Leslie Savan

In Slam Dunks and No Brainers: Pop Language in Your Life, the Media, and, Like...Whatever. Leslie Savan takes on...well, it's hard to say what she thinks she's taking on, and draws the conclusion that...well, it's hard to say what conclusions she's drawn, either.

Part of this is a definitional issue. Savan never defines "pop language," and you can imagine what results when someone pens 350-odd pages without any clear topic in mind, to say nothing of an argument she's trying to defend. This leaves Savan no choice but to play Justice Potter in the Supreme Court of her book: she knows pop language when she sees it, and it apparently includes television, advertising, and movie catchphrases; advertising buzzwords, slang, corporate and psychology lingo, minority dialects, Bush administration talking points, contractions, and tech talk, although it is apparently not all of those things all the time.

Another part of the problem is the text's origins. Much of Slam Dunks and No Brainers has been previously published in a variety of venues over the past decade, and like most books cobbled together after the fact from disparate sources, the result is a bumpy read without any unifying tone, subject, or underlying thesis.

But the majority of it is an ignorance issue. A read-through of the acknowledgements reveals that not only Savan is no scholar of linguistics or etymology, she didn't attempt to familiarize herself with these subjects before writing about them, instead relying heavily a few experts for all her information relating to slang, dialect, and television. In other words, this book is not only biased by her ill-informed interpretations, but by her overweening dependence on a very few sources as well. This may be one thing in an 800-word article for Slate, but it's another thing entirely on a book that purports to be an extensive examination of the topic.

Finally, it's clear, from Savan's examples and definitions of, and attempts to use in the text, "pop language," that she is woefully unfamiliar with many of the terms she believes herself to be "explaining." She misuses many slang words and phrases, and on at least two occasions offers incorrect etymologies for the terms she's discussing.

The upshot of all of this is that Savan's book actually says less than the "empty" language she (poorly) tries to explain and decry.… (altro)