Senior government and politics major

Of all the diversity one might experience at this university, language diversity is the most underrated.

Sure, on any given day, one might overhear five different tongues, and we offer fantastic programs in various languages — but just think of all the wild permutations of English here on the campus. Remember the first time you heard someone say he or she was standing “on line” and finally understood the vastness of the universe? I do.

It’s not uncommon, of course, for some serious debate to occur over word usage. Slang is rough water. I fondly remember freshman year when I first heard a friend refer to an attractive woman as a “slam piece,” a term that soon evolved into “slam pig,” a term that soon evolved into being single and eventually disappeared.

Sometimes slang isn’t so much a singular phenomenon, and well-known words take on new meanings for all of us through repeated interaction. I stay awake some nights wondering if “classic” and “literally” can weather the storm and once more be used as intended.

Language is interesting. It’s a complex system of communication used to give names to what already exists. We humans only learn it through our social interactions with one another, and we do quite a lot of interacting in person or through various machines and robots. So it’s no surprise few people seem to realize they could only be “literally dying” in the most broad, existential terms. (We’re all literally dying, when you really think about it.)

Slang is fun to share and learn but probably not worth arguing about. Hoagie isn’t a better term or more accurate referent than sub, just as morning isn’t any better than mañana. So, if someone says soda instead of pop, they aren’t wrong. Even the redundancy of soda pop is dubious. But the arguments still arise.

Again, we need to keep in mind the social nature of language. It’s not like math; if Portuguese were to go extinct, no one would reinvent it. The subjunctive clause is not the Pythagorean theorem. Also worth keeping in mind: It’s rather arbitrary. “Chair” is just a word we use, not the actual thing that exists in reality. “Jenkins” is just the name of your goldfish, and he probably doesn’t even know about it.

So, is it soda or pop or what? Well, it’s either, so please don’t correct anyone about it. Really, it’s carbonated water, sugar (sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup, depending on country of origin), caffeine, phosphoric acid, caramel color and (suspiciously) “natural flavoring.” Even sugar, which can be legally listed in many different ways on the exterior of your nonuniversity sponsored Coca-Cola can, is really just C12H22O11. That’s just if it’s sucrose, and in America, it usually isn’t. But even sucrose isn’t made up of all that carbon, it’s made up of all that stuff we call carbon because the Romans called it something like carbon.

Look, I get that you think you’re right about this whole slang thing. It’s called the mere-exposure effect, and it’s just one of the many cognitive biases preventing us all from being right about anything. Just because you’re familiar with one version of U.S. regional slang doesn’t make it the right one.

So embrace our language and slang diversity. The arbitrary system of referents we’ve got is complex enough without us letting our personal preferences get in the way, and we need to allow unique and personal modifications to words and grammar enrich the wonderful variety we already have. But, hey, let’s not argue semantics here.

Jake DeVirgiliis is a senior government and politics major. He can be reached at j.devirgiliis@gmail.com.