Palash Week 3 - A Vocabulary of Memories
(Credit: iStock, FG Trade Latin)
Some of the most meaningful words and phrases in my vocabulary would probably mean absolutely nothing to you.
I could say one of them to a close friend and watch their facial expression change instantly. Maybe they laugh or maybe they look at me as if I have gone insane or maybe they say the same phrase back, making us laugh at something that happened years ago.
To others, it may just be a word or phrase, but to us, it's a time capsule of our own little shibboleths.
That is the strange thing about inside jokes. They start out as ordinary language, but at some point in time, they stop belonging to everyone.
Such a phrase gets repeated after something funny happens, someone mispronounces a word, or maybe someone makes a terrible decision that is funny enough to be remembered forever. Eventually, the original moment disappears into the background, while the phrase sticks with us. It becomes shorter and somehow funnier every time it is repeated to check “if they got the reference.”
My friends and I have many of these expressions. Sometimes I will hear a single word and immediately remember an entire day’s worth of memories. These recollections remind us who was there, where we were, and what happened that day. None of these aspects come from the meaning of the word, but rather from what we associate it with.
That is what makes inside jokes feel like their own language. They have vocabulary outsiders may not understand, references that require years of context, and meanings that cannot be found in a dictionary. Even if you explain that joke to someone else, it would never sound quite as funny.
They would have had to live it to understand.
We often think of language as something universal, a way for everyone to be on the same page. But the aspect of it that matters the most to us is completely useless to everyone else. It solely belongs to a specific group and time of people, based on memories that they only share.
With our friends and family, we have all built short languages unconsciously.
Rather than repeating jokes, these inside jokes are our way of reminiscing about our past.
I was thinking at some point about writing about memes at some point in my blogs, although I have chosen not to now; I am noticing now that the idea between inside jokes and memes are really similar. Memes are really just a larger inside joke which connects to way more people. That’s why if you show your parents one they would likely look at you in confusion, just like your example of inside jokes, they just simply do not have the context to understand them.
ReplyDeleteI found the overall idea of your blog very interesting, and notice it also kind of connects to your previous one regarding names. Just like names, inside jokes have no real meaning without the context and memories built around them, and I find it interesting that you are so commonly drawn to such abstract topics.
I noticed that like your previous blogs, you continue to follow a very logical structure and way of speaking, as your ideas all connect and flow well with one another. I also particularly like how you always tie these complex ideas back into your own personal experiences, as it gives me something to connect to while also just further contextualizing the idea. Mostly unrelated, but I quite like the word “shibboleths,” which just took me a solid 5 attempts to spell correctly, and truly wonder how you came across it.
Hi Palash! I like how you utilized short paragraphs, and used some with a single sentence; it creates a more dramatic and weighted effect. I also like how you used your personal experiences to highlight the shared language through inside jokes with your friends. I think that the intimacy of inside jokes and the fact that they are “inside” makes them more meaningful and personal to just the people who understand them. As part of the shared memory, it creates a bond between you and your friends. It creates a kind of poetry where what appears to be random words on the surface actually has a much deeper meaning and history to it, beyond the definitions of the words.
ReplyDeleteThis also reminds me of one of the sources from our thesis sprint a while back: “Mother Tongue." In it, the author explains how she used broken English around her family and a more professional way of speaking during her presentation. Even though the broken English did not make sense to other people, it was how she communicated with her mother and husband and shared an understanding. I think this relates to your blog (and also your first one on code switching) since it reveals the shared language and connection between people with close relationships, in contrast to the way they speak with other groups.
ReplyDeleteHi Palash. I really appreciated your comparison of inside jokes to a time capsule, because it really captures how much meaning they carry. I also think it’s interesting how you said the original joke becomes less important than the memories attached to it. Sometimes I forget why something is funny, then laugh at it when it comes up years later.
I agree that an inside joke just doesn’t hit the same when it's shared with someone who wasn’t there at its conception. So much of the humor comes from the memory of being there and laughing at the joke for the very first time. I like how you connected this to the idea that language brings people together, and inside jokes create small communities that understand a unique language. It makes me think that inside jokes serve a larger purpose than normal jokes: instead of just being funny, they are reminders of the people and experiences that created them.