LV. R. Staples
On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 4:37 PM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
i just can't buy the areguments that it is history or cultural personality or sociological history that accounts for what are essentially changes in popular slang or popular speech. there is a way to imagine thinking about this question, which is what does it feel like to the speaker when using these superlatives. we all on this list speak english, and choose when to use certain phrases and avoid others. we do this because of how it feels to speak a certain way, because of our relation with the addressee. some of us wouldn't be caught dead using these phrases. oh, caught dead. others do it purposefully so as to create an image of themselves that they are communicating to the other.
so, do you think you are a tall texan with a large hat when you use some of these stupid, childish expressions? do you think it expresses more of an americanness which you would be expressing?
we all create an image of ourselves, in our minds, through our choice of words. can't we all answer the question of what such diction does for ourselves when we use it?
ken
On 6/4/11 9:02 PM, Lavonda Staples wrote:--A key to understanding our superlatives is an understanding of our sociological history. It has been in very recent times that this country experienced an economic depression. In the case of Texas, the attitude of "bigness" is a direct response to the boom of oil during World War II and to a greater extent, the falling action of the oil crises of the early 1970's. It is a psycho-social reaction to the economic extremes of a mere 30 year period. To go further, we are "bigger" people. Americans, in general, are tall. We respect "bigness." We fear "bigness." We desire bigness and pursue audacity. One only has to view aspects of African American culture habits to gain an insight as generally, mainstream popular American culture is a distilled, watered-down version of the root (African American trends in entertainment).
Here's what makes my argument schizophrenic and circuitous. What is African American or Black American is a distilled or watered-down version of Jamaican, Haitian, Dominican, Yoruba, or Woloff (in example) cultures/civilizations.
Back to American superlatives. It is not a proof of egocentrism. It is the proof of intellectual, physical, and emotional insecurity. The use of these words begs the listener to "see" the speaker and it is also an attempt to grasp authority. To sum it up, to do things in a quiet way is to be invisible. In the Afrocentric paradigm this is a pragmatic, valid, and logical approach to issues and, in the macro, life in general. Conversely, in the western, Eurocentric paradigm there is a raison d'etre of paying attention to those who scream the loudest and with the most money in their pockets or who have the ability to TAKE money out of pockets (the squeaky wheel gets the oil is not a statement of application as to need - it is application given via annoyance). The squeaky wheel can also be seen as a metaphor for the lack of attention paid by the owner of the wagon. 'I must quiet the wheels so that no one will know there is a greater problem with the axle.'
And finally, our use of superlatives only serves the purpose of creating a requirement that official conversation must be enumerated or "bulleted." For, if things are not simply stated there is so much room for deception.
La Vonda Staples
On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu> wrote:
Is there an interconnection between narcissism, arrogance, insularity
and the usage of superlatives? An interesting issue.
I suspect that the documentary 'Supersize me' may have a
clue to the matter. I plan to check it out one of these days.
Dr. Gloria Emeagwali
www.africahistory.net<http://www.africahistory.net/>
www.esnips.com/web/GloriaEmeagwali<http://www.esnips.com/web/GloriaEmeagwali>
emeagwali@ccsu.edu<mailto:emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
________________________________
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Akinloye Ojo [akinloye.ojo@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2011 2:00 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Superlative Expressions in American English
I thank you for the article, this is something I have always considered in American speech. I am not fully convinced that it is due to a sense of superiority. I would concur if we can show that the speakers are actually conscious of this 'super' usage of superlatives. I think they actually don't see/hear it. Another similar explanation that I also find hard to accept came from a friend that it was due to American's exaggerated value of 'self.' I am more inclined to think that it is due to the extra focus on function more than form in American English. Unlike speakers of most of the other English forms in the World, most Americans seem more interested in function/'understanding' rather than form. This is especially truer in non-formal settings. Although one could speculate that this is due to Americans being more 'native' than others but all the other 'English natives' (or inner circle speakers) are not as unconcerned about form as Americans. I remember in 1997, when Michael Johnson and Donovan Bailey had the 150 meter race in Toronto to determine the World's Fastest Man, a local sportscaster here could not contain his excitement. He told us to tune in at 6 to find out the World's most fastest man. We all understood that he was, unconsciously, trying to highlight the value of Baily being faster than fast. We would have preferred that he used the 'correct' phrase right there on his caption- Baily is fastest man.
Finally, I don't think it has to do with Americans being unconscious of other people's gaze. It appears to be more about Americans' unusual heavy focus on function almost to the exclusion of form. For most people here, understanding the core of the conversation is all that matters, it seems. This might probably be the reason also why American English speakers think that 'more' and 'most' are enough for making comparisons. This kills my British friends here (Sen. Obama was not more bold than Sen. McCain in responding to the fuel shortage question!)
Again, thank you for the article.
On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:01 PM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu<mailto:harrow@msu.edu>> wrote:
i enjoy farooq's columns all the time. i began this one skeptical, and was convinced by the end--maybe with one exception
i don't think american lingo is colored by notions of american superiority. we are, maybe like most people, an insular people, unaware of the way others in the world think of the u.s., unconscious of the gaze of others.
i believe that is true of most people everywhere, but that is another issue.
we go about our business in our little corners of wherever we are, not thinking, gee, what do frenchies think of us, what do congolese think of us. we are totally oblivious to the foreign gaze.
so what accounts for this uber-superlativeness? maybe advertising? not really convinced that that drives diction. are we different others who use superlatives in other ways, say by repetition of the same word? i ask farooq that question since i don't have a clue.
ken
On 6/2/11 9:08 PM, Farooq A. Kperogi wrote:
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Superlative Expressions in American English
By Farooq A. Kperogi
A catchphrase Texans cherish about their state is "everything is bigger in Texas." Given Americans' extravagant fondness for exaggerations, intensification, and superlative expressions, they should probably have a shamelessly immodest catchphrase for the whole nation that says, "Everything is biggest in America."
