2. slang

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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=u4DJnb
kAvTk
http://www.pbs.org/speak/words/sezwho/globalslang/

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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).

17. 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!

18. 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.

19. 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)

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. Slang and EFL
• Although slang could never substitute for
EFL in its instrumental value, it clearly
connects foreign-language learning with
adolescent cultural experience.

23. 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