Response to BBC's ‘Talk about English’, Part Two of “Politics, Language, and Slang

Last time in class, we continued with slang. We’ve listened to the second part of that BBC show ‘Talk about English’, “Politics, Language, and Slang. As you can guess from the title, this part of the show was focused on slang and politics. Question was: Should ‘’high profile’’ people use slang? First I have to explain this term ‘’high profile’’ people. Who are this people? High profile people would be, all the people that are famous or known by something, like celebrities, actors, presidents, politicians... We all agreed that after this explanation the real question is: Should politicians use slang? My answer is no. I remember my first conclusion about it in the class was: ‘’If politicians and high profile people use slang than who will speak proper or formal English?’’ Politicians already dress, eat, walk, smile and do everything formal, so they should also speak formal. It’s really lame to see them use slang phrases, because we all know they’re trying to appeal to young people. Ok, they can use slang in some occasions, for example, when they’re meeting citizens, but other than that they shouldn’t use slang at all. I also think that politicians have their own slang, because when they speak, no one understands them, mostly they don’t understand themselves, because someone wrote their speech for them. Other group of people who shouldn’t use slang are people that work on national TV stations, because in some way they represent formal English language

During the show we heard some examples of high profile people using slang. One of them caught our attention. It was Salman Rushdie, who said that ‘’veil sucks’’. I don’t have to tell you that this derogatory statement caused huge backlash in our class, as it did in the whole Islamic world. As a Muslim I was personally assaulted, because I’m planning to marry a girl who wears hijjab. ''Suck'' is a really strong word and it can’t be used in this contest, considering the fact that Salman said that veil sucks meaning that it sucks in general. If he said that he doesn’t like veil, and that he wouldn’t like his wife to wear veil it wouldn’t be so insulting because it wouldn’t be general, but this way it seems like he said, Muslim women all around the world, throw your veil away because I made universal conclusion that veil sucks. Who is he to judge Islam, and Islamic religion? Ok, everyone has a right to express his own opinion but this topic is too delicate to be discussed in this manner. Islam is the way of life, and by saying that veil sucks he insulted every women that wears veil because she wants it, and it’s like that in Islam, no one is forcing you to wear veil, it’s your obligation to wear veil, but only when you decide to wear it from your heart, not by force, as many people think. It would be the same if someone said that killing people is cool, ofcourse it’s not. This example showed us that in some cases slang can be very powerful and that it shouldn’t be used everywhere by everyone.