Student Slang Research Articles

Humanism and Dialogue

Humanism and Dialogue It has long been recognized that, as Paul Oskar Kristeller puts it, 'the most extensive and direct expression of the thought of the humanists proper must be sought in . . . their treatises and dialogues'.1 Nevertheless, surprisingly little attention has been paid to Renaissance humanist dialogues in terms of what might be called the sociology of their literary form. Though David Marsh has recently studied the form and themes of quattrocento Italian dialogues, he does not develop for the humanist dialogue the awareness of context that Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg develop for medieval phdosophical literature, which they argue 'is closely associated with medieval schools and universities as well as with the material and psychological conditions prevading at these institutions'.2 Yet, in the continuing debate over humanism, the important form of the dialogue, with the clues it gives us of its social milieu, may be extremely revealing. The argument of this paper will be that the humanistic dialogue differs in significant respects from the kinds of dialogue that flourished in scholastic contexts. I shall be concerned with Latin dialogues, and I shall treat scholastic dialogues drawn from die Middle Ages, and humanist dialogues drawn from the Renaissance as ideal types of socio-intellectual activity. M y paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I shall briefly summarize some features of two prevalent forms of scholastic dialogue. In the second, I shall discuss some contrasting features of Renaissance humanist dialogues. In the third, I shall sketch the social milieu that is suggested by the humanists' dialogues. I The question of the social milieu of Renaissance humanism has become pressing in the light of interpretations of medieval scholaticism and humanism, which raises problems for the classic interpretation of Renaissance humanism put forward by Kristeller. Kristeller links the nineteenth-century term 'humanism' to the late Renaissance term humanista, which originated in student slang and which 'designated the professional teacher of the studia humanitatis . . . The old term humanista ... reflects the . . . modest, but correct, contemporary ^Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney, New York, 1979, 28. 2 D. Marsh, The Quattrocento Dialogue: Classical Tradition and Humanist Innovation, Cambridge, Mass., 1980; Kenny and Pinborg, Medieval Philosophical Literature, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100-1600, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny and J. Pinborg, Cambridge, 1982, 11. Another recent and valuable study of Humanist dialogues is K.J. Wilson, Incomplete Fictions: The Formation of English Renaissance Dialogue, Washington, DC, 1985, 198 J J7 . Tinkler view that the humanists were the teachers and representatives of a certain branch of learning which at that time was expanding and in vogue, but well limited in its subject matter'. Renaissance humanism, therefore, is just another academic specialization, focussed on the studia humanitatis, which Kristeller calls 'a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines,' comprising grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history and moral philosophy: the relationship between humanism and scholasticism was 'as much a matter of departmental rivalry as it was a clash of opposite ideas or philosophies'. The shortcomings of this picture begin with the nature of scholasticism. As David Knowles observes, 'A "scholastic" was originally one w h o learnt or who taught in a school, specifically in a school of the middle ages, and scholastic philosophy is the kind of philosophy taught in those schools'.4 Thus, for instance, Sten Ebbeson remarks that 'scholastic method was not peculiar to logic, but the twelfth-century renaissance of philosophical studies concentrated on this elementary discipline'.5 It is thus difficult to see how humanism, understood primarily in terms of a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines in the schools and universities, could have been significantly different from scholasticism - except to the extent that, as Richard McKeon argued, there was a shift of emphasis within the Arts course.6 If w e are allowed to trace the term 'scholasticism' beyond the Middle Ages to Antiquity, w e will find Quintilian referring to a student in general - in this case a student of rhetoric - as a scholasticus. 'We have been in a position to acquire varied knowledge, to familiarize ourselves with the principles that should guide our life...

On the description of subcultural lexicons: A multidimensional approach.

