me if I ever use the phrase "having said that" or any of its moronic variations. I prefer instead to simply link two somewhat contrary ideas with the words "however" or "nevertheless". Cheers.

DS.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Well the sports CLICHES aren't quite the same since they are more like permanent fixtures of the sports paradigm. They function the same way but they sure aren't fads. People will always say "110%", "it ain't over till it's over", and "one game at a time", partly because there is some truth or wisdom behind them, even if the literal meaning sounds rather goofy.


Jack is really more concerned with how some phrase or term is never used, then some jack ass says it once, it catches on because it sounds good, and within 2 weeks every freaking journalist is throwing it out there. Then 6 months later it falls off the map.

Just think EMBEDDED. No one had ever said that ever AFAIK and then you heard it every ten minutes on the nightly news during the Iraqi War Part 2: The Reckoning.


Now we have ON THE GROUND.


The biz world generates gems like OUTSIDE THE BOX, one of the gayest expressions of all time (see, nothing to do with sexuality). Unfortunately though that little bastard is clinging on to life like the "hang in there" kitty.

I think the biz ones like that live longer because there is so much money in selling companies those self-help and team building courses, like 7 Steps.

 

[Chu Gai]

How about the way phrases seem to find their way into audio product review parlance?

Very revealing.
Exceedingly detailed.
It was as if a veil had been lifted.
Without the conditioner there was no pace, no rythm, no bloom, no warnth, no clarity depth or soundstage.
The sound was not very transparent and lacked the inner detail and microdynamics inherent in a well designed...
SET amp
full range horn speakers
throw your favorite in here.
The blackness was profound.
Even my mother, grandmother, wife, girlfriend, sister, brother, friend, dog, could hear it even though there were in the next room, outside, visiting their friends in California, visiting their friends in Pakistan, they were dead, etc.
The system sounds the way it does because it was voiced properly.
The midrange was liquid and very natural.

I did so love Limbaugh's parody of the term gravitas.

 

[Al.Anderson]

Speaking of the biz world, I almost forgot a phrase that's been making the rounds with local management: "forward plan".

Drives me crazy, I thought plans were in the future. Or is a 'forward plan' to differentiate between the 'revisionist plan' the manager plans on using to place blame elsewhere when his 'forward plan' craps out?

 

[Chris Bardon]

That's gaytarded.

There are other perfectly cromulent words that can make for steaktastic additions to the english language. There are others that have made English go all tapioca.

Oh, and the resurgence of "Cool Beans" may have had something to do with David Lapham's Stray Bullets...or not. It's a pretty obscure comic book, but it's where I first heard the phrase.