Interesting post, Kerry. A couple of responses:
"Vegas has since gone legit as a family playground now,
meaning youth is exposed to it while forming their own values
and brand loyalties."
Not that it counters your point, but Vegas has switched back,
replacing the family friendly image with its current slogan,
"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." It seems not enough
of the families' money was staying in Vegas -- guess they
were taking advantage of all of the loss leaders without
hitting the tables to pay it all, and more, back.
"The question though, is what's colloquial during the
mid-sixties when television has spent 20 years stamping out
regional dialects and gotten everyone talking like
mid-Atlantic evening newscasters?"
For the record, it'd be just over 10 years for most of the
US. Due to an FCC licensing freeze, TV was pretty much
restricted to major cities through 1952. After the freeze,
however, TV spread quickly, reaching near national saturation
by the end of the decade. In addition, at least at first, TV
had its biggest impact on movie attendance. Didn't book sales
go up a bit in the '50s with the rise of paperbacks?
As for TV wiping out regional dialects, you've clearly never
travelled through the American South, or between boroughs in
NY, for that matter. In fact, just this week, PBS ran a
documentary called Do You Speak American that examined the
wide variety of speech patterns (not the same as dialects,
but . . .) in the US.
"Macdonald's writing isn't colloquial in the way that
Ellroy's is, but Ellroy latches onto the lingo of jazz
musicians or the scandal-sheet yellow press for its stylistic
flourish. This more jargon, the language of determined
subcultures, not the dialects of average people."
We hear that a lot, from him as much as anyone else, about
Ellroy using jazz speak. But does he? Did anyone ever really
speak that way? It's always seemed to me that it's a
carefully constructed, stylized lingo that bears about as
much relationship to the sppech of real jazz musician as
Chandler's tough guy language is like real tough guy speech.
For the record, although I have developed some problems with
Ellroy's eventual overreliance (in my opinion) on his
schtick, I don't mean the above as a putdown. Quite the
opposite -- real or not, Ellroy's and Chandler's languages
work very well on the page.
Mark
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
--------------------~--> In low income neighborhoods, 84%
do not own computers. At Network for Good, help bridge the
Digital Divide!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/S.QlOD/3MnJAA/Zx0JAA/kqIolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 08 Jan 2005 EST