Like, Oh My God, What Are We Saying?

Move over, William Safire. Leslie Savan has arrived, and she has a whole book instead of measley New York Times columns.

Savan doesn’t do much more with her 270 pages than Safire does with his two weekly columns, but really, it doesn’t matter. This is pop non-fiction: not life-changing or even particularly edifying, but fun.

“Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Pop Language in Your Life, the Media, and, Like . . . Whatever” takes a look at the words and phrases we use or used everyday—“duh” and “I don’t think so” are favorites—and traces their origins from the 1930s to the title of an obscure and deliciously kitschy 1980s sitcom.

Savan is both a lover and a loather of pop language, which she defines as “verbal expression that is widely popular and part of popular culture.” She continues, “Beyond that, it’s language that pops out of its surround; conveys more attitude than literal meaning; pulses with a sense of an invisible chorus speaking it, too; and, when properly inflected, pulls attention, and probably consensus, its way.” Her voice in the book is like that of the dieter sitting in front of an ice cream sundae: slightly guilty for indulging, but never enough to keep her from digging in again.

Conflicted is a tough attitude to convey, and it deserves partial credit for the book’s success. A book like this could have veered too far in the direction of condemnation and alienated hoi polloi, or fallen into bland history, which would have killed it before it hit the shelves. As it is, Savan sheepishly employs the same language that she lovingly derides, and one gets the sense that she was blushing as she wrote certain passages.

The rest of the credit goes to the incredible research behind the book, which preempts potential criticisms concerning timeliness and relevance of the work. Savan writes, “it’s not a word’s freshness date that makes it pop but its degree of persuasive power,” and “a good 93.8 percent of the time we don’t talk pop—but looking at why we do when we do and how it affects communication is my focus.” A third objection—that people have always depended on pop language—gets an entire chapter.

Not only does she look at the fashionable speech of 19th century England, when “flare up” was all the rage, she goes back to the king of pop, William Shakespeare, and even to ancient Pompeii, where volcanic ash preserved graffiti on the walls of the public baths.

A pop vernacular may not be unique to us, she says, but ours is unprecedented because of the media’s power to put words into mouths around the world. Savan finds pop in the flappers of the 1920s, “Seinfeld,” and the Super Bowl, and has veritable glossaries of pop for the Average Joe and what she calls “the community of commitment-centered words.” Two familiar Harvard personalities, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker and Cogan University Professor of the Humanities Stephen J. Greenblatt, even get mentions.

That is not to say that this book is a scholarly work. Frankly, I expected more analysis from a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. Savan seems to have written this just for the excuse to bury herself in funny commercials and reruns of “Friends,” and the result is certainly fun but just a touch too fluffy.

Regardless, the book accomplishes what it sets out to do: Savan aims squarely to be pop lit and hits a bullseye.

Slam Dunks and No-Brainers
By Leslie Savan
Vintage
Out Now