Episode 57: Slanguage

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Social Sciences, Arts, Performing Arts, Science

4.6 • 42.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2017

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it has pretty much always driven older people crazy. But the linguist John McWhorter says all the "likes" and LOLs are part of a natural – and inevitable –evolution of language. This week on Hidden Brain, why language can't "sit still."

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you have teenagers or work closely with young people, chances are you've had
0:05.7	mystifying conversations like this one.
0:08.1	LIT, it means that it's going to be exciting or fun and that you should be there.
0:15.4	Like that party is going to be lit.
0:18.2	My producer Maggie Penman recently went on a slang-finding mission in Washington DC.
0:23.3	She ended up talking to a group of college students from American University.
0:26.6	Yeah, it turns another one.
0:30.7	But I don't know what's turned.
0:34.0	It's one of those words that you just can't really define.
0:35.8	You just have to use it in the context.
0:38.5	It's going to be lit.
0:40.5	It's going to be lit.
0:41.5	It's going to be lit.
0:42.5	It's going to be lit.
0:43.5	It's going to be lit at 11 p.m.
0:44.5	It's going to be lit at 1 a.m.
0:45.5	And then it'll be ratchet at 2 a.m.
0:48.5	Ratchet?
0:49.5	Ratchet.
0:50.5	Yeah, ratchet.
0:51.5	Oh my gosh.
0:52.5	Everybody's sloppy.
	...

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