Title: Blitz

General Information:

         Verbal Lore: Slang

         Language: English

         Country of Origin: United States

         Informant: SW ’22

         Date Collected: 11/04/21

         Location Collected: First Floor Baker-Berry Library

Informant Data: 

SW ’22 is a 21-year-old female from Houston, Texas. She is a member of the Dartmouth Class of 2022, and she is majoring in Linguistics modified with Economics and minoring in French. Outside of the classroom, SW ’22 is involved with the Sugarplum dance group, Women in Business, Women in Student Business, Social Impact Nonprofit Consulting, and Kappa Kappa Gamma. She plans to work in the consulting industry upon graduation.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: SW ’22 was studying in the Baker-Berry Library when she shared this piece of verbal lore with me. She first learned the term as a first-year student during First-Year Trips. Trips is an orientation experience where incoming first-year students spend a few days in the outdoors with 6-8 other first-year students and two upperclassmen mentors. On her trip, SW ’22 learned about the verbal slang ‘Blitz’ when her two upperclassmen mentors did an activity with her and the other first-year students on her trip where they specifically listed off a number of Dartmouth slang terms and defined them. Blitz was one of those words, and SW ’22 and the other 6-8 first-year students learned how to perform this piece of folklore. This piece of verbal slang is performed reguarly and used by all students at Dartmouth.
• Cultural Context: Here, the relevant cultural context is that the informant is a student at Dartmouth College. This piece of folklore is known to and used by all Dartmouth students and is a type of verbal slang. It is commonly used casually between students when referring to emails that are sent from one Dartmouth email account to another Dartmouth account – or accounts. It is specifically used in reference to emails sent from Dartmouth clubs or organizations to large groups of students, or in reference to emails sent in academic settings. Blitz can have both a positive and negative connotation, depending mostly on the situation. For example, for a first-year student, a campus-wide email blitz sent by a club that they may be interested in would be exciting, and thus blitz would have a positive connotation. That same campus-wide blitz, however, could be found as annoying to an upperclassmen student who knows they are not interested in the club, and thus blitz would have a negative connotation.

Item: 

Blitz: Short for “Blitz Web Access”. Blitz refers to an email sent from one Dartmouth account to another. For example, used in a sentence: “Did you get that campus-wide blitz about COVID restrictions?”

Associated File: 

“A word I learned while on trips was ‘Blitz’. Blitz is basically a Dartmouth email sent between two Dartmouth accounts. I learned it when my trip leaders sat down with me and my other tripees and explained a bunch of different Dartmouth slang words to us. This term is used by everyone at Dartmouth, and it came to be because it’s short for ‘Blitz Web Access’.”

Informant’s Comments: 

Dartmouth likes to be niche about a lot of things, and they have their own lingo. Blitz is just one of those words.

Collector’s Comments: 

Blitz is a piece of Dartmouth slang that is known to and used by everyone. There may be some Dartmouth students that do not know that it is short for ‘Blitz Web Access’.

In her transcript, SW ’22 refers to the terms ‘trip leaders’ and ‘tripees’. ‘Trip leaders’ references the upperclassmen mentors on first-year trips, and ‘tripees’ refers to the other incoming first-year students who are on someone’s trip.

Collector’s Name: Nathan Zhang

Tags / Keywords: FA21, FA21-Grp-03, Dartmouth, Verbal Lore, Slang, Students, Email, Dartmouth Clubs