slang
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slang
Slang
• is the use of informal words or expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker’s language.
• is often used by people in a group that are familiar with it like teenagers.
• makes speech more emotionally expressive and shorter.
• is usually taboo when speaking to people of higher social status.
English or American slang?
• Cockney is history• The globalisation of culture tends to be
the culture that is globalised in English or more precise, in American English.
• The vehicle: Rap, hip hop, rock music, …• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4DJnb
kAvTk
Bad language is nothing new
• Slang says a lot about attitudes, particularly male attitudes.
• It is related with insults, with racism, with nationalism, with all forms of cruelty.
• There are 1500 words for fucking, but there is not word for love.
16th Century
• Words for penis: daggers, swords, guns, clubs and needles (basically toys for boys)
• Words for vagina: they are basically narrow alleyways, traps, snares, pits,…: again they are something that boys are frightened of.
Slang of American youth
• Slang is ephemeral, and so to survive it must constantly regenerate;
• Both the ephemeral and regenerative traits are nowhere more apparent than in the slang of American youth.
The medium can be the message.
• Slang is the “tribe” identity and the manifestation of the identity’s benefits.
• At times the primary message is not in the meaning of what is said.
4 Factors
• The four factors that are the most likely to produce slang are youth, oppression, sports and vice, which provide an impetus to coin and use slang for different sociolinguistic reasons.
• Of these four factors, youth is the most powerful stimulus for the creation and distribution of slang.
My generation
• When we are young, we are subject to the generational imperative to invent a slang vocabulary that we perceive as our own.
• We reject the slang of our older brothers and sisters (let alone our parents) in favor of a new lexicon.
Born in the USA
• The Global Spread of American Slang lets young people around the world share a common culture.
• American slang has become a global code, with colorful examples from the music scene.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4DJnbkAvTk
http://www.pbs.org/speak/words/sezwho/globalslang/
Cool, wicked, chill, dope, nerd.
• Young people around the world use this kind of slang to show they’re connected to American pop culture.
• Slang’s main social function is to signal belonging: American slang marks the speaker or writer as an active and informed member of global youth culture.
Exclusive and global
• Vernacular English is powerfully expressive because — paradoxically — it is both exclusive and global. In any host society.
• American slang lives in a world of linguistic and cultural knowledge not available at school.
• American slang lives in the specialized media of the young, such as CD booklets, songs and video clips, magazines and Web sites.
Global code for youth
• Through the media, young people enter fan communities where they learn to incorporate certain forms of English into both their speech and writing to show that they’re a part of youth culture.
• As a result, American slang have become a global code for youth worldwide included in a local code — the national language.
Flipped out = flipar
• When host languages incorporate slang, speakers inflect loan nouns and verbs just like native items and build compounds of English and native nouns.
• For instance, flipped out comes as ausgeflippt in German, flippato in Italian, flippé in French, and fliparisménos in Greek, and flipar in Spanish.
Signals social identity abroad
• Items such as hi, cool and cu ( as in ‘see you’ ) are spreading into general German and Spanish slang, openers such as aight heads have a specific social meaning among hip-hop enthusiasts.
• They identify writer (and addressee) not only as trendy young people, but as members of the same fan community, (in this case, Hip Hop).
Conversational Routines
• greetings and farewells — hi, hey, what's up, bye, cu, peace, cheers
• thanks and apologies — thanx, sorry • discourse markers — ok, anyway,
whatever, yeah, yes • various “chunks” — no way! that's all! I'm
ready! let's go! shut up!
Non-standard spellings
• In print and on the Internet, English often comes with non-standard spellings that may indicate colloquial or non-standard pronunciation or may serve as purely visual distinction.
Vernacular spelling patterns
The following vernacular spelling patterns are common in various countries:
• participial suffix -in' (e.g. livin', movin', rockin') • reductions, assimilations (e.g. wanna, ya, mo') • noun plural ending -a/-ah instead of -er (e.g.
brotha, sistah) • noun plural ending -z for -s (e.g. newz, boyz,
beatz, propz) • spelling variants ph and k (e.g. phat, phunky,
kool, komradz) • lexical substitutions (e.g. u, 2, 4, cu la8tr)
Slang, Globalization and English as a Foreign Language
• American slang has a global currency in youth-cultural contexts.
• It is not transmitted through the institutional teaching of EFL.
• It is the outcome of rapid linguistic transfer via non-curricular sources, reaching teenagers before entering English-language dictionaries.
Slang and EFL
• However, American slang does not threaten institutional EFL. The relationship is best viewed as complementary, both linguistically and in terms of language attitudes.
• Knowledge of slang extends the knowledge of English with respect to particular semantic fields and speech styles.
Slang and EFL
• Although slang could never substitute for EFL in its instrumental value, it clearly connects foreign-language learning with adolescent cultural experience.
webs
• http://www.slangvocabulary.com/wp/• http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/• http://onlineslangdictionary.com/• http://www.slangvocabulary.com/wp/• http://www.urbandictionary.com/• http://jonathongreen.co.uk/• http://www.alphadictionary.com/slang/K.html