Functions and origins of slang

One use of slang is a simple way of circumventing social taboos. The mainstream language tends to shy away from explicitly evoking certain realities. Slang, and also the informal forms of language, permit one to talk about these realities in a special language stripped of the usual connotations in the normal register. Slang vocabularies are particularly rich in certain domains, such as sexuality, violence, crime, and drugs. There is not just one slang, but very many varieties—or dialects—of slang. Different social groups in different times have developed their own slang. The importance of encryption and identity vary among the various slangs. Slang must constantly renew its process of expression, and specifically its vocabulary, so that those not part of the group will remain unable to understand the slang. The existence of slang dictionaries, of course, cancels the effectiveness of certain words. Numerous slang terms pass into informal mainstream speech, and thence sometimes into mainstream formal speech. Originally, certain slang designated the speech of people involved in the criminal underworld, hooligans, bandits, criminals, etc. Therefore, their vocabulary carried very vulgar connotations, and was strictly rejected by speakers of "proper" language. Other groups developed their own slangs. In general, groups on the margins of mainstream society who were excluded or rejected by it.

Examples of slang

Historical examples of slang are the thieves' cant used by beggars and the underworld generally in previous centuries: a number of canting dictionaries were published. A famous current example is Cockney rhyming slang in which, in the simplest case, a given word or phrase is replaced by another word or phrase that rhymes with it. Often the rhyming replacement is abbreviated further, making the expressions even more obscure. A new rhyme may then be introduced for the abbreviation and the process continues. Examples of rhyming slang are apples and pears for stairs and trouble (and strife) for wife. An example of truncation and replacement of rhyming slang is bottle and glass for arse (ass). This was reduced to bottle, for which the new rhyme Aristotle was found; Aristotle was then reduced to Aris for which plaster of Paris became the rhyme. This was then reduced to plaster. Backwards slang, or Back slang, is a form of slang where words are reversed. English backward slang tends to reverse words letter by letter while French backward slang tends to reverse words by syllables. Verlan is a French slang, that uses backward words, similar in its methods to the back slang. Louchebem is French butcher's slang, similar to Pig Latin. The usage of slang very often involves the creation of novel meanings for existing words. It is very common for such novel meanings to diverge significantly from the standard meaning. In fact, one common process is for a slang word to take on exactly the opposite meaning of the standard definiton. This process has given rise to the positive meaning of the word 'bad' such as in the Michael Jackson song of the same title. Nadsat is a form of slang used in the book A Clockwork Orange, which borrows words from Russian and from various types of English slang. Polari is an interesting mixture of Italian and Cockney back slang (in other words common words pronounced as if spelled backward, for example ecaf for face, which became eek in Polari). Polari was used in London fish markets and the gay subculture in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, becoming more widely known from its use by two camp characters, Julian and Sandy, in Round the Horne, a popular radio show.

Various jargons are also loosely considered to be slang:

• Baseball slang

• Gangster slang

• Computer hacker slang (see the Jargon File)

• Leet — computer cracker (or malicious "hacker") slang

• Lumberjack jargon

• Military slang

• Poker slang

• Professional wrestling slang

• Jargonisms

jar·gon

1. Nonsensical, incoherent, or meaningless talk.

2. A hybrid language or dialect; a pidgin.

3. The specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group. Synonyms: dialect. argot, lingo, patois, vernacular, slang, cant

4. Speech or writing having unusual or pretentious vocabulary, convoluted phrasing, and vague meaning.

[Middle English jargoun, from Old French jargon, probably of imitative origin.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

jargon - specialized technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject expressive style, style - a way of expressing something (in language or art or usic etc.) that is characteristic of a particular person or group of people or period; "all the reporters were expected to adopt the style of the newspaper"

ecobabble - using the technical language of ecology to make the user seem ecologically aware

Eurobabble - the jargon of European community documents and regulations

gobbledygook - incomprehensible or pompous jargon of specialists

psychobabble - using language loaded with psychological terminology

technobabble - technical jargon from computing and other high-tech subjects

• professionslisms,

• vulgarisms

"Vulgarism" derives from Latin vulgus, the "common folk", and has carried into English its original connotations linking it with the low and coarse motivations that were supposed to be natural to the commons, who were not moved by higher motives like fame for posterity and honor among peers— motives that were alleged to move the literate classes. Thus the concept of vulgarism carries cultural freight from the outset, and from some social perspectives it does not genuinely exist, or— a perhaps this amounts to the same thing— ought not to exist.

Although most dictionaries offer "obscene word or language" as a definition for vulgarism, others have insisted that a vulgarism in English usage is different from either profanity or obscenity, cultural concepts which connote offenses against a deity and the community respectively. One kind of vulgarism, defined by the OED as "a colloquialism of a low or unrefined character," substitutes a coarse word where the context might lead the reader to expect a more refined expression: "the tits on Botticelli's Venus" is a vulgarism. More broadly, as "vulgarity" generally has a social and moral component, a "vulgarism" offers a substitution for a commonplace that is not a mere euphemism; it draws attention to the speaker's high-toned moral superiority or sophistication. Some fatal flaw in the usage often reveals that the speaker's ambitions are not based in reality: vulgarisms are pretentious, in that they lay unwarranted claim to social graces and education and attempt to inflate the user's status.

