2B — Thursday, January 21, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“That’s literally me af.” “The 

party is gonna be turnt!” “Sarah 
Jessica Parker is bae.” “I’m so 
hungry rn.” “Yaaasss queen!” 
“LMAO, I’m dying!” “The club 
is hella lit tonight.” “Netflix and 
chill?”

If you’ve heard any of the 

following phrases, you have either 
encountered a millennial or are 
one.

In every generation, people are 

primarily defined by the period 
in which they live. And in each 
period, a variety of zeitgeists define 
the culture of the moment. They 
can range from fashion to film, 
music to art and TV to literature. 
But perhaps the most significant 
of them all is language, specifically 
the slang used by the generation of 
the time. For millennials — people 
born between the early 1980s and 
the early 2000s — the current slang 
is notable for its hyper-condensed 
diction and common usage in 
social media. In addition to that, 
millennials have created their 
own language through texting, 
and in many cases embedded it 
into everyday talk. Even regularly 
used words, such as “literally,” 
“awkward” and “dying,” have 
completely new meanings within a 
millennial context. We don’t often 
realize it, but millennial slang 
and texting language play active 
roles in our daily lives, whether on 
our phones, on social media or in 
regular conversation. 

Slang

Considering its mass appeal, 

slang has played an integral part 
of the culture in each generation. 
In the 1950s, an age swept up 
in conservative values, young 
people used “swell” as their very 
own colloquialism. “Cool” and 
“groovy” made their way into the 
counterculture of the ’60s and 
’70s, eventually paving the way for 
words like “wicked” and “sweet” 
in the lively era of the ’80s and the 
grunge scene of the ’90s. The early 
’00s contained a slew of slang like 
“redic,” “redonculous,” “whack,” 
“dope” and “sick” that spewed 
from the mouths of the youth. 
These words aimed to go against 
the traditional vernacular, as well 
as to give a collective personality 
to the people who uttered them. 
Nowadays, slang is just as creative 
and innovative as before, yet it’s 
changing at a breakneck speed.

While movies, TV shows and 

music have become crucial in 
influencing slang both in the past 
and in the present, the increasing 
omnipresence of social media and 
social networking have provided 
millennials with platforms onto 
which we can constantly send 
and receive written and spoken 
messages. 
Through 
popular 

sources like Facebook, Instagram, 
Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr and 
Vine, millennials have more access 
not only to new information, but 
also to the most up-to-date lingo. 
According to Julie Coleman, author 
of “The Life of Slang,” words are 
moving around the world within 
weeks and months because of 
social media. “It’s not necessarily 
that language is changing more 
quickly,” Coleman writes. “But 
technologies have developed and 
they allow the transmission of 
slang terms to pass from one group 
to another much more quickly.”

Indeed, 
several 
of 
these 

technologies 
have 
determined 

the way in which millennials 
communicate with one another, 
especially with the invention 
of Twitter and its distinctive 
140-character limit (at least for 
now). 
Several 
news 
websites, 

such as MTV.com and Buzzfeed, 
have adapted millennial slang 
into their headlines and articles 
(i.e. “21 Bold AF Hair Colors 
To Try In 2016”). Through the 
interconnected environment of 
the Internet, millennial slang 
has also been influenced by the 
reinvention of memes — humorous 
images, videos, GIFs or texts that 
are copied and spread online. 
Since the first well-known meme, 
the popular “Kilroy was here” 
graffiti in the 1940s, the “meme” 
has become a modern worldwide 
phenomenon on the Internet and 
other social media platforms. One 
of 2015’s most pervasive was a man 
screaming “What are those?!” at 
a police officer’s shoes. Memes 
may not necessarily be considered 
language, or even slang for that 
matter. However, through the 
technological advancement of the 
Internet, they do carry a cultural 
significance that has shaped the 
way millennials communicate and 
understand one another.

