- Brands are doing way too much.
Every time I look at my phone, Starbucks wants to be my bestie.
Netflix wants to chill.
Even Skittles wants to know if they're cap or no cap.
Why is it all so cringe?
Brands using slang is nothing new, from the brands saying "Bae" 2010s to the "Wassup" ads of the '90s, advertisers are always trying to find ways to sound cool.
But when brands on social media use a slang word in their marketing, that basically guarantees it's over.
We understand that brands didn't come up with these words and they're not part of the groups we think should be using them, but why?
What makes a word slang and why does it sound so weird when some people or companies use it?
I'm Dr. Erica Brozovsky, and this is "Otherwords."
(playful music) - [Narrator] "Otherwords."
- Slang isn't so much a type of word as a type of communication.
It's the specific words we choose, the type of delivery we use, and even the context we use them in.
All the stuff that sociolinguists call a register.
While there's no set definition for slang, we know it doesn't serve a syntactical function, it's more of a social one.
We also can't agree on which words are or aren't slang.
Words like bread and bomb feel like slang, whereas words like cash or cool that started out as slang, now feel like everyday standard language.
Rather than a rigid box, slang is more of a fluid category that words move in and out of all the time.
So how do we know what slang is when we hear it?
Well, there are few characteristics that we can use to quantify how slangy word is.
Let's take a look.
(playful music) (pencil scratching) Slang usually arises from a small group or subculture.
Remember "on fleek?"
The slang term for being perfect, precise, or looking really good.
It was coined by Peaches Monroe, a young Black woman in 2014.
- Eyebrows on fleek.
- The word caught on with Black Vine and Twitter users and eventually it spread all the way to Denny's Twitter feed.
(crickets chirping) But that's a pretty common pattern.
We got slang like yass and slay from the queer and trans ballroom scene.
- I don't have to tell you because you know you're ugly, and that's shade.
- Young people, gamers, and the extremely online all have their own in-group slang.
These subcultures often marginalized or outside of the mainstream develop their own vocabularies.
Slang is a shorthand to tell other users I'm part of your community.
I share your values, or I just get you.
Of course, as slang moves from small communities, say students at your school to students on social media to everyone on social media to your parents, those words become less associated with a group identity and therefore less slangy.
This is one of the big reasons brands using slang throws us off.
Brands wanna show that they're in with the cool crowd when they call their potential customers bestie or bae.
But smart consumers and language users can tell when it's not authentic.
Brands appeal to broad audiences, not niche underground subcultures.
So the slang they use becomes kind of basic.
(playful music) (pencil scratching) Speaking of on fleek, slang words also tend to have short lifespans.
My millennial slang probably sounds ancient to a gen Zer, and neither of us would call something nifty or swell or the bee's knees.
While some slang survives the test of time, think awesome from the '80s or the 1920s gig for a short term job, usually the newer a word is the more slangy it feels.
But remember, slang starts in subcultures and in-groups and it takes a while to spread to larger and larger speech communities.
By the time new words make it to whoever runs those brand social media accounts, they're not quite so new anymore.
That's how you end up with brands using new 2023 slang that you already stopped using in 2020.
(playful music) (pencil scratching) Slang is usually a synonym for general and frequently used words.
How many slang words can you think of that mean good or bad, or even interesting or annoying?
There's also a ton of slang for alcohol, drugs, sex, and other taboo topics that speakers use when they wanna be a little more discreet.
But usually when someone uses groovy instead of good or wasted instead of drunk, they know the more widely used synonyms but they choose to use the slang term instead to convey their understanding of the audience they're speaking to and the context they're speaking in.
You might talk about your partner at work but your BF or GF in the group chat.
Romantic partner is another general category with lots of slang synonyms.
Boo, honey, wifey, bae, but bread bae?
That's not a thing.
When a brand takes a word that's meant to be general, like a partner and tries to make it specific, like the kind of bread you favor at a sandwich restaurant, that's not slangy.
Using slang isn't just about proving you heard the word.
It's also about showing you understand the context for it.
(playful music) (pencil scratching) Lastly, slang is usually used in informal settings.
You may use it when talking to friends or family, but not when giving a presentation at work or in an essay for class.
In fact, slang lexicographer Jonathon Green notes that until the rise of social media enabled us to have informal conversations online, slang was primarily a spoken language.
Most of it never got written down at all.
Even though brands may wanna sound casual when they use slang online, a corporate account that someone runs as their full-time job is never gonna be informal, right?
So brands are constantly taking slang from an informal context into a formal one.
Even a PBS show is kind of a formal context, so any words I use in this episode have become a little less slangy just because I'm using them, my bad.
All these characteristics help us pinpoint how slangy a word is at a moment in time, but it will never stay at that point for long.
Slang is a gradient.
By using slang in different contexts, we can move it along the gradient from slangy to not slangy, and by their nature, brands just happen to be really good at moving words in the non-slangy direction.
But even more important than what counts as slang is how we use it.
Remember when I said that slang is a register of communication that serves a social function?
That's because every day we use slang to solidify our individual identities as say a young person or a woman or a Midwesterner, as well as our membership in groups like TikTokers or drag queens or sneakerheads.
Brands who are trying to market to those identities will try to pick up that slang to sound like they are part of a social group.
Mountain Dew wants to sound like a gamer.
Glossier is a fashionable it girl.
Slang use provides us with a sense of community, belonging and even safety.
Think about slang words like woke, which Black people started using to communicate awareness of systemic racism.
Or friend of Dorothy, a phrase queer people used to identify each other when it was otherwise unsafe to come out.
Outsiders often originate slang to identify who is trustworthy or comfortable to be around.
And even now, social media subcultures are regularly inventing new slang to get around algorithmic censorship and content filters.
So if a faceless corporate account that doesn't need these words to build relationships or communicate safely uses them just for the clout, that feels inauthentic AF.
Lucky for all of us though, language is constantly evolving.
By the time brands disrupt the social function of slang words, slang users are already well on their way to creating new ones, which we'll probably see in a Skittles ad
