Dig what I’m putting down , ‘cause I’m layin’ it on straight and trying to hip you wise – we can ball all night if you take it slow and fall in on that mess which is swinging with these slang-song cats. Get straight, or cut out!
I love “Chevy” which is slang for face, because of the “Chase” got dropped off of Chevy Chase. Or even crazier “Kettle” is slang for watch because it is short for “Kettle and Hob” (a hob is a flat metal shelf above a fireplace where people would have boiled water) and when watches first appeared they were worn on fobs. I like that you need a history lesson to even get the rhyme.
When the reader opens the novel to page one, the very first paragraph is quite jarring: “The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling. Ah was jist sitting their, focusing oan the telly, tryin no tae notice the cunt. He was bringing me doon. Ah tried tae keep ma attention oan the Jean-Claude Van Damme video” (Welsh 3.) Immediately Welsh achieves a gut reaction, a feeling of uneasiness, from the reader—
namely, confusion. What exactly is the speaker trying to say in these first few sentences of the novel? Though written in “English”, a glossary of terms is needed for quite a few of these words. For a
novel technically written in English to include a glossary of terms for readers is a testament to Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia, and is proof of Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia at work.
edited to add a crucial definition: “Heteroglossia revolves around the concept that multiple languages exist within one single language.”
I read it pretty smoothly, except I thought, “What does Jean-Claude Van Damme” mean here? Then I realized, he was literally watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Wow, never would have expect that.
I just had to look it up to make sure the timelines were right. Yeah, Trainspotting was published in 1993, Blood Sport was 1988, Kickboxer 1989, Universal Soldier 1992, and Street Fighter wasn’t until 1994. So when Trainspotting was being written (I’ll guess 2-4 years prior to publication) Van Damme was at the height of his popularity.
I think this was cognitive dissonance for me because it involved remembering that Van Damme was ever a popular actor rather than a potential punchline.
I fondly recall Brad Pitt’s incredible “Did you understand a single word of what he just said?” speech in Snatch. I swear, when I saw that in a theatre, I actually understood exactly two words: ‘periwinkle blue.’
This malapproximation of received pronunciation is but doggerel juxtaposition, condescending in comparison to the lyrical loquaciousness of the broguish annunciation found in Scottish patternation.
