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