"Ghetto" now (also) means "jury-rigged"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'm 100% with Grant on  this.

  Back in the mid-eighties when big, barely portable stereos were the rage, I understood (as I assumed everyone else did) that the deprecating "ghetto-blaster" reference was to the apparent popularity among young black guys - teenagers mostly - of carrying them around on their shoulders with music playing loudly.

  Presumably the stereos were really "blasting" in "the ghetto."

  The term obviously conveys negative racial/cultural stereotyping, but nothing like what would accompany the (absent, I think) implication of "stolen."

  "Ghetto" has been used a lot in the last few years to mean "tasteless, tacky, or otherwise resembling the presumed behavior of crude ghetto dwellers."  In my limited experience it's used by blacks as well as whites, and especially by young women.

  JL


Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Grant Barrett
Subject: Re: "Ghetto" now (also) means "jury-rigged"?
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On Jan 9, 2006, at 16:21, Alice Faber wrote:
> Wow...I *never* understood *any* implication of illegality in "ghetto"
> (as in "ghetto-blaster"), *never*.

The "stolen" implication is completely absent from my experience,
too. Wilson and Alice's glosses are similar to mine: jerry-rigged,
improvised, half-assed, knock-off, bootleg, cheap, tacky.


Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
http://www.doubletongued.org/




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