In addition to social media and 

Internet memes, celebrities seem 
to hold some influence over the 
way in which language pervades 
the psyche of the millennial 
generation. Around 2010, rappers 
Soulja Boy and Lil B helped 
popularize the word “swag” in 
their songs “Pretty Boy Swag” 
and “Wonton Soup,” respectively. 
Throwback to middle school. 
In 2011, hip-hop artist and pop 
culture icon Drake publicized the 
acronym “YOLO” (which stands 
for “you only live once,” for those 
still living under a rock) in his rap 
anthem, “The Motto.” This past 
year, DJ Khaled, the famed music 
producer behind the ubiquitous 
pump-up jam “All I Do Is Win” and 
other hits, became a prominent 
source of entertainment, when he 
shared his own catch phrases on 
his Snapchat story. Whether he 
was riding on a jet ski in the dark or 
watering his plants, almost every 
one of DJ Khaled’s Snapchats had 
the producer saying, “Bless up,” 
“The key to success” or “They 
don’t want you to … ” to whomever 
was watching. Given his larger-
than-life personality, 2.8 million 
Instagram followers and major 
popularity on Snapchat, DJ Khaled 
is among many of today’s celebrities 
who exude the spirit and mood of 
the millennial generation.

Millennial slang may as well 

be a way in which we distinguish 
ourselves from other generations, 
but there does seem to be larger 
social implications within the 
language itself.

“Young people are interested 

in expressing themselves in a 
distinctive way that makes them 
feel like they’re part of something,” 
said 
Communications 
Prof. 

Scott Walker Campbell, who is 
also a mobile communications 
researcher 
at 
the 
University. 

“The fact that millennials have a 
distinctive way of speaking and 
some distinctive lingo doesn’t 
make the generation distinctive, 
because my generation did the 
same thing.”

As Campbell also points out, 

slang is simply a cultural trend 
that every generation has, yet 
it manifests and looks different 
within different generations.

“It’s what generations do,” 

Campbell 
said. 
“They 
come 

together, have distinctive qualities, 
distinctive tastes in music, in 
fashion and also in language.”

Perhaps slang is more than 

just a reflection of the current 
culture. Perhaps it’s a subtle 
rebellious response to our parent’s 
generation. But more importantly, 
the slang that’s used today can stem 
from a desire to be recognized, a 
drive to become viral and leave a 
cultural legacy behind.

“There are new ways for 

individual people to have a voice 
and participate in a network and 
system of communication that 
is kind of unlimited,” Campbell 
said. “It’s not about money, 
but about being clever and 
entertaining and cool.”

This leads to the idea that 

people who use slang online and 
on social media are accruing 
commercial value. In this age 
of virality, hashtags and instant 
celebrity, millennials want to be 
recognized and slang is a way 
in which they can do that, not 
just within the realm of social 
networking, but with the rest of 
society. 

Texting language

In addition to slang, texting 

has developed into a language 
of its own for millennials. With 
the revolution of the modern cell 
phone in the early 2000s, texting 
has dramatically affected the 
communication millennials use 
in their everyday lives.

“Millennials 
are 
certainly 

using their thumbs as much or 
more than we’ve seen in past 
generations,” Campbell said.

Because 
texting 
involves 

quick, 
rapid-fire 
responses, 

a 
methodical 
process 
has 

been cultivated as a result, 
where commonly used words 
and 
phrases 
have 
become 

abbreviated. 
Some 
examples 

include “to be honest” changing 
to “tbh,” “very” into “v” and 
“okay” 
into 
the 
universally 

abhorred “k.” 

“There’s this idea that texting 

is chaos and that young people 
don’t know how to use grammar,” 
said English professor Anne 
Curzan. “But I think it’s very 
systematic.”

As an educator and historian 

in the field of the English 
language, Curzan understands 
that older and younger people 
have very different perceptions 
on the way language is used 

today, specifically with changes 
in punctuation. An example she 
uses to demonstrate this idea to 
students and adults is the word 
“okay.” She writes the word three 
times — one by itself, one with a 
period and one with a dot-dot-dot. 
When shown to younger people, 
all three words have very different 
meanings, with “okay.” invoking a 
sense of seriousness and “okay … 
” invoking a feeling of skepticism. 
For the older individuals observing 
the three words, they have no idea 
what the difference is.

