Units of Slang in Feed
A coupla years ago I bumped into M. T. Anderson at the Boston Athenaeum and grabbed the chance to compliment him on one little detail in Feed that had struck me as a sign of how skillfully he’d crafted that book’s futuristic language and milieu: the teenage hero and his pals call each other “unit,” but his dad calls him “dude.” Because, of course, Dad wouldn’t be up on the latest.
In his recent interview at Seven Impossible Things, Anderson revealed how that detail was the result of careful calculation and research:As for creating the future language, I figured that American English has always had a few linguistic positions that are filled with slang: an “informal male friend” slot (dude, man, pal, bud, chum, b’hoy – a 19th C New York one – etc.), an intensifier (cool, excellent, awesome, far-out, neat, swell, capital, etc.), and so on. I just made up new additions to these series.
So now I just feel so swiss, you know?
5 comments:
Actually, the 'dude' came a bit of a clunker with me, because a father would remember and use his own youthful slang (and conceivably pick up and try to imitate that of his kids) but he wouldn't likely misuse it. Linguistic structures are usually firmly internalised: brothers call each other 'dude' but father to son or family? What do you think?
However, the principle is good, one which of course Scott Westerfeld also employs. (Your take on this interests me, because I'm also involved in writing futuristic slang at the moment.)
I think the point of the father's "dude" is that he's trying too hard to be a pal to his son, to be hip with the lingo. It's supposed to grate on our ears, but to grate differently from "unit."
I just asked my son his opinion, and he agrees with you. 'Dad to son?' he said. 'Never!' But immediately modified it with, 'Well, maybe, if the dad was trying real hard to be cool...'
Sigh. This sort of thing obsesses me.
Since Feed is set some years in the future, its "dude" doesn't have the exact connotations of our "dude"—rather, it's what "dude" will mean to your son or grandson in some decades.
The equivalent for us older guys might be "buddy," "chum," or "mate"—words that started out as peer-to-peer but now don't sound so strange addressed by a father to a son.
What I found most interesting about that interview quote, however, is how Anderson sat down and systematically analyzed what he wanted to do with language.
'Since Feed is set some years in the future, its "dude" doesn't have the exact connotations of our "dude"—rather, it's what "dude" will mean to your son or grandson in some decades.'
Yes, but that was part of my original point: don't we tend to retain the connotations of slang learned in our youth as we age? I don't have an answer, and your views are certainly valid. Just stuff I think about.
'What I found most interesting about that interview quote, however, is how Anderson sat down and systematically analyzed what he wanted to do with language.'
Absolutely. It is, however, what I expect any serious writer to do.
Have you read Mitchell's Cloud Atlas ? An interesting novel to compare to Anderson's work in terms of both archaic and futuristic language use.
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