The sociological properties of slang

2. Previous Studies on Slang

2.3. The description of slang

2.3.2. The sociological properties of slang

Again in the literature, slang is associated with many sociological properties, which derive from both its varied nature and its multifunctionality. The properties are reported here below and arranged in descending order of frequency: that is, the first property (group-restriction) is the most frequent among slang definitions, whereas the thirty-first (spontaneity) is reported only in one study of all those that I have explored.¹⁴

Given the miscellaneous nature of such properties, and their often contradictory nature (cf. debasement and prestige), slang is not claimed to exhibit all of them simultaneously. However, it should exhibit at least some of the following:¹⁵

Group-restriction: in its specific sense, slang is frequently described as an in-group vocabulary that identifies people of a common age and experience, and facilitates their group solidarity. London teenagers, for example, may be identified by their use of such slang words as man, mate and wicked (COLT), while drug addicts use such words as coke, joint, and smack to create cohesiveness within their group.

Informality: slang (esp. general slang) is commonly viewed as a colloquial level of speech that signals the speaker’s desire to soften the seriousness or formality of the dominant tone, and to assume instead a more familiar or conversational tone.

14 Most of the properties are mentioned by linguists and lexicographers as exactly reported in this section. However, as terminology varies throughout the literature, synonymous properties are included under the same label. For instance, such properties as vitality, vigour, vivacity, liveliness and exuberance fall under the label

‘freshness’, whereas ‘informality’ summarizes the slang qualities of being (highly) colloquial, conversational, familiar, popular, or not accepted as formal usage.

15 See Table 2 for a detailed report in the literature.

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Elisa Mattiello An Introduction to English Slang. A Description of its Morphology, Semantics and Sociology

Opening Considerations and Executive Summary ... 11 Fabio Baggio, Laura Zanfrini

1. Ethics and Human Rights

in the South American Migration Processes ... 15 Mario Santillo

1.1 Migrants’ Rights ... 17 1.2 International Instrument for Migrants’ Defence ... 21 1.3 Some Final Reflections... 23 Bibliography ... 25 2. Migration Policies and Ethics in East and South East Asia... 27

Fabio Baggio

2.1 International Migration in East Asia and South East Asia... 27 2.2 Migration Policies in ESEA... 34 2.3 Ethics and Migration Management... 43 Bibliography ... 47 3. Immigration in the 21st Century.

The Need for an Ethical Approach. The Canadian Experience ... 51 Christine Baghdady, Richard Vanderberg

3.1 World Population Increase ... 51 3.2 Urbanization, International Migration and Governance ... 53 3.3 International Migration in Canada: An Ethical Assessment... 54 Instances of slang informality are the noun bread (orig. U.S.), used in familiar contexts to mean ‘money’, and the verb phrases go big (orig. U.S.) and go it, which are the informal counterparts of ‘be a big success, have a large sale’ and ‘go along at great speed’.

Time-restriction: slang is temporary since it changes over time. It is typical of some generation but falls into disuse very quickly, with the taking over of the next generation and the change of trends and tastes. Thus, some slang words may have a very similar meaning, but a different temporal collocation, as shown by the near-synonymic exclamations for ‘excellent’: wizard (1920s), groovy (1930s-40s), magic (1950s), fab ( fabulous, 1960s), brill ( brilliant, 1980s), sick (2000s).

Ephemerality: slang is an ephemeral, short-lived, ever-changing vocabulary. Novel words and special meanings crop up at very brief intervals, but generally remain in current use for a short time, and then pass away as quickly as they have been created. Thus, while some words, such as chap, chum and grub “have been slang for a long time”

(Andersson & Trudgill 1990: 78), other words (called “vogue words” in the literature), such as massive, paranoid and reckon, “have become fashionable for a short period of time”

(Stenström et al. 2002: 65). And still other words, such as bus, phone and pub are no longer felt as slang, but rather as colloquial language (see § 2.2.6).

Debasement: like many other non-standard varieties, slang is considered debased, subordinate speech, characteristically dominated by reversed prestige, lack of dignity and anti-social features. At least, slang is viewed so by the conformists, who condemn many common slang words (e.g. bloke, dude, guv) because they lower the level of discourse to degraded language.

Freshness: slang is often described as a fresh vital vocabulary that keeps language alive and growing. The vigour and liveliness that lie behind slang make it a language for

Elisa Mattiello An Introduction to English Slang. A Description of its Morphology, Semantics and Sociology

Opening Considerations and Executive Summary ... 11 Fabio Baggio, Laura Zanfrini

1. Ethics and Human Rights

in the South American Migration Processes ... 15 Mario Santillo

Fabio Baggio

The Need for an Ethical Approach. The Canadian Experience ... 51 Christine Baghdady, Richard Vanderberg

3.1 World Population Increase ... 51 3.2 Urbanization, International Migration and Governance ... 53 3.3 International Migration in Canada: An Ethical Assessment... 54 fashionable people, and for those who want to avoid the monotony of ordinary language. Thus, fashionable young people use such slang adverbs as for yonks (‘a long time’), in a mo ( in a moment) and indeedee ( indeed) (COLT) to be fresh and to escape the dullness of neutral style.

