The Story Behind the Buzzword

My best friend’s a hipster. Or at least that’s what I tell him, contrary to his vehement denial.

His denial is masked by the fact that he’s wildly intelligent, cultured, and likes to skim the The Wall Street Journal through thick-rimmed glasses. He is one of the first people I know to have seen Animal Collective perform live; he afterwards claimed that they were entirely unremarkable and is currently very bored by the likes of Avey Tare. And one day, while I was enjoying múm’s “Green Grass of Tunnel,” he casually remarked that Kría Brekkan happens to be fucking Avey Tare, as if it were common knowledge.

Moreover, his tasteful yet minimal wardrobe, consisting of a host of colorful tri-blend BDG v-necks and skinny jeans, could have come straight out of an American Apparel catalogue. And when it comes to his music preferences, eclectic just barely covers it. His perpetual fondness for David Bowie is only ever challenged by his long-time favorite metalcore band, Converge; however, he loves Lil Wayne and Explosions in the Sky just as much as the former.

Yet, he is not a hipster. No thanks. He just doesn’t "self-marginalize like that" nor is he an "attention whore." If anything, he’s a self-motivated finance student—pragmatic and over analytical—but bound for success.

So that really makes me wonder what the hell the buzzword “hipster” refers to anyways. Colloquially, it means “that guy with headphones and tight skinny jeans, smoking a Parliament.” As it has been informally adapted into the English language, it is a slang term for young adults who are somewhat nonconforming to mainstream aspects of society, such as fashion and culture (music, movies, and media). According to the 2009 TIME article, “Hipsters,” the term was first introduced in the 1940s, coined after the jazz age (when those who appreciated the scene were called “hip”), and revived in nineties and 21st century.

In the beginning, there were Beatniks, such as author Jack Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg. Hipsters of the Beat Generation, much like Kerouac, aimlessly traveled the country, bumming off of others and eating out of trashcans, hoping to derive some deeper meaning in life that way. These individuals then morphed into our well-known tree-hugging and peace-loving hippies of the 60s and 70s. They then died out for quite some time until the nineties grunge kids emerged, never short of all things retro or Converse sneakers. These pop culture movements have combined and merged into what we know today as modern hipsters.

According to the previously stated TIME article, "Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They're the people who wear t-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you've never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don't care."

Furthermore, Rob Horning, the author of "The Death of the Hipster" in the webzine PopMatters, considers hipsters to be the "embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics." He claims that the term “hipster” is defined by a lack of authenticity, laden with capitalistic exploits and the constant selling out of alternative sources.

This is perhaps what my best friend thinks of the word hipster—someone who gives off an inauthentic image, constantly searching for some source of superficial personal identity.

On the other hand, Urban Dictionary tells me that “hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.” This is also known as people who have good taste—people who explore politics, culture, art, music, or whatever it may be beyond the basic realm of what mainstream society has to offer.

So despite the somewhat negative connotation of the phony and uninspired individual, this is what I think of when I think hipster. So in that case, the fact that I believe my best friend to be a hipster still holds true. And not only that—Urban Dictionary tells me that hipsters always deny their hipsterdom. Case in point.

Our Unofficial Official Language Is All We’ve Got: The Death of Languages

Like most mothers, mine claims I was something of a bright, eager, and intuitive child. I apparently had the ability to speak to her and ask a multitude questions when I was merely one year old, still unable to fully walk. With the desire to reminisce about our earlier life together, she would pop in home videos of me in my infantile years, and indeed, I was constantly babbling nonsensical and curious baby phrases… in Mandarin Chinese.

English? Couldn’t speak a word of it until I was enrolled in my first preschool class, and even then, it was an entirely unfamiliar and frightening concept. These home videos further depict that I had a “fresh-off-the boat” accent as an English-speaking six-year old, collecting colorful Easter eggs and screaming, “Heeey, I founded anudder wong!”

