Why Do We Create Languages? And What is the Significance of Studying the Slang in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"?
"A language isn't just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. It is a flash of the human spirit, a vehicle though which the soul of a particular culture comes into the material world." --Wade Davis, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence (1)
What my linguistics course and project has taught me is that humans create languages in order to connect with other people. To communicate, and to share experiences. As our real-world languages evolve so do our capacity to create new languages to create new ways to connect with an ever increasing amount of people. Humans are also curious beings and language is a unique gift that the human species alone has. My class, ENG 370, has taught me that there is no "correct" way of speaking, and that each and every language is worthwhile of attention. In creating Elvish, Dothraki, and many other conlangs such as Na'vi and Klingon, fandoms get the chance to really engage in and with their favorite worlds and 'verses. When one 'speaks' the language, whether literally or metaphorically, no matter what it is, one is no longer an outside observer.
Essentially 'creating' a language for the purposes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even if it is/was a language playing upon existing language patterns, was still effective in creating a lexicon of slang which is still in use today. "There's just a lot more linguistic novelty on that show than there is on any other show of which I know," says linguist, Michael Adams, author of "Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon." "It's both innovative and reflective of what's going on in the slang culture at large" (22). He goes on to make an allusion to how viewers perceive these characters on television and how it translates/ed in to their lives and social groups. "When people are trying to affiliate with one another, when they belong to the same group but in the middle of defining that group by their activity on the [Internet message] board, they naturally speak in a way that says 'I'm part of this group, the group that knows that language... that at least mildly in their own language practices, they want to be a part of it, and I think that's interesting to see happen" (22). Television dialogue is a language variety in its own right (13) and should be recognized as such. This is not to say that the slang and language variety and structures found in Buffy is approaching anywhere near the level of complexity of entire constructed languages like Dothraki and Elvish, indeed they cannot be compared side by side using the same evaluating factors. They do, however, share an underlying theme of what all languages of the world do; provide a cultural space for it to flourish and evolve, and be used by people who speak it. As Jane Espenson, former writer on BtVS says, "As any linguist knows, being fluent in a language and understanding the mechanisms of that language are two completely different things (14).
Unfortunately with BtVS being a television show, there is really no way to analyze the evolution of the language on the show or if it was a case of underlying language acquisition on the part of the characters; the viewer comes in to the show in the pilot episode observing Buffy moving to Sunnydale and meeting Willow and Xander for the first time. We do know, however, based on the video on the previous page, that the different writers of Buffy all agreed that the basis of "Buffy-speak" comes from the fact that Joss Whedon apparently speaks like the characters in Buffy in real life! That, in addition to the writers propensity to come up with new, supplementary slang for the characters as the need arose, helped create a believable and enticing dialogue for the show. "Buffyspeak" is not a pidgin nor a creole created to facilitate communication among speakers of unintelligible languages; it is not a combination of different dialects or bits of foreign language (unless a reference is unknown to a listener). However, to really understand the "slanguage" of Buffy or "Buffy-speak," one must be a part of a group that comes in to regular contact with it to understand and use it, just as someone might do to master a conlang.