“If you actually ask prolific 

texters under the age of 30 
how they are doing this, they 
can tell how to use the correct 
punctuation,” Curzan said.

Millennials also pay very close 

attention to every single detail in 
our texts, so much in fact that we 
tend to nitpick at our words out of 
fear that the person on the other 
end of the conversation will take 
the message in the wrong way.

“There’s this idea that younger 

people in this generation don’t care 
about language,” Curzan said. “I 
just don’t think there’s evidence 
for that. I talk with students, and 
they are very attentive with details. 
Spoken and written language is 
how we present ourselves to the 
world.”

Curzan 
also 
believes 
that 

texting is “rapid and very much 
like a dialogue, but you can’t see the 
person most of the time.” However, 
as she mentions, texting has 
adapted to try to create some form 
of tone and emotional expression 
through acronyms like “lol” and, 
more recently, emojis. By using 
these shortened forms of written 
speech, millennials are better 
able to express themselves in new 
and interesting ways. Emojis have 
particularly grown in popularity 
ever since their international 
inclusion on the iPhone. They 
have revolutionized and enhanced 
textual communication by literally 
emoting the thoughts and feelings 
of the person behind the phone. 
People can choose from a diverse 
palette of emojis to express 
emotion, whether it’s using “the 
heart eyes” emoji to flirt or the 
“face with tears of joy” emoji 
to show a hysterical reaction to 
something.

As CollegeHumor hilariously 

satirized in a 2014 video, titled 
“How We’ll All Talk in The Future,” 
emojis could potentially find their 
way into colloquial language. The 
clip depicts two young women 
having a conversation using emojis 
instead of words. In the context of 
the video, the emoji of the “face that 
looks like Edvard Munch’s ‘The 
Scream’ ” apparently translates to 
“no way!” This probably won’t be 
the way people will actually speak 
in the future, but the video makes 
a compelling point about how 
powerful and prevalent emojis, 
and texting language in general, 
have become for millennials. 

Lingo as a linguistic merit

Like text messaging, it’s easy to 

dismiss slang as a simple form of 
primitive speech. But for a while 
now, slang has been recognized as 
having linguistic merit, according 
to Curzan.

“Slang is linguistic creativity 

at work,” she said. “Part of being 
human is being creative with 
language and slang is language at 
some of its most creative.”

This seems to be the opinion of 

not only Curzan, but the linguistic 
community at large. Each year, the 
people behind Oxford Dictionary, 
Merriam-Webster 
and 
the 

American Dialect Society, the 
latter of which Curzan is part of, 
decide which words are the oddest, 
most innovative and most popular 
of the year. For most publications, 
the word of the year is chosen 
based on how frequently the word 
is used or how new the word is. 
Most recently, Oxford Dictionary’s 
word of the year technically wasn’t 
even a word; it was the “face with 
tears of joy” emoji. For Merriam-
Webster, the word of the year was 
“-ism.” The American Dialect 
Society chose “they” (referring 
to the singular gender-neutral 
pronoun) as their WOTY. Other 
recent winners for WOTY have 
included 
“#blacklivesmatter,” 

“hashtag,” “app” and “tweet.” 

As informal as slang can be, it 

shapes culture both universally 
and exclusively. It gives a voice to 
generations and morphs constantly 
with the changing of technology 
and media. But most importantly, 
as linguist Stephen Pinker once 
said, language itself “is not so much 
a creator and shaper of human 
nature so much as a window onto 
human nature.”

That’s pretty lit.

