1990s

1990s

By Bonnie Birch

The 1990’s was a decade of technical advances and the end of two important

wars. Many new words were added to the dictionary, many euphemisms created

however many people in the 1990s were cynical about the success of science

and technology.

Any words in italics/bold are new words within the 1990s.

Age

• We began to have different ideas about age

• More and more adults played video games, without feeling like kids or geeks.

• In 1997, JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was published; soon, adults

were seen reading them as often as children were.

The wars

The end of the 1980’s Cold War meant many new opportunities and

uncertainties were opened up.

Civil war broke out in 1991 with the secession of Croatia and Slovenia and

introduced the euphemism of ethnic cleansing.

The Gulf war 1991 between the United Nations to expel the Iraqi invaders

from Kuwait. This introduced euphemisms such as collateral damage and

friendly fire were introduced to a wider population.

• Confidence returned with the end of the recession and Britain reinvented itself as Cool Britannia, proprietor of Britpop.

• For entertainment, people had docusoaps on TV,

• Aga sagas were found in the book shops,

• Red top tabloids were on the news stands e.g. the Sun, The mirror.

• At work, there was a good chance you would be hot desking

• The new institution of dress down Friday reached Britain from the US

The internet!

• Cybernauts and Netties surfed the World Wide Web.

• It was cool if you had your own website or webpage.

• You had to try and avoid spam and mail bombs, but the main fear in the

cybercafé was the millennium bug which threatened to crash all computer

systems on midnight 31st Dec 1999.

• We all had Tamagotchi/ cyber pets

The European Community

• The number of independent states in Europe went up from 25 in 1980’s to approaching 40 in late 90s.

• Under the terms of the 1992 Maastricht treaty, it transformed itself into the European Union.

• Such developments were not to the liking of Eurosceptic elements within the ruling Conservative party in Britain. They were encouraged in their doom-laden predictions by Black Wednesday, in which Britain was forced ignominiously to abandon its membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

• Britain's relations with its European partners reached rock bottom with the beef war.

• The humbling of the pound spelled the beginning of the end for the British Conservative government which had been in power since 1979.

New labour- new life for Britain

• Taking the Tories place, new labour , a transformed labour party which had

abandoned its more extreme socialist polices in favour of the third way.

• Under Blairism, tax and spend was out, welfare to work and tough love were in.

• To-get-rich-and-flaunt-it in the 80’s was over due to the recession of the

early 90s.

• It was forecasted as the ‘caring decade’, although generation X, job seekers and sufferers from negative equality probably did not find it so.

• Nor did the children, for it was a decade in which the realities of paedophilia,

child pornography were laid bare.

90’s

• Mouthy, low-born young artists became millionaires.

• Indie scruffs (Blur, Pulp, Oasis) overthrown boy bands from the cover of Smash Hits.

• Smart young comedians deposed the creepy old guard of showbiz

• Hirst and Blur were associated with another Nineties trend, the new lad. Today, we think of the new lad as a burping, track suited man-child. But the point about new lad was that he didn’t just like beer, ladies and football; he also liked books, films and art.

NEWS WORDS

• Emoticon New lad

• Icon Laddish

• Voicemail Outing (in the gay community)

• Browser European Union

• Screen Saver Black Wednesday

• Spam

• Viagra

Adverts from the 90s

Technology in the 90’s