In this morning's New York Times, P.J. O'Rourke takes apart Leslie Savan's Slam Dunks and No-Brainers, a book apparently dedicated to lamenting the use of catchphrases. NYT Link. Excerpts:
Savan is very indignant about the prevalence of "Yesss!" with its accompanying pump of the arm. This combination of word and gesture strikes me as almost a social grace - a quick, efficient method of getting the rude but inexorable business of self-congratulation out of the way. Is an extended brag to be preferred? "I am the mighty hunter who has found the TV remote! No wireless control device escapes my tireless pursuit of quarry among the davenport cushions! . . .
Unamused by language and intolerant of it, Savan cannot bring herself to care enough about language to attend to how it works. "Now that road rage has a handy label," she writes, "we may believe that violence on the road occurs more often than it actually does." And now that "orange" is a word, we may believe that more things are this color.
O'Rourke raises humorous points. I don't know what he'd say about neologisms, which I snubbed here. I don't mind catchphrases (other than their overuse), but catchphrases aren't neologisms.
Actually, I don't even mind neologisms. I object to fake neologisms. To be a neologism, the grouping of letters must be a word. Many of the purported neologisms aren't. The proponents of a neologism want to give it "word status" when it's still slang: when it's still relatively unknown, not otherwise serving a useful purpose, or destined to die out in less than five years. I even like slang (some of it "slays" me). Just don't dress it up as a full-fledged word.
