]YIIAT IS SLANG? 127 



WHAT IS SLANG? 



By Professor EDWIN W. BOVVEN 



RANDOLPH-MACON COLLEGE 



HPO the purist slang is an unmitigated evil which makes for the 

 -*- gradual corruption and decadence of our vernacular. The 

 pedant who is a martinet regards all slang with absolute contempt and 

 abhors its use, because he believes slang spells deterioration for our 

 noble tongue. Such an one takes his self-appointed guardianship of 

 the language very seriously and deems it his bounden duty as a curator 

 of our English speech, not only himself to spurn the use of slang, but 

 also to inveigh against all those who employ it habitually or occasion- 

 ally. The baneful influence of slang, he tells us, is sweeping like a 

 mighty tidal wave over the English language, debasing it and corrupt- 

 ing its very sources. 



Nor is the precisionist alone in entertaining this alarming view. 

 For many others who are not sticklers for strict propriety and correct- 

 ness of speech share, to some extent, the same opinion, although they 

 feel no special concern as to the final outcome. However, it is reas- 

 suring to reflect that the best-informed among us and those whose 

 thorough knowledge entitles them to speak with authority do not take 

 so gloomy and pessimistic a view of the future of the English language. 

 They inform us that the fears of the pedants and pedagogues — the half- 

 educated — are never destined to be realized. 



" Strictly speaking," says Professor Lounsbury, than whom there is 

 no higher authority in America on the history of English, " there is 

 no such thing as a language becoming corrupt. It is an instrument 

 which will be just what those who use it choose to make it. The words 

 that constitute it have no real significance of their own. It is the 

 meaning men put into them that gives them all the efficacy they possess. 

 Language does nothing more than reflect the character and the charac- 

 teristics of those who speak it. It mirrors their thoughts and feelings, 

 their passions and prejudices, their hopes and aspirations, their aims, 

 whether high or low. In the mouth of the bombastic it will be inflated ; 

 in the mouth of the illiterate it will be full of vulgarisms ; in the mouth 

 of the precise it will be formal and pedantic. The history of language 

 is the history of corruptions — using that term in the sense in which it 

 is constantly employed by those who are stigmatizing by it the new 

 words and phrases and constructions to which they take exception. 

 Every one of us is to-day employing expressions which either outrage 



