Language in Use 1 -1- Nicole Kolisch

John Heath Mtr. Nr. 9002037

„Buffy is able to survive longer than other slayers

because she is embedded in language and because
she embodies language. It is a very particular
language with its own vernacular, but it behaves like
all languages in that it creates, it compiles, it
translates, it follows well-defined rules, it draws on
shared knowledge, and it must be wielded with
precision in order to be effective … Any slayer can
brandish a weapon, but for Buffy The Vampire Slayer,
the tongue is as pointed as the stake.”

- Karen Eileen Overbey and Lahney Preston-Matto,

“Staking in Tongues: Speech Act as Weapon in Buffy”

“She saved the world. A lot.”

The use of language in “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”

As this is meant to be a rather personal opinionated piece and not some sort of highbrow
argumentative essay, strictly in academic style and register, let us for a moment assume that
the potential reader is no member of a carefully selected academic audience. Or if she/he
happens to be: Let us assume that the ivory tower has television. What’s more: It has cable.
And its inhabitants – at least for the sake of this argument – are known to watch and enjoy
an American TV series called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (henceforth BTVS), created by the
versatile screen-writer Joss Whedon in the late 1990s.
Therefore there is no need to explain either the history, or the plot of the series. I would
rather like to embark on a more adventurous journey, exploring the use of language that lies
at the core of BTVS.

Language plays a vital role in BTVS because the series focuses on a group of adolescents
struggling for their distinctive identities. Any teenager uses slang to separate himself/herself
from the establishment, from their parents’ or teacher’s world that doesn’t seem to offer what
they are looking for. Slag is, as James Slegg argued, a somewhat disruptive force. It is used
by people who lack (or are denied) conventional status and it “serves the outs as a weapon
against the ins. To use slang is to deny allegiance to the existing order, either jokingly or in
earnest, by refusing even the words which represent convention and signal status.” (Slegg)

If this is true for any teenager who uses slang to create identity and to state cultural
opposition, it is even more the case in the so-called Buffyverse, the world inhabited by Buffy
and her friends. For Buffy not merely faces the burdens of being a teenager. She also has to
cope with a mythic prophecy that marks her as “the chosen one”, the only girl that can
Language in Use 1 -2- Nicole Kolisch
John Heath Mtr. Nr. 9002037
protect our world from some nocturnal forces of evil, bent on either total destruction or at
least world dominance (depending on the respective season of the series…)

Buffy is a reluctant heroine. Saving the world interferes with her cheerleading career and
social life. Her role as a vampire slayer robs her of her adolescence. And even though she
comes to hesitantly accept this, she is not giving up her ordinary life without a fight; her most
powerful weapon being language. Buffy is a rapid-fire quipster who knows the language of
her time and place. In his acclaimed book “Slayer Slang” Michael Adams denotes: “Buffy
needs slang, as means of shrugging off millennial expectations, as a weapon, and as an
expression of personality officially denied her by her role: in a sense she IS slang, as are
those who associate with her.”

Therefore it does not come as a surprise that in order to carve out her very own niche Buffy
has introduced new slang terms and phrases in nearly every episode, many of them formed
in rather unusual ways. Most of them will probably prove to be ephemeral but some of these
Buffy-isms have already found their way into everyday American teen speech. For teenagers
dissatisfied with the language they inherit have always been free to invent a language that
carries relevance and meaning beyond those pesky words their parents use.
In being most creative with idioms, cultural references1, pre2- and suffixation3, and functional
shifts of items45, BTVS provides not only a lexicon of words but also a handy toolbox for its
adolescent audiences, a “Do-it-yourself” language kit that has been embraced and put to
most creative use in various newsgroups and posting boards on the internet.

For slang not merely separates the outs from the mainstream. It also serves as social
grease, providing cohesion within the outs’ language community. In doing so it marks a
language user as part of a specific group while simultaneously marking the user’s individual
style or approach to language within this group.

1
„Does anyone feel like we’ve been Keyser Sozed?“ remarks Buffy’s sidekick Xander in one of the earlier
episodes.
2
„übersuck“, „unfun“, „untopicy“, „pre-here“
3
„everydayness“, „glib-free“, „nowness“, “double-shiftiness”, “sticking-upness”, as well as suffixes phrases like
“stiff upper-lippy”
4
e.g. SIMPLE PRESENT VERB + „much“ + INTERROGATIVE: „Walk much?“, “Over-identify much?”
5
„Sitch me!“ (= “Bring me up to date on the current situation”)
originates from „What’s the sitch?“
Language in Use 1 -3- Nicole Kolisch
John Heath Mtr. Nr. 9002037

Personally, I urge anyone who ever was interested in these mechanisms provided by
language to get his/her hands on the DVD-collection of BTVS. Granted, we are confronted
with fictional characters who, of course, cannot speak their own languages. They exhibit
verbal styles that originate in the verbal style of the show’s writers, i.e. Joss Whedon and his
creative team. Still what can be witnesses in every episode are distinctively individual and
original patterns of speak, each relating to a specific character, but still belonging to a
common speech community with rather fixed rules; with all those contributions of individual
speakers marking variations on a given theme.
If one manages to get over the initial “Oh it’s about werewolves, demons and vampires”-
shock, one is rewarded with a rich landscape of language; more imaginative than I have
seen anywhere else on American television.