The purpose of this study was to describe the differences in the multidimensional structure of social- and personality-trait words as a function of experience within a specific subculture. Fifteen freshmen and 15 seniors at Princeton University ascribed 60 trait adjectives, 20 of which belonged to the student slang lexicon, to people they knew. Disassociation measures between pairs of traits were used to provide a multidimension al scaling (MDS) solution. A twodimensional solution provided a satisfactory fit for the freshman data, while a three-dimensional solution was needed to provide a satisfactory fit for the senior data. Axes for these solutions were located by multiple-regr ession techniques, using data obtained from independent samples of subjects who provided unidimensional scale-ratings of the trait words. For the freshman solution, the two dimensions of intellectual- academic desirability and social desirability provided a satisfactory interpretation of the semantic space. For the senior solution, an additional dimension, Princeton social desirability, was required to provide a satisfactory interpretation. These data, as well as differences between freshmen and seniors in the locations of particular trait names, provide a quantitative description of the acquisition of a specific subcultural lexicon.

Student Slang in Hays, Kansas

Student Slang in Hays, Kansas

Some Problems in the Study of Campus Slang

FOLLOWING THE FIRST APPEARANCE of Berrey and Van den Bark's disLtinguished American Thesaurus of Slang' in I942, a number of separate observations continued to be made on campus slang without, as a rule, pointing to some of the unique problems involved. For obvious considerations of size, the ATS was unable to lavish additional space on subtleties or distinctions in vocabulary. One must supplement this work with Wentworth and Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang2 and with a number of shorter studies of the sort which have appeared in this journal.3 The lists provided in these shorter studies are useful, as my own citations will indicate; but they fail to distinguish, except casually, between what is unique at the particular campus discussed and what may be shared with other campuses or even with other occupational groups. The result is that the lists either confirm, usefully enough, the continued life of familiar words and expressions or add some which are new but cannot always be delimited geographically. This article is intended as a preliminary survey of problems in the collection and analysis of the student slang vocabulary. This vocabulary is, to begin with, much less circumscribed than that spoken, say, by lumberjacks or by stagehands. Many different geographical areas and social backgrounds are represented on a campus, at least on a relatively large one; and some students, through summer employment, may have absorbed these same closed vocabularies of trades or technical skills.

American Indian Student Slang

traditions may include folk speech and, more particularly, slang. At Haskell Institute, one of the most famous federal schools for Indians, located in Lawrence, Kansas, the more than I,ooo students attending in 1962 came from no fewer than eighty different tribes from thirty states. Although the boys and girls who go to Haskell for vocational training may still speak their native language, the language spoken at the school is English. Thus, English serves as one of the few aspects of non-Indian culture which all the students are willing to accept. They do so because it is necessary as a means of communication. Whereas a Navaho at home may resent English and accordingly may prefer to speak to his friends in Navaho, at Haskell he finds he must use English to converse with new friends, who may be Eskimo or Chippewa or the like. For this reason, the English spoken at Haskell is of special interest. An investigation reveals that there are a number of slang expressions in widespread use. Many of these expressions appear to be unique. This sampling of slang also serves to demonstrate how, in an acculturation situation, the borrowing culture may not necessarily simply accept the dominant culture and its language, but may rather adapt some aspects of that culture to form something entirely new. Some of the student slang at Haskell corresponds quite closely to standard American school usage. To cram*l means 'to study hard right before an examination'; flunk* means 'to fail a test or course'; goof off* is 'to waste time'; get shook* (very popular) means 'to be upset'; fake somebody out means 'to deceive someone'; go stag* is 'to attend a dance or social function alone'; hit the pad* means 'to go to bed'; brown nose* or suck around* means 'to curry favor'; shag* or shag A [ss] means 'to remove oneself from or leave a place'; make tracks is 'to go'; and get a charge* out of something is 'to enjoy it.' Here one finds a sex difference. The girls often use rhyming slang: large charge; while the boys say big charge. There are other obvious borrowings. A church key is 'a beer can opener'; a rumble* is 'a fight'; a big wheel* is 'an important