MILLENNIAL LINGO
From Page 1B

MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW

 Blend together a unicorn, 
an artistically original J-Pop 
Britney Spears and the entire 
city of Tokyo 
— whatever 
image comes 
to mind, what-
ever hybrid 
creature that 
produces, 
the result is 
Grimes.
 Maybe I’m 
living under 
a rock music-
filled rock, but the first I ever 
heard of Grimes was two 
months ago upon the release 
of her critically acclaimed Art 
Angels. The unusual synthpop 
sound that Grimes has mas-
tered is part of what makes 
her album so intriguing; noth-
ing produced in 2015 is any-
thing like Art Angels. Grimes 
is first and foremost an artist 
— being a musician is just a 
small part of who she is, and I 
think that really shows in her 
latest music video for “Kill V. 
Maim.”
 The first time I listened to 
“Kill V. Maim,” I envisioned a 
slightly more badass Princess 
Peach from Mario Kart zip-
ping through a neon-lit Tokyo. 
It turns out that either I’m psy-
chic or Grimes is really good at 

making you visualize her world 
the way she wants you to see 
it because the music video for 
“Kill V. Maim” is pretty much 
what I imagined two months 
ago. It’s fun. It’s artsy af. It’s 
unlike anything out there.
 Grimes and a sexy squad 
of posh punks take over our 
screens for four minutes and 
thirty-seven seconds in what 
appears to be a video game. The 
video cuts between shots of the 
outlandishly dressed characters 
dancing and zooming through 
what appears to be a neon-
lit Tokyo (defs psychic) with 
Snapchat-esque drawings of little 
halos, hearts and other doodles 
fluttering in and out to further 
define the video as a Grimes pro-
duction.
 From a purely visual stand-

point, the “Kill V. Maim” music 
video is perfection; it has a way 
of sucking you into the world 
Grimes has created for us — the 
world that Grimes probably 
inhabits in her dreams. It’s a col-
orful, outlandish, science fiction 
world full of possibilities. How-
ever, the video seemingly lacks a 
story or purpose — at first I hated 
it for lack of substance. It’s only 
when you pay close attention to 
every detail that you realize how 
provocative it really is.
 I’m not going to disclose my 
interpretation of the video with 
you mainly because art is and 
should be viewed and understood 
differently by each individual — 
but also partly because I have no 
idea what the fuck I just watched. 
 

— Danielle Immerman

4AD

A

Kill V. 
Maim

Grimes

4AD

New cheese bar open

By VANESSA WONG

Daily Arts Writer

Ann Arbor is becoming an 

even more creative and dynamic 
food community with uniquely 
structured restaurants — such 
as places that are known for 
reliable 
staples, 
pop-ups 
and 

other partnerships. They give 
local businesses space to try 
nontraditional ideas and offer an 
ever-changing blend of locally 
sourced meals for a new audience 
looking to try something new. 

Spencer, a wine and cheese 

bar/restaurant, has recently taken 
root in Ann Arbor with a focus on 
serving a menu that constantly 
changes with the seasons. Its airy, 
communal seating space creates 
a shared experience in which the 
diner trusts the restaurant to serve 
interesting and high quality meals 
rather than deliberately seek out 
a specific dish fulfilling his own 
cravings.

Co-founder Steve Hall notes, 

“In the last couple of years there 
have been a lot of changes (in the 
Ann Arbor food community), like 
more creative and small things 
popping up … We are tying into a 
similar audience who has eaten 
everything in Ann Arbor and is 
looking into some new sorts of 
foods.”

“The nice thing about changing 

all the time is that we’re not 
any kind of restaurant,” Hall 
continued. “There’s no one cuisine, 
so if we get an idea that’s like ‘hey, 
I’m really excited about doing 
some duck legs this week,’ Abby 
and I will be like, ‘oh, we’ll do 
them sort of like French Alsacian-
German, so let’s do some mustard-
braised cabbage and some roast 
turnips,’ and we’ll sort of run with 
that for a week.”

Their cheese and charcuterie 

brings to light a lesser-known 
market 
in 
Ann 
Arbor. 
Hall 

laments 
in 
particular 
how 

underappreciated Zingerman’s is 
for their cheeses.

