The English language is always being added to and changed. Leslie Savan’s book, Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Pop Language in Your Life, the Media, and, Like, Whatever, explores the phenomenon of pop language and the changes it makes in communication.
Savan goes through pop language, past and present. She discusses how Shakespeare added thousands of words to the English language. For example, when you say that you have had “too much of a good thing,” you are quoting a phrase popularized by the Bard himself.
Pop culture influences so many parts of our lives that today, words like “dude” and “cool” have become a normal part of any conversation. Savan goes into more recent instances of pop culture like The Simpsons, where the phrase “don’t have a cow, man” was popularly used to the point that even the character it was intended for, Bart, could not use it anymore.
Not all pop language discussed is English. Savan goes on about the influences that Yiddish, French and Spanish have on current and not-so-current pop phrases. Remember “hasta la vista, baby”? She writes that while foreign languages infiltrate our language, English is slowly seeping into other cultures. She lists some silly examples of American words that have been banned in foreign schools. Most of the words were innocuous, like cheeseburger (France), cool (Turkey), intellectual (Iran) and brainstorming (France).
Savan does not criticize all pop language. She writes that there are some words she likes, some she loathes, and some she can’t stop using. She uses pop language the way it was meant: to give more feeling to what is being said.
Savan describes the many ways that things that are popular influence the very words that we use to express ourselves. She writes of the words that are used so many times that their meanings become something completely different, or else they become the only way to express a certain feeling in our politically correct ways.
“X-words,” as Savan refers to them, are words that are so taboo that they are usually referred to by the first letter of the word. Some examples of this are when people say the “F-word” or the “N-word.” Savan writes that this form of pop language is really a distancing method; people use it to cope with the enormous power words have.
Overall, Savan’s book is an intricate look at all forms of pop language, with just a hint of irony and a lot of attitude.