Several examples will be instructive. A case in point is objects d'art which denotes ornamental decorative objects of little practical use but considered by the user to be of some artistic merit and material value. The phrase is taken from 19th-century English auctioneers' puffery, with the assumption that if it were French it was of a higher standard of artistry. "Objects d'art" is a gaffe aiming at the French objets d'art ('artistic objects' ). It appeared in Rothschild wills published in the late 19th century, and it is an expression now in common English usage. Like most vulgarisms, it is a shibboleth, defining the status of the speaker.

The substitution of homes for brick-and-mortar houses had its origins in real estate salesman's pitch which implied that the hearth or foyer of family life could be bought in the market, ready-installed in its architectural shell. The inflation was a vulgarism for at least two generations. Today it has gained such wide acceptance that it simply distinguishes middle-class from upper-class usage; or 'U' from 'Non U' usage. U and non-U English usage, with U standing for upper class, and non-U representing the rest, were part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolects) in 1950s Britain and the northeast United States. The debate was set in motion in 1954 by the British linguist Alan Ross. Profanity is a word choice or usage which its audience considers to be offensive. The original meaning of the term was restricted to blasphemy, sacrilege or speaking God's name in vain (profane speech, or swear word), especially expressions such as "God damn it", "go to Hell", and "damn you". Obscenity has several connotations. Obscenity and its parent adjective obscene take their derivation from the Greek terms ob skene, which literally means "offstage". This is because violent acts in Greek theatre were committed off stage. It then descends into the Latin word obscenus, meaning "foul, repulsive, detestable", (possibly derived from ob caenum), literally "from filth". A euphemism is an expression intended by the speaker to be less offensive, disturbing, or troubling to the listener than the word or phrase it replaces. When a phrase is used as a euphemism, it often becomes a metaphor whose literal meaning is dropped. Euphemisms are often used to hide unpleasant or disturbing ideas, even when the literal Stylistically neutral layer includes the most vital part of the vocabulary and makes up the basis of the standard language vocabulary with a standardized spelling. This vocabulary is registered in a recognized dictionary or a group of dictionaries and represents the triumph of a certain variety of linguistic prescriptions.If a word is not stylistically neutral it is either literary-bookish or colloquial. Literary-bookish words are formal lexical units used in formal speech or writing.

Lecture 8

Contrastive analysis of English and Ukrainian

phraseology.

Languages differ greatly in the combinative power of words. The branch of lexicology which studies word-combinations or phrases may be termed phraseology. Opinions differ how phrases should be defined or classified. The word “phraseology” itself has very different meanings in this country and in UK or USA. In our linguistic literature the term has come to be used for expressions where the meaning of one element is dependent on the other one irrespective of the structure and properties of the unit (V.V.Vinogradov). Thus the term is used to describe various structural and semantic types of phrases characterized by different degrees of stability in a given language.

The most general division of phrases can be the following: free phrases versus set expressions. Dividing phrases like that we proceed from restrictions imposed upon the lexical filling of structural patterns which are specific for every language. Actually there are no absolutely free word-combinations. Restrictions depend on the ties existing in extra-linguistic reality and grammatical properties of words. Description of different types of word combinations in any language means, in the first place, the study of their semantic structure displayed in the interrelation of the semantic content of the components. The existing classifications of word combinations are numerous and are based on different principles.

In Ukrainian linguistic tradition phraseological units are usually classified according to the system suggested by V.V.Vinigradov:

1. Phraseological fusions (фразеологічні зрощення) – stable, indivisible word combinations the meaning of which cannot be deduced from the meaning of the words which make up a combination, e.g. пекти раків, собаку з’їсти, скакати в гречку, розводити антимонії, дати драла, врізати дуба, не до солі, точити ляси

2. Phraseological unities (фразеологічні єдності) – semantically indivisible combinations but their semantic content is partially motivated by the meaning of words that make up this phraseological unit, e.g.,закинути вудку, тягнути лямку, мілко плавати, покласти зуби на полицю, товкти воду у ступі,

3. Phraseological combinations (фразеологічні сполучення) – stable phrases in which one of the components has an independent meaning, which is concretized in permanent use with other words. For example, брати preserves its lexical meaning in combination with different nouns reveals the meaning of the phraseological unit, e.g. нічого в рот не брати, брати рушники, брати гору, брати близько до серця, боати на глум. ( посилання : Авксентєв, за ред. Плющ)

Trying to define a semantic type of any word combination we should first make clear the terminology applied and the technique of the analysis of their sense structure as it is sense structure that may provide adequate basis for their semantic classification.