Despite the many hardships of my younger years sans fluency—almost being sent to speech classes in elementary school and enduring the taunts of my more eloquent counterparts—I cling on to what I remember of my parent’s native language, hoping to never completely forget it.

However, a three-week trip in 2005 to every important corner of China taunted me more than the kids back in kindergarten ever did. I was instantly dubbed a foreigner by not only relatives and family friends, but also every street vendor and stranger I encountered. I remember my parents explicitly telling my sisters and I to not utter a word while sitting in a long taxicab ride that would have tripled in price had any of us attempted to speak in Chinese. Again, I was in an unfamiliar and frightening world in which I could not fully communicate what I desired.

Maybe not that frightening. Somewhat surprisingly, almost everyone I encountered in China knew how to speak basic English or at least aspired to learn. Back when my mother was a student, she began learning English in middle school; she claims that many Chinese children today now learn English starting from elementary school. It’s a hot language—many people, like my overachieving cousin, ultimately take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in hopes of immigrating to America for the customary “better education and standard of living.”

On the other hand, aside from my Asian-American friends, I personally know of few Americans who are able to or aspire to speak Chinese. According to the New York Times article, “China on Path to Become Second-Largest Economy,” China’s economy rose by 10.7 percent in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago, and is progressing forward as other nations are undergoing global recession. Thus, considering China’s skyrocketing economy and newfound global importance in which future businessmen among others will interact, it is odd that so few people choose to pursue learning it.

Despite my belief that few people are willing to learn Chinese, the New York Times article “Foreign Languages Fade in Class — Except Chinese,” shows otherwise. While thousands of public schools stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade—a very negative trend—many schools in the U.S. are now offering Chinese.

I’m not here to advocate that we replace our unofficial-official national language with Chinese. However, I am stating that America, or at least the America with which I am familiar, is suffering a tragic loss of languages in general. The influx of Chinese classes offered is merely a start to what would solve our country’s linguistical problems, but the deterioration of foreign language classes in general definitely does not help.

There is actually no national language of the United States. Contrary to English-only supporters, I believe that this is not necessarily a bad thing. It allows for people to maintain their native languages, especially if they reside in small communities, say Hispanic neighborhoods or Chinatown. This diversity and cultural myriad is the basis and underlying foundation of America and should be preserved. It is also faintly present in much of our daily life, such as with the foods we eat, which are never really “American” but some form of Americanized ethnic surprise.

This ‘ethnic surprise’ is rarely depicted in how people communicate in actuality and the American media. English, and English alone, seems to be the way to go. The newest Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds portrays this well with Lieutenant Aldo, the simple and unilingual American—he attempts to speak Italian at some point, but sounds less than articulate.

According to a poll conducted by the Rasmussen Reports in 2009, 84% of Americans say English should be the national language of the United States. While I do not support or refute this, I fully believe that foreign languages should not be completely lost amid the English, whether or not it becomes the national language of our country. The two to four years of high school Spanish, French, German, or Latin required of American students is underwhelming compared to the language requirements of other countries.

The article “Foreign Language Teaching: What the United States Can Learn from Other Countries,” extracted from the Education Resources Information Center, states that “it is well known in the United States that we have not kept up with the rest of the world in providing quality foreign language instruction to our students.”

The 2000 study (conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics) highlighted in this article compares the education systems of 19 countries, focusing on foreign language instruction. Among these countries are Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Finland, and Germany. Of the 19 countries in the study, the United States offers the latest start in foreign language education.

While the starting age for children in the United States to learn Spanish (the primary foreign language learned in our country) is 14 years old, the average for the other countries is around age 8. Furthermore, a few of the countries, such as Australia and Austria, offer foreign language education to students as young as 6 years old.

So while my Mandarin is currently subpar in my opinion, I am thankful I at least retained enough of it to be able to loosely communicate with others who can speak the language. I hope to build upon these skills or take classes to reach the level of fluency I evidently had as a tot. I realize I was lucky enough to be exposed to a foreign language at a very early age—a luxury many U.S. children do not have, but something that is commonplace with many other children around the world.