‘That’s How I Roll” by Ginny Donaldson (2009) is a short look at some of the phrases and anecdotes that are used in language today, defining there origins. Donaldson backs up assertions made in the opening exchanges with facts about the phrase “That’s How I Roll”, and its growth from 50,000,000 links to 56,200,000 in just over one day. Donaldson then goes on to give more examples taken as quotes from the Internet, often using clever pieces of information from her own life to back up claims and strengthen points. The purpose of this piece would be to inform; it does not make conclusive findings about the origins of a phrase. But while it does not conclude definitively about the origins of such phrases, it does help the audience to understand their place in language today.
My initial response to this essay was that of enjoyment. I enjoyed the quotes given to back up claims about slang or a certain phrase expanding in our language. The quote “we created our own language by altering the language we already know and called it slang” is one of the most important lines in the text from my perspective. Not only does it give an accurate representation of Donaldson’s main point, what is slang and what are its origins, but for me its sums up the paper as a whole in one line. Although the origins of “That’s How I Roll” as a phrase are not truly conclusive, Donaldson’s take on how we create and edit our language, shortening and simplifying where necessary, altering already existing phrases to make them ‘slang’, is a perfect summing up of how these phrases are brought into language today. Overall I agreed entirely with Donaldson’s interpretation of where these phrases in our language come from. I just wish she could have found the origin of the phrase!
I think the meaning of the text is not to find one specific example of a phrase and its origin, but to give an insight as to how our language has evolved and taken in these slang/language hybrids to become the language we have today. Donaldson makes a point using quotes from “Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Dan Heath. She raises the point that if all concepts either ‘stick’ or do not, then there must have been a time when slang itself ‘stuck’. This then leads on to the still unexplained phrase “That’s How I Roll” and how its origin, and that of slang, and that of the English Language can not be directly traced to just on specific input, but is the combination of all these things that give us what we have today.
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