t be distinguished from other words by sound or meaning. In fact, mostslang words are homonyms of standard words, spelled and pronounced just liketheir standard counterparts, as for example slang words for money such asbeans, brass, dibs, dough, chinc, oof, wards; the slang synonyms for word headare attic, brain-pan, hat peg, nut, upper storey; drunk-boozy, cock-eyed,high, soaked, tight, and pot (marijuana). Of course, these words are alike intheir ordinary standard use and in their slang use. Each word sounds just asappealing or unappealing, dull or colorful in its standard as in its slang use.Also, the meanings of beans and money, head and attic, pot and marijuana arethe same, so it cannot be said that the connotations of slang words are anymore colorful or racy than the meanings of standard words. [2]
All languages,countries, and periods of history have slang. This is true because they allhave had words with varying degrees of social acceptance and popularity.
The samelinguistic processes are used to create and popularize slang as are used tocreate and popularize all other words. That is, all words are created andpopularized in the same general ways; they are labeled slang only according totheir current social acceptance, long after creation and popularization.
To fullyunderstand slang, one must remember that a word's use, popularity, andacceptability can change. Words can change in social level, moving in anydirection. Thus, some standard words of William Shakespeare's day are foundonly in certain modern-day British dialects. Words that are taboo in one era(Eg, stomach, thigh) can become accepted, standard words in a later era. Manyprove either useful enough to become accepted as standard or informal words ortoo faddish for standard use. Blizzard and okay have become standard, while conbobberation("Disturbance") and tomato ("girl") have been discarded.Some words and expressions have a lasting place in slang; for instance, beat it("Go away"), first used in the 16th century, has neither become StandardEnglish nor vanished.
Language isdynamic, and at any given time hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of words andexpressions are in the process of changing from one level to another, ofbecoming more acceptable or less acceptable, of becoming more popular or lesspopular.
Slangis very informal use of words and phrases for more colorful or peculiar styleof expression that is shared by the people in the same social subgroup, forexample, computer slang, sports slang, military slang, musicians 'slang,students 'slang, underworld slang, etc. Slang is not used by the majority ofnative speakers and many people consider it vulgar, though quite a few slangphrases have already come into standard usage. Slang contains many obscene andoffensive words and phrases. It also has many expressions that are acceptablein informal communication. Slang is highly idiomatic. It isflippant, irreverent, indecorous; it may be indecent or obscene. Its colorfulmetaphors are generally directed at respectability, and it is this succinct,sometimes witty, frequently impertinent social criticism that gives slang its characteristic flavor.Slang, then, includes not just words but words used in a special way in acertain social context. The origin of the word slang itself is obscure; itfirst appeared in print around 1800, applied to the speech of disreputable andcriminal classes in London.
Language isthe property of a community of speakers. People rarely speak, or write, withonly themselves as the audience. It should not be surprising then that somecomponents and forms of language are socially motivated. Slang is one kind ofvocabulary that serves the social nature of language. In an important articlein 1978 Bethany Dumas and Jonathan Lighter make the crucial point that slangmust be identified by its social consequences, by the effects its use has onthe relationship between speaker and audience.
Dumas andLighter posit four criteria for identifying a word or phrase as slang. [3]
1. Itspresence will markedly lower, at least for the moment, the dignity of formal orserious speech or writing.
2. Its useimplies the user's familiarity either with the referent or with that lessstatusful or less responsible class of people who have such special familiarityand use the term.
3. It is atabooed term in ordinary discourse with persons of higher social rank orgreater responsibility.
4. It is usedin place of the well-known conventional synonym, especially in order (a) toprotect the user from the discomfort caused by the conventional item or (b) toprotect the user from the discomfort or annoyance of further elaboration.
They concludethat "when something fits at least two of the criteria, a linguisticallysensitive audience will react to it in a certain way. This reaction, whichcannot be measured, is the ultimate identifying characteristic of trueslang ". In other words, Dumas and Lighter's formulation requires that thetype of lexis called slang be recognized for its power to effect union betweenspeaker and hearer. Whether or not the particulars of their definition arenecessary or sufficient, Dumas and Lighter are right. Slang cannot be definedindependent of its functions and use.
Despite thedifficulties of defining the term, slang does have some consistentcharacteristics. [4] Slang is lexical ratherthan phonological or syntactic, though, in English at least, body language andintonation are often important in signaling that a word or phrase is to beinterpreted as slang. Nor is there a peculiarly slang syntax. Slang expressionsdo not follow idiosyncratic word order, and slang words and phrases typicallyfit into an appropriate grammatical slot in an established syntactic pattern. Furthermore,the productive morphological processes responsible for slang are the same onesresponsible for the general vocabulary, ie, for English, compounding, affixation,shortening, and functional shift.
II. MAIN PART
Slang derivesmuch of its power from the fact that it is clandestine, forbidden or generallydisapproved of. So what happens once it is accepted, even in some casesembraced and promoted by 'mainstream' society? Not long ago the Oxford EnglishDictionary characterized slang as 'low and disreputable'; in the late 1970s thepioneering sociolinguist Michael Halliday used the phrase 'anti-language' inhis study of the speech of criminals and marginals. For him, theirs was aninterestingly 'pathological' form of language. The first description now soundsquaintly outmoded, while the second could be applied to street gangs - today'sposses, massives or sets - and their secret codes. Both, however, involve valuejudgments which are essentially social and not linguistic. Attitudes to the useof language have changed profoundly over the last three decades, and theperceived boundaries between 'standard' and 'unorthodox' are becomingincreasingly 'fuzzy'.
Today, tabloidnewspapers in the UK such as the Sun, the Star and the Sport regularly useslang in headlines and articles, while the quality press use slang sparingly -usually for special effect - but the assumption remains that readers have aworking knowledge of common slang terms.
There has beensurprisingly little criticism of the use of slang (as opposed to the'Swear-words' and supposed grammatical errors which constantly irritate Britishreaders and listeners). The use of slang forms part of what linguists callcode-switching or style-shifting - the mixing of and moving between differentlanguages, dialects or codes. [5]
2.1 The originof slang
Slang was themain reason for the development of prescriptive language in an attempt to slowdown the rate of change in both spoken and written language. Latin and Frenchwere the only two languages ​​that maintained the use of prescriptive language inthe 14th century. It was not until the early 15th cen...
