Slinging that slang

he first thing that hits you when you read Trainspotting, is perhaps the last thing to fade from the experience of reading the text. That is, from the onset, readers are submerged into a lower class subculture of debauchery and drug abuse through the immersive capabilities of language. Not unlike A Clockwork Orange, and its implementation of ‘nadsat’, the reader is forced to reckon with counter culture in its most apparent manifestation, language, or more specifically, slang. I think what is most striking about the utilization of a language in Trainspotting, is how one is forced to assume a phonetic disposition, which more often than not, is not native to them. At first, especially for American readers I would presume, there is a what seems to be a learning curve where one first tries on their best British accent only to realize that the words on Irvine Welsh’s page, are in fact not British in the slightest. Rather, the inflection is one which, after some brief period of adjustment, the reader understands is characterized by a dialect and inflection which are clearly not akin to the Brit, nor the bourgeois author. Furthermore, after more reading, this style of speech, which is rather lazy with respect to its annunciation of syllables, is one rather favorable and easily adaptable. That is, after a few hours of reading I noticed a proclivity for my inner monologue to have a vaguely Scottish lower class accent.
I think though that what is so effective about Welsh’s choice to utilize this dialect is that, on some level anyway, the vernacular is inherently transgressive to the normative mode of speech and therefore lends itself to easily conveying realities which are far separated from our own, yet nonetheless, understood in essence as one that is clearly not of the mainstream ilk. Thus, it seems that by beginning with a transgressive dialect, Welsh makes what is a seemingly far removed world, one which is understood on the surface as rejecting normative values and modes of life. Therefore, one is not, at least in my opinion, asking themselves, “why would he act in such a way, and how could he go on with shit in his trousers?,” but on the contrary one immediately understands and accepts to a certain degree that these are persons of a fringe culture who abide by and conform to the rules that get them through the day. Not for nothing, but this is why, to a certain extent, good rap albums, (i.e. 36 Chambers, Lifestyles of the Poor and Dangerous, Stillmatic and so on), communicate much more about the process of socialization and the power of language in conveying a modus operandi than politically correct critics and moms across the board care to observe.