WE'RE COOL, MOM AND DAD ARE SWELL: BASIC SLANG AND GENERATIONAL SHIFTS IN VALUES

Abstract

�� Not all slang terms are created equal. Though slang is commonly described as serving a variety of social and psychological functions, it is not generally noted that these different functions imply the existence of different categories of slang. This paper outlines one particular kind of slang, what I call basic slang, and identifies the functions that shape its use and longevity. To illustrate the significance of basic slang and the semantic structure that underlies it, I present here an extensive social and historical discussion of the basic slang terms swell and cool with attention to their uses in American speech from the 1910s to the present. Briefly, a basic slang lexeme is a slang expression that emerges when a young generation or cohort takes on a set of values starkly opposed to the values of its elders and begins to use a positive slang expression that is semantically linked to its new value orientation. It differs from most slang in that it typically endures for one or more generations, is used pervasively, and is applied to a wide array of referents as a general term of approval. The basic slang terms discussed here, swell and cool, can in many contexts be loosely glossed as meaning ‘good’. But in addition to this broad applicability, both swell and cool have core referents, namely, the values adhered to by the young generation that distinguish them from their elders. These basic slang terms are subtypes of what Flexner (1975) calls a counterword, an expression whose meaning has expanded to a broader and more general applicability than that of the term’s original referent. It is the special semantic structure of counterwords that makes them particularly appropriate as basic slang terms and helps account for their unique qualities: that is, their endurance over long periods not merely in occasional use, but as pervasively used slang expressions whose main functions are (1) to express approval and (2) to align the speaker with an attitude or set of values characterizing his or her generation. The slang terms cool and swell and the attitudes that comprise their core meanings allow their users to employ them tirelessly for decades and not “wear them out,” because those who use them in their heyday never tire of identifying themselves with the values they represented. Counterwords that serve as