Real and Unreal Language: Perspectives from an Unconventional Background

I’m not sure how to start except to say today in lecture Meghan used the word “boo-hiss,” and it was a great moment for me. 

Immediately noting my own unfamiliarity with the word, I looked to my peers for context the second it was uttered. Should I be laughing? Or empathize with sadness? Was our professor angry? Simply irritated? 

Growing up in Cypress, Texas, as the child of African immigrants, moments of confusion like today were quite familiar.  The reason isn’t because I was raised in a household where broken English is the norm. On the contrary, both my mother and father have spoken English since childhood and do so with the precision that comes from learning a language in an academic setting, since they both attended American schools all their life and did in fact learn all their English in an academic setting.

Though I'm hesitant to assign dialects value judgments such as "real,” if we're equating "realness" to correctness, their English is very "real.” I'd venture to say that their use of the English language is more "real" than most natives, myself included, since it was learned in an academic setting rather than colloquially, but does that make it better? I don't believe so. 

That precision led to (a) a very confusing childhood for me, and (b) questions like those that came up in lecture today. Mainly without deciphering between prescriptive and descriptive grammar, what should makes a word real (no quotation marks here), rules or usage? 

For me the consequence of the precision of their dialect is simple, there are so many "unreal" words that I have so little experience with. I’ve never had trouble understanding “real” words, and as a native speaker I can of course keep up with words added in my time. However, understanding American slang from the generation above me will always be hit-or-miss. I don’t even try to understand random American colloquialisms anymore. I’m aware that decades of words that may be functionally fantastic are lost on me, but many of these words sound like “boo-hiss” to me.

The look splashed across the room this morning has been a permanent fixture on my face, far more than many of my peers. Indeed, today was the first time I can recall that I wasn’t in the minority; nobody got it. Does the fact that nobody in the class understood “boo-hiss” make it less real than the unreal slang that the majority does recognize? Where do we draw that line? Where ought we draw that line?

Given that language's expressed purpose is to be communicative, should a majority's understanding of a word make it real? If not, then what makes a word real? I thought long and hard about it, and I was unable to articulate any criteria I was satisfied with. However, I know that criteria are necessary. Naturally I googled (one of my favorite words; it was added in 2006), and I found a TED talk conveniently titled "What makes a word real?" by language historian Anne Curzan.  

According to Curzan, the key is an individual's attitude towards language - whether or not you believe there is value in living language.  Having experienced the English language with and without "unreal" words, I conclude without a doubt, yes. While I'm not sure when a word should formally become "real,” I know that once a word is defined (perhaps not in the Oxford Dictionary, but socially) it's on its way to being understood. And once a word becomes commonly understood, how can it not be real (again, no quotes)? 

Thoughts? Here’s the link to Anne Curzan’s TED talk if you want to check it out: http://www.ted.com/talks/anne_curzan_what_makes_a_word_real?language=en.