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It was last fall, in the wake of the stock-market crash, that the pundits announced that the '80s were officially over.
But they were wrong, because our language hasn't changed since October. Every decade has its own forms of expression, and we can't change decades until our phrases change.
Only in the 1960s did anyone talk about groovy times
with some righteous Owsley that turned into a monster
bummer.
And you're still stuck in the 1970s if you have
a meaningful, sharing relationship
with someone
who's mellow and vulnerable.
What have the 80s given us?
For one thing, do
serves as the verb of all
purposes. Nobody eats lunch or has lunch; it's Want to
do lunch Monday?
When you call someone important, the
secretary tells you that He can't come to the phone
because he's doing a meeting right now.
Another characteristic of 80s speech is the widespread
use of power
as a favorable adjective. You can't run
your computer unless you're a power user.
If you
can't do a power lunch,
you're a nobody. You're at
the top of your profession if you're a power surgeon
or power plumber.
Of course, inflation is inevitable here. It isn't enough
to be a star
anymore -- any performer who gets any
billing is invariably touted as a superstar.
Superpower
is already in use for international
matters, so my guess is you'll get a jump on your rivals if
you let it be known that you're a megapower
manager.
Naturally, you'll have a strategy.
Everybody has
a strategy,
whether it's for international marketing
or for finding a parking place. The preferred strategy has
been to keep your options open.
In the 80s, people like that always provide quantum
leaps
or quantum improvements.
Just why
quantum
gets used that way is beyond me, since a
quantum is about the smallest unit known to science. A
quantum is the amount of energy expended when an electron
changes orbits. But perhaps it is the way of the 80s to
make minuscule matters sound great.
Even if 80s people are obsessed by money and status,
they do not aspire to be known as wealthy.
The
preferred term is upscale.
And if you're on the
other end of things, you're not a flunky
or a
laborer
any more; you're a subordinate.
A law
clerk is now a paralegal,
and a bookkeeper is a
para-accountant.
Like job titles, personal names got changed during this decade. In the 60s, the preferred way to cope with an identity crisis was to change the spelling, so that we dealt with not Linda and Tom, but Lyndda and Thomm. In the 80s, you want to sound important, not unique. Apparently the most important name anyone knew J. Edgar Hoover.
Thus anyone who aspires to power status uses an initial before the rest of his name, and generally something after it, too, as in R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr., editor of the American Spectator; C. William Verity, Jr., U.S. Secretary of Commerce; or H. Lawrence Garrett, III, general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Consider some other linguistic gifts of the 80s, such as
parenting.
It used to be that there were families
that raised children. Now there's parenting,
whatever that means.
Actually, parenting
does mean something. People
who parent
are people who provide quality
time
for their children, during the 20 minutes a day
they see their offspring.
Note, though, that the concept of quality time
applies only in this context. You'd be told to report to
the corporate outplacement office
if you told your
boss that I know I spent only two hours on the job
yesterday, but I should be paid for a full day because the
time I did put in was quality time.
Normally, I don't worry all that much about these matters. But I was trying to figure out how to fit in, because lately, I've been feeling out of it. The rest of the nation is sweltering in heat and drought, and up here, it's been downright chilly, with thundering downpours every afternoon that often continue into the night.
The problem is that once I go to the trouble of taking
up parenting,
of promoting myself as a power
columnist,
of learning how to do lunch,
of
adopting a significant name like E. Kenneth Quillen,
III
-- then the 80s will actually be over, and it will
be time to adopt a new set of official buzzwords.
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