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Acceptable Usage of Slang

1. Slang arises through various linguistic processes like metaphor, clipping words, borrowing from other languages, and plays on taboos. 2. Slang is used in all languages and time periods, even by highly educated individuals, as a way to express emotions or create in-group identities. 3. Slang serves many purposes from naming new concepts to expressing attitudes in a shockingly candid way. It also provides euphemisms for sensitive topics. While some slang terms are essential, many are just passing fads.

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Dunya Bahitjanoff
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77 views

Acceptable Usage of Slang

1. Slang arises through various linguistic processes like metaphor, clipping words, borrowing from other languages, and plays on taboos. 2. Slang is used in all languages and time periods, even by highly educated individuals, as a way to express emotions or create in-group identities. 3. Slang serves many purposes from naming new concepts to expressing attitudes in a shockingly candid way. It also provides euphemisms for sensitive topics. While some slang terms are essential, many are just passing fads.

Uploaded by

Dunya Bahitjanoff
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Ganyukova A.A.
Karaganda state university, Kazakhstan
Acceptable Usage of Slang in English
Slang ... an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself
illimitably ...
Walt Whitman, 1885
The processes by which words become slang are the same as those by which other words in the
language change their form or meaning or both. Some of these are the employment of metaphor, simile, folk
etymology, distortion of sounds in words, generalization, specialization, clipping, the use of acronyms, elevation and
degeneration, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, borrowings from foreign languages, and the play of euphemism
against taboo.
All languages, countries, and periods of history have slang. This is true because they all have had
words with varying degrees of social acceptance and popularity. All segments of society use some slang, including
the most educated, cultivated speakers and writers. In fact, this is part of the definition of slang. For example,
George Washington used redcoat (British soldier); Winston Churchill used booze (liquor); and Lyndon B. Johnson
used cool it (calm down, shut up).
In some cases slang may provide a needed name for an object or action (walkie-talkie, a portable
two-way radio; tailgating, driving too close behind another vehicle), or it may offer an emotional outlet (buzz
off! for go away!) or a satirical or patronizing reference (smokey, state highway trooper). It may provide euphemisms
(john, head, can,and in Britain, loo, all for toilet, itself originally a euphemism), and it may allow its user to create a
shock effect by using a pungent slang expression in an unexpected context. Slang has provided myriad synonyms for
parts of the body (bean, head; schnozzle, nose), for money (moola, bread, scratch), for food (grub, slop, garbage),
and for drunkenness (soused, stewed, plastered).
Slang is used for many purposes, but generally it expresses a certain emotional attitude; the same
term may express diametrically opposed attitudes when used by different people. Many slang terms are primarily
derogatory, though they may also be ambivalent when used in intimacy or affection. Some crystallize or bolster the
self-image or promote identification with a class or in-group. Others flatter objects, institutions, or persons but may
be used by different people for the opposite effect. "Jesus freak," originally used as ridicule, was adopted as a title
by certain street evangelists. Slang sometimes insults or shocks when used directly; some terms euphemize a
sensitive concept, though obvious or excessive euphemism may break the taboo more effectively than a less
decorous term. Some slang words are essential because there are no words in the standard language expressing
exactly the same meaning; e.g., "freak-out," "barn-storm," "rubberneck," and the noun "creep." At the other extreme,
multitudes of words, vague in meaning, are used simply as fads.
There are many other uses to which slang is put, according to the individual and his place in society.
Since most slang is used on the spoken level, by persons who probably are unaware that it is slang, the choice of
terms naturally follows a multiplicity of unconscious thought patterns. When used by writers, slang is much more
consciously and carefully chosen to achieve a specific effect. Writers, however, seldom invent slang.
It has been claimed that slang is created by ingenious individuals to freshen the language, to vitalize
it, to make the language more pungent and picturesque, to increase the store of terse and striking words, or to
provide a vocabulary for new shades of meaning. Most of the originators and purveyors of slang, however, are
probably not conscious of these noble purposes and do not seem overly concerned about what happens to their
language.
Slang is one of the vehicles through which languages change and become renewed, and its vigor and
color enrich daily speech. Although it has gained respectability in the 20th century, in the past it was often loudly
condemned as vulgar. Nevertheless, Shakespeare brought into acceptable usage such slang terms as hubbub, to
bump, and to dwindle, and 20th-century writers have used slang brilliantly to convey character and ambience. Slang
appears at all times and in all languages. A persons head was kapala (dish) in Sanskrit, testa (pot) in
Latin; testa later became the standard Latin word for head. Among Western languages, English, French, Spanish,
Italian, German, Yiddish, Romanian, and Romany (Gypsy) are particularly rich in slang.
With the rise of naturalistic writing demanding realism, slang began to creep into English literature
even though the schools waged warfare against it, the pulpit thundered against it, and many women who aspired to
gentility and refinement banished it from the home. It flourished underground, however, in such male sanctuaries as
lodges, poolrooms, barbershops, and saloons. By 1925 a whole new generation of U.S. and European naturalistic
writers was in revolt against the Victorian restraints that had caused even Mark Twain to complain, and today any
writer may use slang freely, especially in fiction and drama. It has become an indispensable tool in the hands of
master satirists, humorists, and journalists.
Slang is now socially acceptable, not just because it is slang but because, when used with skill and
discrimination, it adds a new and exciting dimension to language. At the same time, it is being seriously studied by
linguists and other social scientists as a revealing index to the culture that produces and uses it.

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