By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi A favorite catchphrase Texans cherish about their state is: “everything is bigge...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
A favorite catchphrase Texans cherish about their state is: “everything is bigger in Texas.” Given Americans’ extravagant fondness for exaggerations, intensification, and superlative expressions, they should probably have a shamelessly immodest catchphrase for the whole nation that says, “Everything is biggest in America.”
Americans are the masters of superlatives and intensification. I have never seen a people whose conversational language is so full of intentional and unintentional exaggerations as Americans.
In grammar, a superlative is the form of an adjective or an adverb that indicates its highest level or degree. In the gradation of the levels or degrees of adjectives or adverbs, it’s usual to talk of the base, comparative, and superlative degrees. English superlatives are normally created with the suffix “est” (e.g. wealthiest, strongest) or the word “most” (e.g. most recent, most beautiful). But some words are by nature superlative and require no suffix or "most" to indicate their degree. Examples: absolute, favorite, unique, perfect, etc. Therefore, it would be superfluous (or, as grammarians say it, pleonastic) to write or say "most absolute," "most unique," etc.
So superlative expressions are boastful, hyperbolic expressions that sometimes have no literal relationship with the reality they purport to describe. In this essay, I identify the commonest superlative expressions I’ve encountered in American English.
In contemporary American English, instead of simply saying something like “it’s really nice,” young Americans say “it totally rocks!” The “best experience” becomes “the absolute best experience ever.” Kids no longer just have “best friends”; they now have “Best Friends Forever.” There is even an initialism for it: BFF. (An initialism, also called an alphabetism, is an abbreviation made up of first letters of words or syllables, each pronounced separately. E.g. HIV, BFF, CEO). My daughter changes her BFFs every other week! “Forever” now has an expiration date.
On American TV it's now common to hear teenagers use “bestest” (a nonstandard word) to heighten the sense that the superlative adjective “best” conveys, as in: “we had the bestest party ever!” “Baddest” is another nonstandard superlative in American youth lingo. The word has been a part of African-American vernacular English (or Ebonics) for a long time. It’s now fully integrated into mainstream, mostly youth, conversational English. But “bad” here is not the absence of good. It is, on the contrary, the surfeit of goodness or “kewlness” (kewlness is derived from “kewl,” which is the nonstandard slang term for “cool,” i.e., fashionable, excellent, or socially adept) or greatness. So “the baddest guy in town” in the language of the American youth subculture means the best or greatest guy.
The intensifier “very” is now considered tame and lame in American conversational English. It has effectively been replaced with “super.” People are no longer just “very excited”; they are “super excited.” It’s no longer common to hear people being described as “very smart”; they are “super smart.” An alternative intensifier is “uber,” which is borrowed from German. It means extreme or outstanding, as in “uber-hero,” “uber-smart professor,” etc.
But it appears that “super” has also exhausted its intensifying elasticity. It is now being replaced with “super-duper.” It’s now typical to hear Americans say they are “super-duper excited” or that they have eaten “super-duper burgers.”
Perfect. In America, everything is “perfect.” During Christmas, New Year, Mother’s Day, etc people get “perfect gifts” for their loved ones. When appointment times work well, it’s “perfect timing.” Things are not just “acceptable”; they are “perfectly acceptable.” President Obama once described high-flying young country singer Taylor Swift as a “perfectly nice girl.” She is not just nice; she is perfectly nice. Does that mean she has no blemish of any sort? Of course no. It only means “perfect” has lost touch with its original meaning.
When people respond to a question in the affirmative, a simple “yes” is no longer sufficient. They say “absolutely!” The response to a question like “did you have a good time there” would more likely be “absolutely!” than the hitherto conventional “yes, I did.”
In America, routine, quotidian events are habitually called “one-of-a-kind.” On my daughter’s kid TV, programs are almost always described as “one-of-a-kind TV event.”
And “best ever” has become the default phrase for just about anything. My daughter calls me “the best dad ever” each time I give her a treat. Her “best day ever” is any day she has lots of fun. Now, Americans are graduating from “ever” to “ever ever.” An American friend of mine described one of my Facebook pictures as “my most favorite picture of you ever ever”! Well, “favorite” is itself a superlative word that does not admit of any intensifier in standard grammar. To add "most" and “ever ever” to “favorite” seems to me like imposing an unbearably excessive burden on my poor little picture!
If an American hates this article, he would probably call it the “worst article ever written article on American fondness for superlatives.” If she is a teenager and likes it, she might call it the “bestest written article on American fondness for superlatives ever ever.”
The American fascination with exaggeration and superlative language is probably the consequence of the ubiquity of advertising in American life. Advertising traditionally engages in hyperbole, deliberate overstatement, and extravagant exaggeration. Now that advertising has become more omnipresent and more intrusive than ever before (this is no American superlative, I swear!) in American life, it is logical that it would influence their everyday language.
Or it could very well be the linguistic evidence of the over-sized image Americans cherish about themselves. When you’re used to being the world’s number one in most things, it’s inevitable that it will reflect in your language sooner or later.
But the effect of all this is that it has blurred the dividing line between fact and fiction in everyday American life. I am now dubious of many claims here. Everything here is the “world’s biggest.” For instance, Atlanta’s international airport is called the “world’s biggest and busiest airport.” Well, it turns out that the claim is not exactly accurate. In terms of the number of passengers that pass through it annually, it is indeed the world’s busiest airport. But in terms of land mass, there are much bigger airports in the world.
A modestly sized farmer’s market here in Atlanta has also been touted as “the world’s biggest farmer’s market.” If it indeed is, then farmers’ markets elsewhere in the world must be really tiny.
Superlatives certainly make language colorful, but I worry that their untrammeled profusion in everyday speech has the potential to desensitize us to actually exceptional things around us.
Postscript
A day after writing this column, I watched a British program here and found young Brits speaking the very superlative expressions that I had thought to be exclusively American. If you look carefully at my previous writings you will probably notice that I too have been “infected” by the American superlative plague!
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Dr Kperogi,you are damn too good (excuse the language,I think I too have been infected).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this is definately one of your funniest articles. Keep up the good work.
This rocks...totally!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear your input on my favorite misuse...objective case use of I instead of me.
It drives me up the wall.