“It’s not just sandwiches; I know 

that all students think it’s just 
only sandwiches,” he said. “Their 
cheeses are just some of the best in 
the country and you can taste all of 

them.”

There are many considerations 

that go into the cheese-making 
process, Hall said.

“You think about the animals 

and how they’re treated, you 
think about what those animals 
were eating, you think about the 
season of when they’re eating,” 
he said. “Is it winter and they’re 
eating dry hay or in the middle of 
summer when they’re eating fresh 
grasses and flowers and stuff? All 
that to the size of the production, 
the care of the cheesemaker, the 
age, how it’s been transported, all 
of it down the line. I think a lot of 
people don’t consider that and just 
think, ‘that cheese is $30 a pound, 
that’s a ridiculous price.’ Well, no, 
it’s awesome. It’s way underpriced 
because people really, really care 
for cheese.”

One of the most important 

aspects of creating a dynamic 
culinary culture in Ann Arbor is 
for both diners and restaurateurs 
alike to be adventurous and keep 
an open mind. Being willing to 
mix new ingredients and flavors 
signals that innovation is welcome.

For example, Hall urges people 

to try different types of cheeses.

“I think a lot of people think 

that, ‘oh, I ate goat cheese on a 
salad once and I thought it was 
really weird and I didn’t like it, 
I therefore don’t like any goat 
cheese,” he said. Well that’s 
ridiculous. I don’t like American 
cheese but it doesn’t mean I don’t 
like any cow’s milk cheese.”

Additionally, 
pop-ups 
and 

collaborative events between local 
businesses bring fresh takes to the 
way people traditionally interact 
with food.

Before Spencer opened shop 

a few months ago, owners Hall 
and Abby Olitzky did multiple 
pop-up events: a weekly menu 
of dishes at Braun Court bar — 
wine, cheese and book pairings 
with Literati and a seasonal five-
course dinner using ingredients 
from Zingerman’s. In addition 
to establishing local connections 
for the pair after moving to Ann 
Arbor from San Francisco, pop-
ups offered space to take creative 
liberties and test new ideas that 

liven up the local food scene.

Hall says pop-ups taught them 

about “what people are looking for, 
what do they respond well to, and 
how do we best get to that?” which 
helped identify what elements 
from San Francisco’s vibrant food 
community they could successfully 
implement in Ann Arbor. Both 
budding entrepreneurs and storied 
establishments can benefit from 
partnerships, as well as being 
willing to reach outward to the 
community to see what they are 
interested in while designing a 
menu.

There 
are 
many 
other 

businesses in Ann Arbor that 
also play with unique restaurant 
structures to satisfy a modern 
audience that craves flexibility 
without sacrificing quality and 
health. Babo sheds the distinction 
between grocery store versus 
restaurant with a cheeky, “well, 
it’s both!” Like Spencer, Babo also 
has communal seating inside, 
but supplements it with separate 
tables outside, giving a range of 
options for solo munching, on-the-
go meals or a catch-up between 
friends.

The People’s Food Co-op, a 

communal-membership 
grocery 

store that has been a staple in Ann 
Arbor since 1971, features a similar 
hot bar and coffee shop concept in 
the adjoined Café Verde. This is an 
extension of their goal to provide 
reasonably priced, fresh, healthy 
food from local farmers, according 
to their website. They also offer 
many ways to get involved in the 
community through the food, 
with free classes about eating 
and health and events for co-op 
members.

Though Ann Arbor restaurants 

are typically known for delivering 
reliable and well-made favorites, 
there is a growing audience out 
there looking for elements of 
novelty and creativity in how 
they engage with food. And with 
new businesses like Spencer and 
Babo opening their doors, or 
historic local fixtures like People’s 
Food Co-op and Zingerman’s 
participating 
in 
pop-ups 
or 

changing things up, it’s clear that 
there are places ready to deliver.

COURTESY OF SPENCER

Spencer, a wine and cheese bar, is new in Ann Arbor.

