New (to me) slang

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Note the adjectives: hillbilly and coal miner.  These seem to be the current
>default bottom of the barrel sociolinguistic labels. I recognize that the
>alliteration is a factor as well.  But surely those more widely versed in
>ethnic and regional derogatory labels could come up with alternate ethnic
>and regional groups that would satisfy the alliteration requirement. So can
>we speculate from these two examples that those poor folks in KY (see
>previous post) really do need dialect retraining to avoid the status of
>hillbilly or coal miner?

I don't know that "coal miner" is comparable to "hillbilly". I suppose a
coal miner makes a pretty good wage nowadays, and mining would seem to me
to be a respectable occupation. I doubt that the typical coal miner would
have any objection to being called a coal miner. On the other hand, I
suspect that just about anybody referred to *in seriousness* as a hillbilly
would object, and point [farther] out into the hills where the *real*
hillbillies might be found.

I suppose that the two terms for oxycodone are both factitious. I surely
never heard either around these parts, despite the hills and coal mines
(south of Pittsburgh) and despite the fact that oxycodone abuse/addiction
is an everyday routine thing here (as elsewhere, I suppose): it's just the
prosaic "wants some Perks", "wants some Oxycon".

"Hillbilly heroin" is at least a partially apt metaphor since oxycodone is
grossly similar to heroin pharmacologically AFAIK; the other metaphor is
invented from double naivete, I think.

-- Doug Wilson