Hit that jive, Jack...

I have never been comfortable with slang, and cannot stand jargon in almost all of its forms.

When I was in high school I could not describe something as "fab" or "boss" with the proper élan; and a few years before that I was sure "daddy-0" was a term whose only real function was to make Maynard G Krebs sound funny. Was that cool cat "hip" or "hep"? If I was square was the kid ridiculing me triangular or circular? As far as I could tell the only purpose the words served was to make the speaker sound silly. It was as if they were trying too hard to make a distinction between their generation and their parents' generation.

It only got worse in college. Everything became far out and right on and groovy, unless, of course, it was really heavy or deep. Did I have a jones, or was the man keeping me down? What really happened at a happening, and could you have a be in outside? If I rapped with some freaks and we got into some heavy shit should I take a bath? And, finally, if you had some really righteous weed was it possible to get some that was blasphemous?

I became convinced that with the proper chemical enhancements the purpose of language ceased to be communication, and mutated into something that only needed to sound impressive. The goal was to sound amazingly metaphysical without actually imparting any information, "There is nothing you can do that can't be done," being a prime example. About the best that can be said is that my generation's slang prepared it for such marketing fact-vacuums as "professional grade."

As I see it, the purpose of slang like 'daddy-o' or 'groovy' is to make a distinction between the speaker's group and the rest of the world, and to convey the excitement and joy of being part of that group. We are young. We are inventive. We have broken free of the staleness of You. Our generation is more aware/expressive/happening than the last. This, of course, is nothing new. Just as Socrates complained about the lawless ignorance of the next generation, the youth of Athens probably thought he was two iambs short of a pentameter. As far as I can tell it has been going on ever since our 573,286th great grandparents grunted their parents were really dull sticks.

Jargon's purpose, on the other finger (the difference is small so it's on the same hand), is primarily to exclude. Whatever the group, be it Sherlock Holmes aficionados or stock brokers, they develop an argot that serves to separate Us (those who are in the know and part of the group) from Everyone Else.

Usually it starts as a form of shorthand. A way for textbook buyers, for example, to talk about the number of books they are going to acquire for a particular class. In this case they can say "QTC" instead of "quantity to cover", which is itself shorthand for "the number of books required to fulfill the needs of a particular class." The problem is that approximately thirty seconds after its first use this shorthand becomes a code that tells me if you are also a textbook buyer or just another student or faculty member spouting off.

A second, subtly different, use for jargon is to make the outsider feel small, stupid, impotent, unqualified or all of the above. "How dare you tell me how to do my job when you don't even know what a QTC is," being the typical attitude. The field of medicine has traditionally been the prime example of this behavior, but every group, no matter how small—or perhaps I should say, especially if it is small—is guilty to some extent. I'm sure that the three or four of you who are still reading this have, at some time or another, left a discussion with the IT department or an auto mechanic feeling slightly humiliated and very much enraged because you had just been made to feel like a mentally challenged three year old.

Is there a solution, or is one even needed? The answer to both is probably not. Slang will continue to be invented by those striving to express the excitement, joy, awe or fear they feel in discovering the universe and their place in it; and jargon will always be needed for a group to conduct their business, and will always be twisted to protect the group and exclude outsiders. My answer has been to avoid both as much as possible, but that has led to my having speech and writing styles that tend to make me sound like a fussy, old man.

Perhaps the real answer is, as they say, just to keep on keepin' on.

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A couple footnotes:

My inability to use the adjective "boss" in the mid-sixties without a fair amount of irony might have had some self-evident causes, but I would have had the same problem with "smith" or "carmichael".

Maynard G Krebs was a character on "The Many Loves of Dobby Gillis" played by Bob Denver before he became Gilligan.

何か言いつつ車押し行く夫婦なり
A married couple/Pushing a hand-cart/Saying something to each other.
—Ittou