A PLEA FOR GOOD SLANG.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 846, 18 June 1910, Page 9

A PLEA FOR GOOD SLANG.

A great deal of slang (a good word; once a tiling slung oil or along?) ought to be taken up into language, which cannot- but contain endless ancient slang, more or loss transformed. In the earliest times, indeed, when men. must needs be pointedly expressive—or die — was not language all slang?' For good slang is .always pithy, as this last word itself is. In original speech', every sound, every emphasis,- every pause and rush, all the. adding and the clipping, each shade of accent and tone, all clicking and grunting, "chest" Nor ''head" notes or nasal sounds, increasing the human wealth of indicative power and efficiency, gave Man more mastery, greater ease of intentionally concerted action. And the tongue developed moro and moro skill in superseding Attitude and Gesture, as these had surpassed Action. Of course Slang must undergo a long probation of rising association, of gain in delicacy and'dignity as well as in forco and point; it must not call up the coarse, abusive, gross, or vicious, the reckless or .blasphemous, or even the merely forcible; and it ought not to owe its characteristic forco to mere violation of grammar, etc. But its cutting point is 'often precious, like that of a diamond. And its truest forms are often the play-words or combined word-forms that children spontaneously evolve, adventure? generally at present either suppressed by rebuke or treated and used by their ciders as only funny or quaint <jutfositio3, or blunders to at. In truth tjie effort to acquire mow expression by any means is priceless. One winder; how many eoUoinin' forms, like "turning up one's nose, 1 ' are survivals of lostipower of muscular expression? Perhaps, ages ago, a man could actually turn up his nose, and thus sniff tliu urgent signals of odour far above him 1 : And we still the tst, tst, or annoyance and4he Hm of puzzle or suspicion. We wink, or shake, or nod, or bow the head, clasp hands, stamp with feet, or jwbit with finger, etc., and call this gesture-language. All these things express and signify, denote and convey, meaning or hetray feeling.- And that means, as we say, that they "matter" ; that they mako a difference to us as relevant and cqnseciuent,' important, and even sometimes indispensable. Hero wo' have an immensely significant question, What does .it matter? no doubt originally slang. For "matter" is litre active, not merely constitutive or resistive. It it matters it does something, is energetic; and in ordinary usage what, matters signifies. And what signifies is what we lose by ignoring what concerns us. For Sign of evory possible kind; even a "stony glare" or a "sharp glance," a yawn or grunt or hiss or whine or roar or whisper in Man or animal —finally warning sounds or sights in inorganic nature —must matter, and may matter very much to us. The explorer in tho wilds, tho scientist in his laboratory, kndw_this well. For all signifies, may even be incalculably significant to us, in a world where Matter in Motion, and motion creating matter, rule us actually or ■ figuratively; entering in some form or another, direct or borrowed, into all our experience and all our interests. So let- us value'what good slang may give us, and not allow it to deform or depreciate the true norms of language, but rather mako it more racy in the sense, of moro expressive. . | —V.W.,.in tho "Westminster.'