twoja stara/ twój stary

This expression, known in youth slang for several years, has regained popularity among younger teenagers (third place in MSR 2021). It has long been a staple of youthful retort, appearing in many communicative exchanges. It ends unwanted discussions and is a universal response to taunts like: “But who asked?” – “Your mom.” It ends unwanted contact, although the adversary may still try to take the initiative by saying: “Probably yours!” Repeated in thousands of variations, expressions like: “Your dad…” / “Your dad in Winiary…” / “Your drunk dad…” / “Your mom…” are used to create asterisms (repeating expressions to draw attention to what follows) and diazyrms – mocking and depreciating the opponent, e.g., “Your dad bathes in rubber boots”; “Your dad camps on the couch,” “Your mom builds sand snowmen”; “Your mom dances rap in front of the TV”; “Your mom fries salt.” These figures are useful both in “playfully dismissing someone” (MSR 2019) and in creating jokes (“satirical, inoffensive joke” MSR 2019), which function independently, popularized by websites, internet applications, music works, and compilations (e.g., Google Play app Twoja-stara.pl, the portal Twoja stara; trap-rap Hotelowy freestyle o Twoim starym by Parisa Platynova, Songs with lyrics about Your Mom (YouTube.com). The confrontational power of these structures stems from violating important cultural-linguistic norms related to “saving face” (Brown, Levinson), including respecting the interlocutor’s heritage and lineage (in slang, stary and stara are synonyms for parents). Meanwhile, the convention of humorous distance and play gives them a different role. It makes genealogical status (lineage) shaky and expands the meaning. Context determines the semantics in terms of playability, and the possibility of duplication mitigates the invectiveness and brackets the cultural norm. These structures thus function also as euphemisms, jokes, or – as young people say – simply “funny lines” (cf. the tab on Jeja.pl).

[1] Trap-rap is a subgenre of hip-hop (see e.g., https://hhpl.fandom.com/pl/wiki/Trap)