Talking Street
We’ve all seen it.
The little swiggly green line of shame that appears whenever Microsoft Office doesn’t feel comfortable with your syntax. Turning off the ‘check my grammar’ function on my computer is one of the first things I do whenever I get a new word processing program, but I tend to leave spellcheck on, minus most of its functions. I do not, for example, want my occasionally wacky use of capitalisation corrected; if I hit the indent button several times, it is not because I’m having a difficult moment with a recalcitrant little finger, and above all else, more than anything, I refuse to believe that this many words in (British) English have ‘z’ in them.
However, even with spellcheck stripped down to its absolute minimum, I still get the regular red line of reproach on a fairly regular basis. Street slang, it seems, is not permitted by Microsoft, and writing characters such as the Tribe, who talk entirely in text messaging, creates whole pages of red that infuriate the slightly obsessive editor inside of me.
It’s a question which I suspect has been dogging the English language since the time of the Norman conquest… even though, strictly speaking, the way I’m using language when writing the Tribe is wrong, is it still permissible based on usage? I know several people, generally, it has to be said, older people, who get very worked up when they hear people talking on the street, exclaiming in their linguistic pain, “But ‘sick’ isn’t good!” Obviously as someone who’s background is obscenely book-heavy, I’ve been bred to turn my nose up at street slang, but I must admit, listen long enough and even I can appreciate a certain charm in the utterly ungrammatical, entirely incorrect language of the inner city. Often delivered at break-neck speed, and replete with all sorts of filler sounds – ‘yeah man’ and ‘like’ being common exemplars – never-the-less there’s a certain enticing, bantering rhythm about the language of ‘well sick, blood!’ that, for my part, draws the listener in. Even if this wasn’t the case, I don’t think Microsoft can deny that usage is beginning to trump strict grammatical form. If we accept that ‘street’ is going to more and more introduce into the natural flow of our daily language, it does raise another interesting question – if language is mankind’s greatest invention and gift, then will our use of it change us? What will we sound like, in fifty years time, when we’re all talking well street yo, and how will it change our society as a whole? The question is potentially troubling, in that words are often a mirror of society, and as a woman I do begin to question whether being known as a bitchin’ bitch is not, in fact, a linguistic regression to less enlightened times. Then again… ‘bitch’ in that context arguably no longer has the meaning as understood by Microsoft Word… though that could change at any moment, subject to the way the conversation goes. How long, I wonder, until the Prime Minister has to start biggin’ it up with the kidz? And if he does, considering the mastery of saying nothing at great length which politicians have at the moment, will this new use of language be such a bad thing?
