Graffiti scrawls and hiphop calls: coming to grips with non-traditional sources for historical lexicography

Conference item

Citational evidence for slang and other varieties of colloquial English occasionally strains the traditional acceptability requirements of historical dictionaries. Since at least 1935, when Allen Walker Read privately published "Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America," the case has been made for the widening of admissible lexicographical source material to encompass more elusive textual traces such as graffiti. This paper will consider two fertile yet problematic sources for the development of American English slang of the late 20th century. The first is a collection of graffiti-covered canvas bunk bottoms from a U.S. military transport ship that carried troops to Vietnam between 1965 and 1970. The canvases, which have been scanned and catalogued by the Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University, provide valuable data for the emergence of American slang, casting new light on the origins of the much-discussed "X sucks" formation. The second type of source material considered in the paper consists of bootleg recordings of rap music from the South Bronx predating the first official rap records in 1979. The bootleg tapes document live performances featuring rapped words and phrases that would later gain wide prominence in hiphop usage. Both the Vietnam graffiti archive and the rap bootlegs present difficulties for standard bibliographic protocols followed by lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary and elsewhere, but the historical significance of the evidence encourages a reconsideration of such protocols. A more serious treatment of non-traditional sources also helps to overturn assumptions that slang, due to its ostensibly oral and evanescent nature, is somehow untraceable by methods of historical lexicography.

Authors: Zimmer, B

• Alternative title: Presented at Slang Lexicography session
• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Language: English
• Subjects: Lexicography; English Language and Literature