New (to me) slang

[James C Stalker]

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?

JCS

Wilson Gray writes:

> When you come across a slang term for the first and ofttimes the only
> time in the NYT magazine - hillbilly heroin - or in Time -
> coal-miner's cocaine - it probably makes sense to take it with a
> grain - or perhaps a box - of salt.
>
> -HWG
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: New (to me) slang
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 01:04:20PM -0800, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>  But, then, you're not a coal-miner.
>>>
>>>  This phr. is also new to me, and sounds somewhat factitious.
>>
>> "Hillbilly heroin" is a more widely distributed, if perhaps
>> equally factitious, term for this.
>>
>> Jesse Sheidlower
>> OED
>



James C. Stalker
Department of English
Michigan State University