Kansas University Slang: A New Generation

IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, the developing concern for the oral as opposed to the written tradition and the romantic attachment to the folk and their idiom resulted in a host of minor but scholarly studies of slang. The remarkable vitality of common speech attracted the attention of both anthropologists and poets. E. B. Tylor, one of the founders of modern anthropology, felt that an analysis of the evolution of slang would reveal those general laws common to the growth of all languages; Walt Whitman, thirty years after the first publication of Leaves of Grass, revealed his lifetime preoccupation with American speech in a meaty article covering many of the diverse types of slang, ranging from state soubriquets to hashhouse jargon.' The variety of Whitman's examples perhaps indicates the increased awareness of the great number of slang vocabularies employed by different social and occupational groups. The excitement generated by the active recording of American slang is clearly evidenced in the growing number of studies which concentrated upon the characteristic diction of the American undergraduate. As early as 185 I, B. H. Hall presented a compendium of college expressions in use in the New England area.2 Hall's collection is significant because, though primarily a study of the full range of university experiences, it does contain an abundant amount of student slang. The traditional dismissal of slang as a short-lived linguistic phenomenon is belied by the continuing currency of many of Hall's words and phrases, for example, cram, crib, cut, flunk, and grind. Perhaps the most scholarly nineteenth-century study of student slang was made by Willard C. Gore in I895.3 Gore attempted to find etymological origins, determine morphological changes, and describe the figurative direction of university expressions. Included in Gore's list are: bone, cram, crib, grind, and loaded. At the turn of the century, the most ambitious project for the collection of American college slang was undertaken by some members

Soviet student slang

Soviet student slang

"A Giria Academica": Portuguese Student Slang

Ever changing, student slang covers so much ground, both in space and time, that its study requires much persistence.* But it is an entertaining study, for, apart from the curious forms of the words themselves, this vocabulary reflects and brings to mind a world of traditions past and present, the notorious praxes academicas of Coimbra in particular, to which Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelos, distinguished alumnus of the Coimbra Law School in the sixteenth century, seemed to allude when he referred to the paddle of the students' brotherhood in his play Eufrosina (Coimbra, 1555, Act v, sc. 8). The literature on the subject is small and recent. In Portugal, the slang of the Coimbra students was first explored by two young philologists at the suggestion of Manuel de Paiva Boldo. One of these was Amilcar Ferreira de Castro, who in 1947 published a thesis on Giria dos Estudantes de Coimbra. It was in the main a commented word list, compiled to a large extent on the spot, among students, drawing distinctions between current terms and those found in publications which had gone out of fashion. He also distinguished between terms used in schools generally and others--the vast majority-used at Coimbra University exclusively. Castro's still imperfect and incomplete study was improved upon by Delmira Ma~gs, first in A Giria dos Estudantes de Coimbra, a critical book review, in Boletim de Filologia ix (1948), 356-368, which added fresh material from Gil Moreno's older slang list of 1908-09. Her second article, A Formagio da Giria Estudiantil, Revista de Portugal, Serie A: Lingua Portuguesa, xv (1950), 101-116, dealt with the morphology and the semantics of Coimbra student slang more systematically than Castro had done. She showed, for example, how only sixteen terms had survived in a span of less than forty years since Gil Moreno had compiled his all inclusive slang vocabulary. Such rapidity of turnover constantly requires, as she pointed out, new studies on the subject. To be sure, a number of Portuguese have compiled glossaries of slang expressions, and Brazilians have done likewise, the latest in date being Antenor Nascentes, with his Giria Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1953). These glossaries comprise all kinds of slang and thus do not serve our purpose well. very useful, secondary source is the large literature of school reminiscences. Its finest examples are Trindade Coelho's In Illo Tempore, Estudantes, Lentes e Futricas (6th ed. Lisbon, Portugalia, n.d., 1st ed., 1902) and, for Brazil, Jos6 Luiz de Almeida Nogueira's Academia de Sio Paulo, Tradi~&es e Reminiscencias, Estudantes, EstudantJes, Estudantadas (9 vols. S. Paulo, 1907-12). To my knowledge, Brazilians have, however, not yet given close attention to the slang cultivated by students, either because it has seemed little developed to them, as one of my correspondents, a student in S. Paulo, surmised, or else because student slang has yet to be reached by Brazilian philology, which is of recent date.