Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 10:09:55 -0500

From: Gregory {Greg} Downing downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU

Subject: Re: origins of slang



At 08:39 AM 11/3/97 CST, you (Ellen Johnson Ellen.Johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WKU.EDU ) wrote:

"It's all good" does sound new-agey to me, but no way is it

pop-Buddhist. For Buddhists, all of us here confined to the wheel of

birth and death are suffering in various degrees depending on our

level of attachment to this illusion we call "reality".





Yes, you're right -- sukkha and all that. Maybe "it's all indifferent" would

have been the phrase to label pop-Buddhist.... Sorry -- I dashed my note off

within ten minutes of the note I was responding to, and in no way was I

trying to sound normative: just trying to point out that (absent the

evidence obtainable through heavy lifting) there were other sources at least

as likely as AAVE for the phrase "it's all good"....



And I absolutely agree with your other point (which I clipped out -- whoops)

that a lot of these catch phrases come into wide usage via popular culture

-- TV and movies etc.--, just as a century ago they'd have done so through

music-hall songs or routines, or political sloganeering, etc. (Examine the

clear, or hazy, origins of many items in Partridge's _Dictionary of

Catch-Phrases_.)



Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu