LIKE, WHATEVER.

Kid rhetoric is meant to hide everything from adults while revealing everything to other kids.  Duh.

So what’s the strategy?

1.  Work from what you know, which adults might also know but maybe not.  Then find a code that lets you talk about it without them understanding your references.  It might be free-association, it might be abbreviations, it might be reversing (like saying something is the opposite of what the usual meaning of a word might be), and it’s often from advertising, because what else is there?

2.  Use song lyrics from music adults probably don’t know.  Even the ones that are just repetitions have meaning, like a baby babbles but you still know in general what it’s trying to say, especially if the baby is just expressing feelings.  (Felt concepts)

3.  Emotional content is important.  The second decade of human life is all about emotion, whether your style is all-emo all-the-time, or stone cold brutal resistance.  Emo is probably more important than rational deduction kinds of sense.  But try not to scare adults.

4.  Deliberately mis-use particles, like reverse gender (“she” for a guy), or adding “s” to something that usually doesn’t take an s to make a plural (peoples -- "peeps".).  What it does is sound a little like English is your second language, which is cool.  All the intellectuals like people other than white bread English teachers because it’s bullying to make people conform.  And international is IN -- it’s GLOBAL.

5.  Being ambiguous is making room for interpretation.  It’s respectful, it doesn’t reveal people who don’t want to be revealed.  A person who is inventing themselves or searching for themselves don’t want the facts of their lives splayed out there in public.  It’s no one’s business what’s under your bed -- or in it.  Adults say that all the time -- but then they want to know.  They always want the last word, the bottom line, and closure.

6.  There is nothing wrong with free association rather than  logical lists like this one.  “Free” is a value and so is “association,” so what’s the objection?  Shrinks want you to free associate to ink blots but not to your friends?  Which one can you really trust?  So you talk fast and hop around on different subjects.  That’s just life and not much of it is so precious or crucial that you can fail to “get” much of it.  You'll have forgotten or even have become a rather different person by tomorrow.

7.  “Loud” is because music is physical.

8.  Dark, tunnels, parcours, are because escape is physical and because it takes adrenaline to have the strength.  You get Super-A from danger.

9.  Using kid rhetoric is not about vocabulary lists the same as it’s not about Latin syllables used to make words.  It’s mostly about oral culture so HOW you speak it counts.  Sometimes that where the code thing comes in -- by adding sarcasm or groaning or by trailing off, the emo component is there.  Barely moving one’s lips and talking quickly can set up adult concentration and frustration -- very satisfying.

10.  The rhetoric that is useful is not that of political speaking to large groups on amplification but rather the way one would talk to a friend, which is why you NEED a friend.  At most a few others, because there will be many references to the immediate past -- not the academic past -- because of needing the evidence of the immediate just-past because farther back than that is not relevant, but the evidence of the just-past needs reflection to find meanings and plot the next move.  You might need a friend or two so you can compare notes, triangulate, and pick up info lost by one but not the other.  

11.  If there are no other people with whom you wish to be intimate, selfies will work.  In fact, you and a camera make two and if you add a mirror or a song, that makes three.  Dogs are good.

12.  Slang, cursing, sexism, extreme political correctness, are all part of the ways to say, “this is an in-group and our rules are different.”  They are rhetoric strategies, not supreme court decisions or restrictions from Leviticus. But an outsider can NOT use group pejoratives if not deeply included.  That means “nigger,” “blanket Indian,” “faggot,” “fucker,” must NOT be spoken lightly because they only say, “I am talking about myself and I am not afraid to say anything about it.”

13.  Don’t expect anyone to be interested in YOUR world.  And don’t instruct people about your life.  NO one cares.  

14.  Sometimes it is the duty and usefulness of a straight, virtuous, abstemious, vanilla, grown-up person to be just exactly that for the sake of having the reference point.  Sometimes to interface or intervene with authorities.

15.  Movies that only teens would watch make good reference points: the names of the characters, names (any nouns) made into verbs, and sci-fi sounding words which tend to have Z, W, Q or K in them or to be kinda African or Afghani are good, but also verbs may be invented, like mind-meld or groking, which means they are about things impossible in “real” life but which a person might yearn for when trying to talk about the difficulties of communication.

16.  There are HUGE differences between the two sexes at this point.  So far the effort to get people to change their ideas to fit a spectrum of types has not moved them away from their binary fixations.  Much of the prejudice that gets kids thrown out of their homes too early and too violently comes from this idea that there is a “right” way to be male or female and anything else is not just offensive but in fact an act against the integrity and function of the family which is based on the “Game of Thrones” obsession that “sons” must through military, sports, or business distinguish the name and bring in major money.

17.  Drug slang serves many of the same purposes as teen slang, the same as gang signs or tats.  Everyone likes to style as “gangsta” because it’s assumed to mean power.  

18.  Google and other search engines try to keep up with the definitions and inventions of language, but they often are out-of-date or have overtones you might not want to call out, like “wanksta.”  This is a good reason for trying experiments with people who will merely laugh and hit you, but not too hard -- as opposed to yanksta you to the principal’s office.

It’s really hard to pick one’s way between a world where some contingents are invested in experiment and energy while others value correctness, often in 19^th century terms, in order to demonstrate respectability, and all the time new words are being invented on the Internet, some of them necessary to know in order to say what you mean.  Beyond that, because our young are invested in drawing back the curtains that used to hide so much, things might be talked about which previously only had medical names.  Of course, I’m talking about the brain -- what did you think?