One feature of words like this is that like all adolescent slang it varies enormously from one part of the country to the other and one group to the other. I guess at least in Hercules, California. The group response that's so gay was a way of saying, you are so individual. If it matters the expression referred to when one was so into their own thing, he or she didn't care what the group felt. It wore out like most frivolous expressions. I work in the high school and kids don't use that expression anymore. My high schooler used that expression eight years ago. The title that says, that's so gay, that's so yesterday. And in a way what it does -it's an interesting development linguistically because unlike insults that use the old fashion pejorative and disparaging names for groups, this one takes what had become the official positive name for their group but invests it with all of the negative stereotypes that were associated with that group and then broadens it so it just means stupid or lame.ĬONAN: Here is an email we got from Elizabeth in Hercules, California. NUNBERG: Well I think as kids become aware that this is not simply a word for stupid but also the name of a particular sexual orientation, they can't help but make that connection and realize that in some way there is an association of these properties with gay people. And it has in that sense a lot of the properties of old insults like fag.ĬONAN: And I wonder does its connotation change as kids get older? If it's used to people it's used more of boys than of girls. Boys use it more than girls, unlike stupid. That said, it's a little disingenuous for people to say, oh, well this just happens to be a word for uncool or stupid and really has nothing to do with the fact that this same word is used as a name for people with a certain sexual orientation. And kids as early as first and second grade are using this. After all, kids even now don't become aware of homosexuality and - sexual orientation until they're in third or fourth grade. When you're talking about kids on the school yard, probably young kids don't even realize that there is a connection when they first hear it. NUNBERG: And uncool, generally uncool.ĬONAN: And is there - is it said with consciousness that this is related to homosexuals? But very early on after gay became the acceptable standard name for what we now think of as the gay community, it was transformed into this word that means lame, unpleasant, stupid, sometimes disgusting, whatever. So it's much more common now than it was back than. It probably gained steam in the '90s and in the last 10 years. NUNBERG: That's as far back as anybody's been able to trace it. Probably around the mid '80s which is not that much longer, not that long after it was mainstreamed as a word for homosexuals and the homosexual community.ĬONAN: And how far - when did it first - start - in the '80s, late '80s it started becoming that playground insult? When did it change again into that playground pejorative? Professor GEOFFREY NUNBERG (Linguistics, University of California Berkley School of Information): Nice to be back.ĬONAN: And gay many years ago transformed from meaning jolly to become a synonym for homosexual.
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His latest book is "The Years of Talking Dangerously." And he joins us from the studios of member station KQED in San Francisco. And we begin with Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California Berkley. Later in the program the surprising results of an economic study of prejudice against women playwrights. If you deal with this as a parent or a teacher what you do when you hear a kid say, that's so gay? Give us a call 80, email us You can also join the conversation on our Web site, that's at npr.org, click on the TALK OF THE NATION. And many teenager's parents and teachers find the anti-gay implications of the phrase unavoidable and offensive. But some kids are also taunted and bullied for their sexual preference, real or perceived. Gay is a generalized insult with no connection to sexual preference. If you're wondering what a backpack has to do with homosexuality, well, a lot of kids who use the phrase say it doesn't to them. Kids will pick on other kids for wearing a certain backpack, being polite to a teacher, well, pretty much anything.
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Playground putdowns have always been cruel.