Mind-Rain: Your Favorite Authors on Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series

All That Glitters Is Not Hovery by Lili Wilkinson

All That Glitters Is Not Hovery

Slang, Language, and Identity

By Lili Wilkinson

How many of you have ever said “bubbly” or “bogus” or “icy” to an uncomprehending bystander? That’s right, all of you have.

And wasn’t it fun?

Lili Wilkinson is here to tell you why. She thinks it’s because if you’re a teenager, language belongs to you. You’re officially in charge of slang and poetry and song lyrics and nicknames. So it’s no wonder that you’d find a set of books as slang-ridden as the Uglies series very brain-infecting.

Away we go.

***

Teens are generally more interested in language than adults. They produce

more slang, more poetry, more neologisms and nicknames, and memorize

more song lyrics than their elders. They’re still acquiring language in ways

that most adults aren’t: as a tool for self-definition.

—Scott Westerfeld

Shay sometimes talked in a mysterious way, like she was quoting the lyrics of some band no one else listened to. (Uglies)

What if you had no control over your body? The way you looked, what you wore? How your brain worked? How would you still know that you were you?

When you see me, how do you know I’m me, and not someone else?

There’s how I look, where I live, what I wear. What I listen to, read, watch.

And there’s the way I talk.

I live in Melbourne, Australia. Here, when you blow off fifth period and go shopping, you’re wagging. When I give someone a dirty look, I’m giving them a greasy. In Adelaide, 1,000 kilometres away, wagging is cutting, and greasies are daggers.

Where I live, carbonated beverages are called soft drinks, not pop or fizz or soda. We sleep under a doona, not a duvet or comforter, and eat capsicums, not bell peppers. We travel in lifts, not elevators, and the storage compartment at the back of our cars is called the boot, not the trunk.

Sometimes only a single letter is different—like the way we have maths classes and the U.S. has math classes. You wouldn’t think a single letter could tell you much about a person, would you? But it does.

These things mark me as Australian, and that’s a big part of my identity. But the language I use isn’t just about where I come from.

Do you write please or plz or pls? When you sign off an e-mail, do you say love and other indoor sports, or with love and hugs or xxxxxxxoxoxoxo or kthxbai?

All of these things shape who you are, make you different from the people around you. I can tell my dad is over fifty, because he says groovy and uses the phrase surfing the net. *cringe*

The language that Tally uses in the Uglies series is what makes her come alive. Especially the slang she uses. Westerfeld is very careful not to use current slang in his work, for fear of his books dating too quickly or trying too hard. “Slang,” he says, “is like a fish. Good when it’s fresh or when it’s old, a fossil. But in between is a nasty period, something you don’t want at all.”