We can accept the definition of a word combination as a unity of at least two notional words that do not present a structure of predication and come to life as the result of a realization of the compatible semantic components of these words. The material for the analysis of the semantic structures of word combinations are dictionary entries revealing the semantic content of the components. If the study of the corresponding dictionary entries shows that the general (сукупний) sense of a word combination is formed as the result of combining of the components senses, then such word combinations can be considered word-sense ones (WSC).

For example, right hand in

Estela’s right hand showed the ugly red burn from the cigar (A.Hailey)

But in the sentence:

Miss Street is my right hand (S.Gardner)

The communicative sense of the combination is not the sum of the communicative senses of the components. But still the sense of the combination reflects some semantic features which can be discovered in the original word-sense combination, and namely, the higher degree of importance (strength, skill etc.) of the right hand when compared to the left. It is essential for the technique of the analysis that the semantic feature (SF) “importance” cannot be found in separate components of this word combination and can be singled out only for the whole word-sense combination. Such combinations can be named quasi-idiomatic (QIC). The formation of the QIC senses can be described by the following scheme:

Sense A Sense B

SF_A SF'_A SF''_A SF_B SF'_B SF''_B

Sense of WSC

SF_WSC SF'_WSC

Sense of QIC

Having analysed the semantic structure of the formally equivalent combinations when used as WSC and QIC, we can determine that the difference in their semantics is the sense indivisibility of the latter Sense indivisibility can be defined as the impossibility to single out those semantic features in the semantic structures of separate components which can be singled out for the whole combination.

But when we go on with our studies of set expressions functioning in modern English and Ukrainian languages we discover that sense indivisibility can be encountered not only in quasi idiomatic combinations. For example, when we try to analyse the semantic structure of such a word combination as to take a hand in the following context:

In fact, all through the case there have been things that puzzled me hopelessly. Everyone seems to have taken a hand(A.Christie)

it becomes obvious that though the sense of the combination itself seems clear enough, it does not harmonise with the sense of the whole utterance. The technique applied in the first example does not work. Such word combinations can be named idiomatic (IC). In order to find an explanation of the idiomatic sense formation we can turn to the history of the language. In our example the analysis shows that by the end of a Middle English period the verb to take had started to be used in the sense to use for something. Consequently, the whole combination could be used in the sense to use a hand for some action. Thus, we can single out a semantic feature which the original word-sense combination did not possess: цілеспрямована дія. This feature might have become the basis for the formation of the sense that this combination possesses when used in card playing, where hand means cards given to each of the player, and the whole combination has the meaning to use cards for playing, to enter the game. In this last case the word combination is quasi idiomatic. The semantic feature to take part in something, in its turn, makes the basis for the further development of the semantic structure and the combination starts to be used in the sense illustrated in our example and registered in phraseological dictionaries as to take part. Thus, the formation of the idiomatic sense of a word combination consisting of the components A and B can be described be the following scheme:

Sense A Sense B

SF_A SF'_A SF''_A SF_B SF'_B SF''_B

Sense of WSC

SF_WSC SF'_WSC

Sense of QIC

SF_QIC

Sense of IC

Thus, the suggested technique of the analysis of the semantic structure of word combinations based on the studying of the semantic features of separate components of this combination and the combination in integrity, allowed to single out three semantic types of word combinations:

• word-sense combinations,

• quasi idiomatic combinations,

• idiomatic combinations

QIC and IC are phraseological units. Thus, a phraseological unit is a combination of two word forms which do not present a syntactic structure of predication and are characterized by sense indivisibility. Sense indivisibility being the crucial factor for defining a phraseological unit, this factor can be viewed as a key one for understanding of the mechanism of phraseologisation. The process of phraseologisation of free phrases is based on the possibility of singling out a semantic feature or features of a word combination which cannot be found in its separate components. These semantic features can make the basis of another sense or senses of this word combination. Thus we have to deal with the semantic process which is exactly the same as the process of the semantic development of separate words, namely, polysemy. In the process of language development the semantic feature which made the basis of the formation of a new sense of the word combination can get so “darkened” that formally equivalent units can become homonymous.

Expressive value of phraseological units is combined with distinctiveness and emotional couloring, they autonomise human features and behaviour, actualise norms of life etc. Both English and Ukrainian languages abound in various phraseological units covering the whole anthropocentric spectrum: from the internal life of a person – to social status. Phraseology reflects the human psychology in all its representations and features, simulates probable variants of human behaviour, gives “recipies (рецепти)” of the situations etc. We can discover a lot of similarities and differences in phraseological treasures of both contrasted languages. Similarities can be explained either by the common source of origin (biblical expressions, expressions of Roman origin etc.) or universal character of some peculiarities of the natural world, human physiology etc. For example, right hand and права рука are registered in both languages. But mostly phraseological units reflect national peculiarities of the cognitive perception of the world and life. Compare топтати ряст(походить із народного заклинання – „Топчу, топчу ряст”, яким у давнину щороку, особливо бідні люди, не зважаючи на нужденне життя, стрічали весну. Semantic feature “Meet spring” gave birth to the present meaning of this combination – to live) [Авксентьєв, с.43-44]