In Print
When Students Talk, Words Get a Life
Slang and Sociability: In-group Language Among College
Students. By Connie Eble. University of North Carolina Press.
228 pages, $14.95.
Slang is so ordinary that it often "slips by unnoticed" in the study of language, says Connie Eble, professor of English.
But slang is "absolutely imbedded in the society that produces it," she says, so it reveals something about the particular group of people who use it. Eble hopes that 200 years from now, her book will help people learn
how Southern college students in the 70s, 80s, and 90s spoke, how they lived, what was important to them.
Most linguists won't find anything they don't know in her book, Eble says, except maybe that
ted, from wasted, means "drunk," or that
intellectual hour means "soap opera time."
"They won't be surprised at the way slang operates," she says, because it develops and changes the same way formal
language does. Eble illustrates this using about 1,000 examples of slang words and phrases out of the 10,000 submitted by
students in her English classes from 1973 to 1993.
There have been few scholarly studies of slang, which is often dismissed as being a curiosity or an aside. But Eble feels
it's important.
"The burden of proof is with the people who claim that slang is not central to the language," Eble says. "Number
one, everybody who uses language, who's old enough to belong to a group, can use slang and understands how it
works. Number two, slang does not use any kind of peculiar processes that make it different from any other kind of
vocabulary."
Slang and Sociability contains a glossary of the words and phrases discussed in the text, as well as a list of the 40 most
enduring terms since 1972. But the words Eble finds most interesting are the ones submitted only
once, by a single student, such as dorkus pretentious
, a mock-Latin phrase that means "fool." There are a large number of these, which
illustrates how ephemeral slang is. Groups who produce slang are constantly trying words out, Eble says. "Who knows
why some words catch people's attention and some don't?" she asks.
Slang isn't subject to notions of correctness, so "it's allowed to do what language does, which is change," Eble says.
"Since slang doesn't tend to show up in dictionaries or in writing that has a serious purpose, the use of slang is
ungoverned. It can change in its own merry way without anybody getting upset. In a way, slang is a microcosm of the
language as a whole."
-- Angela Spivey
North Carolina's China Connection
The Jiangyin Mission Station: An American Missionary Community in China 1895-1951.
By Lawrence D. Kessler. University of North Carolina Press. 212 pages, $24.95.
Lawrence Kessler, professor of history, describes how a North Carolina community reached out to another culture
through the work of missionaries in China's lower Yangzi River Valley from 1895 to 1951.
"Historically, North Carolina had constant interaction with the outside world, and that is a story that needs to be told.
North Carolina is not an isolated state. This missionary activity indicates how it is part of the world," Kessler says.
Kessler studied how missionaries supported by the First Presbyterian Church of Wilmington served many of the medical,
educational, and spiritual needs of the Chinese at the Jiangyin Mission Station.
"I think it was only through secular services that the mission movement was really having somewhat of an impact on
China," Kessler says. In addition to the missionaries' role in establishing and running necessary hospitals and schools, the
missionaries often served as peacekeeepers because warlord violence raged through China during the early part of this
century.
"Local citizens were desperate in trying to avoid being caught between fighting armies, and very often they turned to
missionaries to act as their intermediaries to the various warlord generals, asking them to call a truce or spare the city,"
Kessler says.
But in the 1920s and '30s, when China became more nationalistic, foreign intercessions became unwelcome. "The
Chinese felt that the missionaries, who were foreign, bringing foreign religion and propagating it in their schools, were
undermining China's traditional values and were working against Chinese control of their own fate," Kessler says. In
addition, it was difficult for the Chinese to differentiate between a group of Westerners who were missionaries and other
Westerners who tried to dominate China politically, militarily, and financially. The cultural imperialism debate ended in
1949 when the new communist government sent all missionaries home.
Even though the relationship ended, Kessler believes that the missionaries' fifty years of service overseas helped to
change perspectives at home.
Many of the women from Wilmington found opportunities to work outside the home at a time when it was difficult for
women in the United States to do so. The missions needed women to convert Chinese women and children because
Chinese culture allowed American men to interact only with other men. "I think the American mission movement was
one that helped promote a sense of women's development and liberation," Kessler says.
Kessler believes that the missionaries' work broadened the international perspective of North Carolinians, too. "There
was enormous interaction between the missionaries and other Americans at a personal level," he says. The parishioners
learned about China through the missionaries' speeches, correspondences, and photographs. "It was a broadening
experience for a lot of people."
-- Colleen Haikes
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