Americans are the masters of superlatives and intensification. I have never seen a people whose conversational language is as full of intentional and unintentional exaggerations as Americans.
In grammar, a superlative is the form of an adjective or adverb that indicates its highest level or degree. In the gradation of the levels or degrees of adjectives or adverbs, it's usual to talk of the base, comparative, and superlative degrees. English superlatives are normally created with the suffix "est" (e.g. wealthiest, strongest) or the word "most" (e.g. most recent, most beautiful). But some words are by nature superlative and require no suffix or "most" to indicate their degree. Examples: absolute, favorite, unique, perfect, etc.
So superlative expressions are boastful, hyperbolic expressions that sometimes have no literal relationship with the reality they purport to describe. In this essay, I identify the commonest superlative expressions I've encountered in American English.
Today, instead of simply saying something like "it's really nice," young Americans say "it totally rocks!" The "best experience" becomes "the absolute best experience ever." Kids no longer just have "best friends"; they now have "Best Friends Forever." There is even an initialism for it: BFF. (An initialism, also called an alphabetism, is an abbreviation made up of first letters of words or syllables, each pronounced separately. E.g. HIV, BFF, CEO). My daughter changes her BFFs every other week! "Forever" now has an expiry date.
On TV, I now hear teenagers use "bestest" (a nonstandard word) to heighten the sense that the superlative adjective "best" conveys, as in: "we had the bestest party ever!" "Baddest" is another nonstandard superlative in American youth lingo. The word has been a part of African-American vernacular English (or Ebonics) for a long time. It's now fully integrated into mainstream, mostly youth, conversational English. But "bad" here is not the absence of good. It is, on the contrary, the surfeit of goodness or "kewlness" (kewlness is derived from "kewl," which is the nonstandard slang term for "cool," i.e., fashionable, excellent, or socially adept) or greatness. So "the baddest guy in town" in the language of the American youth subculture means the best or greatest guy.
The intensifier "very" is now considered tame in American conversational English and has effectively been replaced with "super." People are no longer just "very excited"; they are "super excited." It's no longer common to hear people being described as "very smart"; they are "super smart." An alternative intensifier is "uber," which is borrowed from German. It means extreme or outstanding, as in "uber-hero," "uber-smart professor," etc.
But it appears that "super" has exhausted its intensifying elasticity. It is now being replaced with "super-duper." It's now typical to hear Americans say they are "super-duper excited" or that they have eaten "super-duper burgers."
Perfect. In America, everything is "perfect." During Christmas, New Year, Mother's Day, etc people get "perfect gifts" for their loved ones. When appointment times work well, it's "perfect timing." Things are not just "acceptable"; they are "perfectly acceptable." President Obama once described high-flying young country singer Taylor Swift as a "perfectly nice girl." She is not just nice; she is perfectly nice. Does that mean she has no blemish of any sort? Of course no. It only means "perfect" has lost touch with its original meaning.
When people respond to a question in the affirmative, a simple "yes" is no longer sufficient. They say "absolutely!" The response to a question like "did you have a good time there" will more likely be "absolutely!" than the hitherto conventional "yes, I did."
In America, routine, quotidian events are habitually called "one-of-a-kind." On my daughter's kid TV, programs are almost always described as "one-of-a-kind TV event."
And "best ever" has become the default phrase for just about anything. My daughter calls me "the best dad ever" each time I give her a treat. Any day she has a lot of fun is her "best day ever." Now, Americans are graduating from "ever" to "ever ever." An American friend of mine described one of my Facebook pictures as "my favorite picture of you ever ever"! Well, "favorite" is itself a superlative word that does not admit of any intensifier in standard grammar. To add "ever ever" to "favorite" seems to me like imposing an unbearably excessive burden on my poor little picture!
If an American hates this article, he would probably call it the "worst article ever written article on American fondness for superlatives." If she is a teenager and likes it, she might call it the "bestest written article on American fondness for superlatives ever ever."
This American fascination with exaggeration and superlative language is probably the consequence of the ubiquity of advertising in American life. Advertising has traditionally engaged in hyperbole, deliberate overstatement, and extravagant exaggeration. Now that advertising has become more omnipresent and more intrusive than ever before (this is no American superlative, I swear!) in American life, it is logical that it would influence their everyday language.
Or it could very well be linguistic evidence of the over-sized image Americans cherish about themselves. When you're used to being the world's number one in most things, it's inevitable that it will reflect in your language sooner or later.
But the effect of all this is that it has blurred the dividing line between fact and fiction in everyday American life. I am now dubious of many claims here. Everything here is the "world's biggest." For instance, Atlanta's international airport is called the "world's biggest and busiest airport." Well, it turns out that the claim is not exactly accurate. In terms of the number of passengers that pass through it annually, it is indeed the world's busiest airport. But in terms of land mass, there are much bigger airports in the world.
A modestly sized farmer's market here in Atlanta has also been touted as "the world's biggest farmer's market." If it indeed is, then farmers' markets elsewhere in the world must be really tiny.
Superlatives certainly make language colorful, but I worry that their untrammeled profusion in everyday speech has the potential to desensitize us to actually exceptional things around us.
Postscript
A day after writing this column, I watched a British program here and found young Brits speaking the very superlative expressions that I had thought to be exclusively American. If you look carefully at my previous writings you will probably notice that I too have been "infected" by the American superlative plague!
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Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
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La Vonda R. StaplesAdjunct Professor, Department of Social SciencesCommunity College of the District of Columbia"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
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