Playfulness: slang is usually playful, since it manipulates words and their meanings. The jocular use of slang is illustrated, for example, by the catch-word Abyssinia, which plays on the pronunciation of the parting salutation I’ll be seeing you!, by the term Eyetalian, which distorts standard Italian (cf. offens. Eyetie), and by nana ( banana) and cake, used jocularly for ‘a foolish or silly person’.

Obscenity: slang synonyms flourish in the taboo subjects of a culture. For instance, slang vocabulary is rich in dirty words and obscenities which are related to sex, especially male and female genitalia (e.g. cock, dick, prick, cunt, fanny, pussy), sexual intercourse (e.g. fuck, screw, shag), oral sex (e.g. suck) or sexual stimulation (e.g. wank). Other obscenities are related to either excretion (e.g. cack, crap, shit), or religion: e.g., blasphemous expressions, such as for fuck’s sake, goddamn, etc. (cf. Munro ed. 1997, Stenström et al.

2002).

Subject-restriction: sometimes slang is described as the special, even specialized, vocabulary of some profession, occupation or activity in society. This makes slang peculiar to a set of people who are identified by their specific terminology or by the specialized terms they use with in-group members. In particular, specific slang words such as crack (‘a potent, crystalline form of cocaine’), junkie (‘a drug addict’) and joint (‘a marijuana cigarette’) are related to the topic of drugs, and creep (‘a stealthy robber’), dog (‘an informer; a traitor’), and the Family (‘the thieving fraternity’) are connected with the crime topic.

Novelty: slang is generally modern and up-to-date. The linguistic exuberance and the rapid change of the slang lexicon represent a large part of slang’s originality, as they

Elisa Mattiello An Introduction to English Slang. A Description of its Morphology, Semantics and Sociology

Opening Considerations and Executive Summary ... 11 Fabio Baggio, Laura Zanfrini

1. Ethics and Human Rights

in the South American Migration Processes ... 15 Mario Santillo

Fabio Baggio

The Need for an Ethical Approach. The Canadian Experience ... 51 Christine Baghdady, Richard Vanderberg

3.1 World Population Increase ... 51 3.2 Urbanization, International Migration and Governance ... 53 3.3 International Migration in Canada: An Ethical Assessment... 54 render people’s speech more creative and new. Eble (1996:

42), for instance, notices how North Carolina students enjoy creating such novel words as emboosticated (‘embarrassed’), matriculate (‘start a trip’), or motorvate (‘move around socializing in a group, leave’). An original expression that has gained the approval of many young people is Black slang phat, esp. applied to ‘sexy, attractive’ women, or to

‘excellent, admirable; fashionable’ music.¹⁶

Orality: slang is predominantly associated with spoken language, where it generally starts its way towards recognition and acceptance. This is amply demonstrated by what Stenström et al. (2002: 65) call “vague words” (e.g. doodad, doofer, thingamajig, thingy) and “smallwords” (e.g. innit, yeah, you know), which are typical fillers of everyday conversation and never used in formal written language.

Unconventionality: Dumas & Lighter (1978: 13) argue that, in general, the slang lexicon is characterized by the intention of the speaker/writer “to break with established linguistic convention”. Unconventionality is evident, for example, in some unusual slang expressions meaning ‘crazy, mad’, such as bananas, bonkers, crackers or nuts (Mattiello 2005).

Faddishness: slang consists of an eccentric, strange vocabulary, mainly characterized by “bizarre metaphors” (Allen 1998: 878) and other “extravagant, forced, or facetious figures of speech”

(McHenry ed. 1993: 871). For instance, bird and chick are odd metaphors for ‘a girl; a young woman’, while fairy and pansy bizarrely allude to ‘a male homosexual’. Figurative interpretation likewise characterizes metonymy (e.g. brain ‘a clever person’), irony (e.g. bitching, killer having the positive senses of ‘excellent’ and ‘a formidable person or thing’), euphemism (e.g. wacky baccy, wacky tobaccy, wacky weed U.S. ‘marijuana’), and similes (e.g. to smoke like a chimney

16 The OED considers phat a respelling of fat, but also provides some quotations with explanations of the term as an acronym ( pussy hips ass and tits or pretty hot and tempting; cf. pretty hips and thighs, Eble 1996: 175).

Elisa Mattiello An Introduction to English Slang. A Description of its Morphology, Semantics and Sociology

Opening Considerations and Executive Summary ... 11 Fabio Baggio, Laura Zanfrini

1. Ethics and Human Rights

in the South American Migration Processes ... 15 Mario Santillo

Fabio Baggio

The Need for an Ethical Approach. The Canadian Experience ... 51 Christine Baghdady, Richard Vanderberg

3.1 World Population Increase ... 51 3.2 Urbanization, International Migration and Governance ... 53 3.3 International Migration in Canada: An Ethical Assessment... 54

‘smoke a lot’, to work like a dog ‘work very hard’) (Mattiello 2005).

