This week: Insults. What are they and why is it okay to use them with your best friends? We get into it. Plus a couple of linguistic-related articles to share and all the usual footnotes. Here we go!
"Why do you want to work in radio?" John, an already ancient 62, perched on his favorite bench, cigarette dangling from his scarred fingers.
"I dunno. I'm thinking about journalism and this seemed a way in?" At 16 I was, charitably, a little awkward. John, the senior engineer at the radio station I worked for, had quickly become my favorite co-worker. He always had a joke, the depth and breadth of musical knowledge was legendary, and he could make one hell of a barbeque.
"And you've got a face made for radio." I'll admit. It took me a second. Because that's what John did. He asked a serious question and then, right when you had shifted into an answer-serious-questions-from-a-grownup-seriously-mode, he suckered you with a seriously good insult.
It's one of my favorite memories of him.
I was reminded of that anecdote recently because I heard the same insult pop up as a self-burn during a podcast. The two hosts were contemplating moving their podcast to YouTube but they have faces1...well, you get it. Insults have an awkward place in the history of English language and cultures. Often scathing, sometimes merely hurtful, and occasionally, maliciously funny. And, as tempting as it is to just fill up the entire essay with examples of great insults from pop culture, this is a linguistics2 blog!
Let’s start with some definitions.
From Cambridge Dictionary Online:
(v) to say or do something to someone that is rude or offensive:
(n) an offensive remark or action
From Merriam-Webster Online:
(v) to treat with insolence, indignity, or contempt
(n) a gross indignity: an instance of insolent or contemptuous speech or conduct
The word insult goes back to the 14th century and starts with a little bit different meaning than the ones shown above. From Etymology Online:
1560s, "triumph over in an arrogant way" (obsolete), from French insulter "to wrong; reproach; triumph arrogantly over," earlier "to leap upon" (14c.) and directly from Latin insultare "to assail, to make a sudden leap upon,"
That's the verb usage, by the way. The noun came a bit later and in the more-or-less standard way that verbs become nouns3.
Sense of "verbally abuse, affront, assail with disrespect, offer an indignity to" is from 1610s.
What's interesting to me between these definitions and history, is the persistent thought that an insult is a way of fighting and beating someone which ties in with the idea of punching up4 or punching down. When we are faced against someone with more power, be that social, economic, physical, or emotional, we can insult them with the blessings of the crowd. Think about a stand-up comedian facing down a heckler, or the underdog squaring up to the bully. Ok, fine, here's one of my favorite examples from pop culture:
I had no idea that Steve Martin's 1987 comedy Roxanne was a re-telling of Cyrano de Bergerac5 the first time I saw it. And I wouldn't have cared if you had told me because the only thing that I remembered was this scene. I still love it.
But there's a third aspect to the insult that is, uh, punching equally? Punching across? You see it in sports all the time. Think about two boxers squaring up at the weigh-in, trying to psyche each other out and put each other down. Or, better yet, think about rappers battling each other. Diss tracks are literally insults6 set to a beat. Done live or on record, these battles are done when two rappers are vying to name themselves as greater than the other.
So, with all this in mind, why do we insult our friends? Why do I cherish the memory of an elder mentor insulting me? In a lot of English-derived cultures7, formality is reserved for when we don't like someone very much. It's seen as cold and unfeeling, something we use to distance ourselves from others. Insults, on the other hand, can be used to show something almost like intimacy. In-jokes and pet names8 often have their start as a kind of insult, but one that time and familiarity have worn into a bond of affection rather than barb.
In lieu of a goodbye, I'll leave you with this closing quote from Oscar Levant, "Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome."
Stay Curious,
J
Linguistic Bits 'n' Bobs:
This week brought two language-related articles across my desk that I wanted to share. The first is from the good folks at Lifehacker and is a godsend to hapless Gen-Xers like myself: Skrt, Cheugy, and All the Other 'Gen Z' Slang You Might Need Help Decoding
The second is more serious but incredibly fascinating. Twitter user Sam Ettinger takes us along on a long thread detailing the attempts to bring the traditional Mongol script online. It's a deceptively complicated challenge, not least because Mongolian is written not as letters or syllables but as parts of letters wherein the pronunciation stays the same but the written symbols change depending on where and in which words they are used. Absolutely fascinating and a reminder of how much work there is still to do in not just preserving languages but making them useable in the modern world.
Don't get me wrong. I know this is an old joke. As far as I'm aware, it goes all the way back to the advent of radio via the vaudeville comedians who first changed their acts to embrace the nascent technology.
Nominally, anyway.
Having said that, when I did watch Cyrano as an adult, it was one of those "oh, so that's where that reference comes from!" moments from start to finish.
The best fictional example I can think of is 8 Mile, but I'm sure there are more going back to the very advent of rap.
As in cultures where the primary language is English.
There's a thing now where prominent Tik Tokkers (that sounds weird) create a name for their followers and fans. A lot of them seem to be derived from slang, swear words, and, of course, insults. Go ahead and check your bingo card for "dissertation subject."