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