Humour: slang is usually hilarious and as Yust (ed.) (1950:

766) states, “an element of humour is almost always present in slang, usually as humorous exaggeration”. Sometimes the humour of slang is evident (as in antiphrases that are generally accompanied by an ironic intonation), but more frequently it is implied (as in punning or intrinsic ambiguity). The humour of slang is clearly illustrated by the expressions to dance one’s ass/tits off, to work one’s brains off/out and to work one’s guts out, which are exaggerations of the effects produced by excessive dancing, studying or working.

Vulgarity: slang has often been associated with bad language (see, e.g., Andersson & Trudgill 1990: 69). Slang vocabulary in effect abounds in vulgarisms, which are now used as naturally as decent language by most people.¹⁷ Examples of vulgar slang are expressions connected with the word fuck (e.g. fucked-off), esp. when used as an intensifier (e.g. fucking bollocks, fucking crap, fucking hell, etc.) (cf. obscenity above).

Desire to impress: slang is deliberately used by speakers to impress or shock others. Partridge (1947: 288) supports this opinion by stating that one reason for using slang is “to be arresting, striking, or even startling”, and Andersson &

Trudgill (1990: 78) likewise state that “the point of slang words is often to be startling, amusing or shocking”. The striking or shocking effects of slang are obviously related to the extravagance and taboo nature of some of its expressions, such as fart (‘a breaking wind’, ‘a contemptible person’) and cunt (‘the external female genital organs’, ‘a term of vulgar abuse for a woman’).¹⁸

17 Apte (1998: 989): “Individuals who use taboo words excessively in their speech may become insensitive to both the socially determined taboo nature of these words and the fact that such words are offensive to listeners”.

18 Apte (1998: 988): “Speakers who are aware of the potential of taboo words to arouse strong reactions may deliberately use them to shock their listeners”.

Elisa Mattiello An Introduction to English Slang. A Description of its Morphology, Semantics and Sociology

Opening Considerations and Executive Summary ... 11 Fabio Baggio, Laura Zanfrini

1. Ethics and Human Rights

in the South American Migration Processes ... 15 Mario Santillo

Fabio Baggio

The Need for an Ethical Approach. The Canadian Experience ... 51 Christine Baghdady, Richard Vanderberg

3.1 World Population Increase ... 51 3.2 Urbanization, International Migration and Governance ... 53 3.3 International Migration in Canada: An Ethical Assessment... 54 Hybridism: slang is sometimes viewed as a hybrid language variety because some foreign words may occur in its vocabulary. Foreign lexical material can be borrowed either as direct loans, as in ciao (‘hello; good-bye’) from Italian, and loco (orig. U.S. ‘mad, insane’) from Spanish, or as loan adaptations, as in capeesh (chiefly U.S. ‘do you understand?’), which is adapted from Italian capisce (cf. Polari in Iamartino 2002, Pinnavaia 2003a, b). In any case, the effect of borrowing is always that of a mixture of languages and cultures (see also Andersson & Trudgill 1990: 83-84, Munro ed. 1997: 13).

Localism: there are many regional differences in slang.

British, American and Australian slang, although they share a common language (English), are viewed as different varieties of it (cf. Brit. slang bloke ‘man, fellow’ and U.S. slang guy), and within each variety, other sub-varieties can be identified.

For instance, American slang is often differentiated between Southern and Northern, and within British slang, Cockney is used in the London area. So, while some slang items can be found in all regions of Britain (e.g. knackered ‘exhausted, worn out’), others, such as whistle ( rhym. slang whistle and flute for ‘suit’), are restricted to Cockney.

Colour: slang has a tendency to be colourful, or, as Andersson

& Trudgill (1990: 16) suggest, “to make your speech vivid, colourful and interesting”. Yust (ed.) (1950: 766) made reference to the “onomatopoeic colour” of some slang words of the period: e.g., biff (‘a blow, whack’), flabbergast (‘bombast’) and flummox (‘a failure’). Other instances of the onomatopoeic colour of slang are verbs for ‘engage in sex’

(e.g. boff, bonk, pork, etc.) (see Eble 1996).

Impertinence: slang may be defined as audacious, and be accused of disrespect and impertinence.¹⁹ For instance, it disregards respect for other people with its numerous impolite appellations. Many derogatory terms are coined or used in slang to name outsiders: e.g., the term dago (a corruption of Sp. Diego ‘James’) is used by American people for Spaniards,

19 An additional sense of ‘slang’ in the OED is “abuse, impertinence”.

Elisa Mattiello An Introduction to English Slang. A Description of its Morphology, Semantics and Sociology

In document An Introduction to English Slang__Elisa Mattiello__2008 (Page 46-61)

2. Previous Studies on Slang

2.3. The description of slang

2.3.2. The sociological properties of slang

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents