Lingo

Photo By: Melvin A. Agrazal  Mark and Iris Estrada's Backyard party.

September 24th, 2013

Lingo, slang, jargon, we all use it. From our coworkers, to friends and family.  It separates certain groups of people.  Gives you a sense of belonging.  My essay discusses how lingo has changed over time.  I also compare lingo to the military jargon that is discussed in the book called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

“ADM” (Aye Dios Mio)

        We, as humans, are social creatures; with every group we have our own lingo.  As we evolve, so too does our language.  Add technology into the equation, and now we’ve taken a form of communication to a whole new level.  From the first moment our parents speak to us in baby talk to the jargon we speak with our friends and coworkers, our language is not just a form of communication, but it identifies who we are and where we come from.

As the screenwriter, director and producer Greg Thompson said:

        “It is said that children learn languages from their environment.  They get into an environment where language can happen, and language learning happens."

        Many people, especially in the Latino community can relate to this.  If you are Latino, like I am, more likely, your parents taught you “Spanish baby talk.”  This is when a young child is brought up learning Spanish, only the parent would talk to the child in a diminutive manner.  Parents speak in simple terms to make it easy for a child to understand.  Such words would end with “ita” or maybe even “ito.”  For example, a parent would ask a child in Spanish if they would like some “aguita” or water.  Perhaps a parent would take notice that a boy who stayed asleep would say, “se quedo dormidito.”  Latinos before us have done this because it is our culture.  The power of lingo starts early; it gives us a sense of belonging.  As we get older, we come to understand that lingo goes far beyond our upbringing.  We now see that it’s outside our home; Lingo now exists with our friends and coworkers.  In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, O’Brien describes the relationship that soldiers have through their lingo.  The guys in Alpha Company understand this lingo all too well.

        The Things They Carried demonstrates Alpha Company’s jargon.  In this post-Vietnam novel, O’Brien uses terminology that may not be found in the U.S. Army Survival Handbook, because these are words that are used by a special group of individuals.  You will not hear this from a pogue. A pogue is considered to be a derogatory military slang word used by these battle hardened soldiers to describe support personnel or desk jockeys for lack of a better term.  You will see words such as “hump” which means to march, because this is what they do.  They go on hikes from one destination to the next.  They would stop and eat their M.R.E.’s, or meals ready to eat.  This was nutrition in a bag.  Back in Vietnam, some of the seasoned veterans would call the new guy “cherry.”  Today’s military would call the new guy the “FNG” or the “fucking new guy.”  These guys were cut from a different cloth; they would act outlandish so they wouldn’t show their peers that they were scared, which was the social norm.  These soldiers were more than coworkers; they were teammates.

        Lingo has been around a long time, but it evolves when technology is added into the mix.  The result, is a new form of language use.  David Crystal, a Professor at the University of Wales said:

        “There’s been nothing quite like this ever before.  It certainly is the case that the Internet will have a more rapid impact on language than any previous technology.  If you invented a new word tonight and you sent it out on an e-mail or put it on a website, it’d be round the world in seconds”

        Technology knows no boundaries, and with it, our little cliques have grown into a tribe.  Certain slang words that were used for the “in crowd” is now used by the masses.  Hundreds of thousands of people are trying to keep up with the lingo.  But with the use of internet, people have also created their own language.  First we have speech, and then we have writing, now we have “netspeak” or newly formed words from the internet  (Hearne).  Verbs such as bookmarking have replaced book mark or “Googling” something (I was surprised not to see the red squiggly line under the verb Googling on my computer screen; even my computer considers googling a verb) in order to conduct an internet search using Google.  These are lingos that have been created by the internet.  Once the internet boom happened, it brought life to chat rooms.  People started using abbreviated words that would give new meaning to complete sentences, but it wasn’t until the mobile phone where people really saw a rise in abbreviated text lingo.

        Once the mobile phone was easily accessible to most, people saw it easier to get a quick message across by use of text messages, the younger generation saw it as a means to get their message across while ditching a full on conversation.  As their fingers do the talking, it almost becomes second nature.  The masses now are actually saying what they are texting.  An example of this is my fiancé, Bernadette.  She actually calls her best friend Iris Estrada “bff,” or rather best friend forever.  As silly as it may seem to most, people actually speak in netspeak lingo.

        “Netspeak may be compared to a dialect since it is used by people of similar linguistic knowledge who shorten or change English words for effective communication between the users.” (Kinsella)

        In closing, language may be different from one group to the next group; as children, the foundation of lingo is set by our fathers and mothers, because it teaches us who we are.  It teaches us heritage.  As language and technology evolve, one can only imagine what terms will be in, and what terms will be “so 1990’s.”  Nevertheless Lingo is what’s what makes us unique as people.  It separates us from others.  So if you have yet to learn some of the lingo, you might as well say “WTH” (what the hell) and start learning.

Works Cited

Hearne, John. "Text Wave." 29 October 2001. The Irish Times. 7 September 2013. Web

Kinsella, Naomi. "BW its just netspeak lol." 07 09 2010. Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communications 3,2. 07 09 2013.Web

O'Brien, Tim,. "The Things They Carried." Book (1990): Pages From 1- 25 Print.