Informant Context: The informant is a 20-year-old white male from Riverside, California.
Conversation Transcript:
Collector: “What is a proverb or saying you might share with a guy friend when giving advice about women?”
Informant: “The other week, my boy came to me about a girl he’d been seeing. He found out she was talking to other guys. I told him ‘she’s for the streets’ and to keep it pushing.”
Collector: “What does it mean when a girl is ‘for the streets’?”
Informant: “It means they’re a hoe. That she sleeps around and she belongs to everybody. Like she is willing to do things with anyone on the streets. Kind of like a prostitute.”
Analysis: In recent years, this saying has risen in popularity among the Gen-Z and Millennial demographic. If someone’s viewed as promiscuous, younger generations will commonly deem that person as “for the streets” through online comments or folk lore. The phrase’s popularity is reflected in this decade’s pop music. One notable example is the pop song “Streets,” released in 2019 by rapper/singer Doja Cat.
Informant Context: The informant is a nineteen-year-old female undergraduate student at the University of Southern California (USC).
Conversation Transcript:
Collector: “Could you share an example of tabooistic vocabulary you’d use in everyday life? Any indirect way you might reference an inappropriate topic. For example, instead of saying ‘we had sex’ one might say ‘we got to fourth base’.”
Informant: “Right. So like a euphemism?”
Collector: “Exactly.”
Informant: “I have a few for when I get my period. I’ll say ‘Miss Flow came to town this week.’ (laughs) Have you ever heard that one before?”
Collector: (laughs) “No, I haven’t!”
Informant: “I’ve also heard some people say ‘Japan has invaded’, you know because of the flag and its colors.”
Analysis: It was interesting to learn the creative ways other women reference their menstrual cycles. During my conversation with the informant, we were constantly laughing. The tabooistic phrases were funny because they aim only to be understood by a specific folk group (women of the female sex) who can personally identify with the menstruation process. For instance, the word “flow” in the first phrase is commonly used among women to describe bleeding during a period. The Japanese invasion phrase was comical since the country’s flag has similar imagery to blood spotting on a white pad. As members of the target folk group, the informant and I enjoyed these tabooistic phrases about menstruation.
Informant Context: The informant is a 20-year-old white male from Riverside, California.
Conversation Transcript:
Collector: “I am exploring tabooistic vocabulary around masturbation. For men, are there any phrases or gestures you use to reference male masturbation?”
Informant: “I mean, when I’m talking to my boys I’ll straight up just say ‘jerk off’ and be more explicit. Sometimes I will do this–“
The Informant cups his hand it into a cylindrical shape, then moves it up and down. The gesture aims to demonstrate male masturbation.
Informant: “–and say ‘yank one out’ or ‘beating your meat’. Meat is just another word for your penis.”
Analysis: I was not surprised by the tabooistic vocabulary the informant shared about male masturbation. Those phrases and gestures are commonly used in our age demographic. What did surprise me was how openly the informant discussed masturbation. He said around peers, he is not afraid to explicitly talk about the activity. When it comes to people outside his peer group or age bracket, he avoids talking about it all together.
Informant was a teacher of sixth grade science for several years at a private, US K-12 school in the South.
Swim, swim, swim you sperm
From the testicles
to the epididymis
and onto vas deferens
Snack, snack, snack you sperm
on the sweets galore
From the seminal vesicle
not the grocery store
On, on, on you go
through the donut hole,
the prostate press
shoots you out
It is the great escape!
(last line preformed as goodness what a mess, but when dictated out loud this was the last line used)
Swim, Swim, Swim Ye Sperm Preformed
Informant created this parody of row, row, row your boat for her sixth grade science classes when they learned the reproductive system. Her goal was to ease some of the awkwardness of the subject of genitals for middle school students by having them sing a silly, goofy song to both help them remember the reproductive system and to normalize the discussion of the topic. The other teacher that taught sixth grade students did not teach their students the song, so it became an identifiable marker of who was or was not in the informant’s class or associated with her. Additionally, because the song was so absurd, students often remembered the informant by this song she taught them.
As the informant’s daughter and with features that bare resemblance to her, I would be approached by random students several times throughout my years at the school she taught at. They would ask “Are you [informant]’s daughter?”, and when I replied that I was, they would explain that they were in her sixth grade science class and still remembered the song she taught them and then they would sing it to me.
The American School System has a long history of lacking when it comes to sexual education. Many students’ sex education can be summed up by the word “abstinence”. Although the private school this song was taught at did not have an extensive or even satisfactory sex education, it did have material covering the reproductive systems of males and females and how they worked individually. The conservative approach to the discussion of sex, sexual organs, and sexuality leads to those subjects being taboo both in school and outside of it. The informant’s use of a well know song to ground the subject in something well known and her parodying it with a subject rarely discussed provide a medium by which her students could comfortably and socially acceptably learn and talk about the reproductive systems that were taboo up until that time in their lives. She would sing the song to them first before they had to do it with her to ease tension and let them know it was okay to say or sing all of those words in her class. The need for such a song is indicative of the long standing taboo treatment of sex.
[So what does that (EBIT) mean?] It basically measures a company’s profitability and its calculated as the revenue minus the expenses but it does not include taxes or interest, it’s also known as operating profit. [What’s your relationship to this, this EBIT that you speak of?] (laughter) I am an accounting major, so therefor I have to look at a company’s EBIT and occasionally have to calculate it. It’s unfortunate, really. [Where did you first hear this, was it in a class-?] Yeah it was in my accounting class, BU8380 financial accounting I do NOT recommend anyone take that class, or any other accounting class (laughter). [Will it be that you’ll type it out or see it on a document-] I’ll see it, sometimes when people are talking about it, when it does come up, sometimes it’ll come up when you’re talking about companies profitability, yeah, that’s when it’ll come up. [Is this a term that is used more exclusively by accountants, or if you’re a business major and you hear EBIT you’ll know what someone’s talking about] Business majors should know [should know?] if they payed attention in class (laughter).
-Interview with Informant
The shortening of words is a longstanding practice. Humans are lazy by nature and so as time passes they will say and do things the easiest way they can. Often the way a person says a word changes as the vowel sound becomes the one easiest to make after the previous one in a word. For example the word for is often pronounced as “fer” in modern day, where as fifty years ago no one would have pronounced it that way. “Fer” is easier to say and more convenient than the defined “for”, so that’s how its said. Accountants are no exception to this. All of the different professions also have jargon, and whereas someone who is a Dornsife students probably would have no idea what EBIT was or even what it means once the words are said, a Vertibi student, or at least one that has taken an accounting course, would. The informant voiced a general dislike of their chosen study, which gives insight into the almost mandatory or inevitable nature of folklore. Despite their deep dislike of accounting, the informant cannot help but know the terms used frequently by accountants. Minor forms of folklore are often picked up without realizing or making a conscious effort to do so. When one frequently interacts with something or some group, they are bound to pick up the relevant lore.
