"Turd Ferguson" slang book

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 7, 2004, at 6:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> I've never encountered ANY of these terms from students at my
> university.  Now how could that be?

i haven't encountered any of them, either.  but then i'm not really a
slang maven.  i'm impressed that they're news to slangologist jonathan
lighter.

larry horn recognizes "sexile" (and the long-familiar "dead soldier",
but not the larger expression "tomb of the dead soldiers").  but
nothing else.

it's worth thinking about how this could come about.  (i'm admitting
that lighter, horn, and i are not exactly plugged into undergraduate
student life.  but we're by no means insulated from it.)  two
suggestions, neither very original...

first, these compendia of college slang are as inclusive as possible,
with no estimation of how many students use the items, how often, or in
what circumstances.  many of the items are likely to be short-lived
inventions used by just a few people.  (my college roommate was an
extravagant person in lots of ways, one of them being his endless
linguistic inventiveness; he produced a constant stream of colorful
expressions, few of which lived on for more than a couple days.)

second, the compendia are collected by asking students about the slang
they use.  this method of collection invites the students to offer
their most colorful vocabulary and to disregard the items that are
entirely ordinary from their point of view.  in fact, the students are
likely to be predisposed to offer remarkable items, since they are
aware of having a special vocabulary that binds them together and sets
them off from people outside their social group.

as always, it's easiest just to ask people what they do, rather than to
observe what they do.  but in some situations just asking can produce a
really strange picture.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)