社会语言学导论

Social analysis of American slangs

一． Definitions of slangs

二． Characteristics of American slangs

三． Social analysis of slangs from the perspective of gender, age, occupation and

social settings to use slang

四． Social functions of slang

五． Social reasons for the use of slang

1. Introduction

To study slang scientifically, we can take the anthropological tradition of cultural relativism.“According to Bryjak and Soroka, cultural relativism is the belief that there is no universal standard of good and bad or right and wrong and that an aspect of any given culture can be judged only within its own context. Cultural relativists appear to suggest that all cultures or institutions are equally valid or fitting and tend to assume that the mere presence of a cultural trait warrants our valuing it”.

2. Definition of slang

2.1 definitions

During the history of language development, people s attitudes toward slang have changed a lot. In 1828 Webster defined it as “low, vulgar, unmeaning language.” Slang is very informal language that includes new and something not polite words and meanings and is often used among particular groups of people, and is usually not used in serious speech or wring (Longman dictionary of English Language and Culture 2004). Oxford Advanced Learner s English-Chinese Dictionary defines slang as “very informal words, phrases, etc commonly used in speech, esp between people from the same social group or who work together, not considered suitable for formal contexts and often not in use for long.” From these three definitions, we can see that in the past slang suffered abuse from people and nowadays this discrimination has disappeared and is regarded as informal and highly colloquial language.

2.2 attitudes

Slang is acknowledged to be one of the most active and sensitive parts of language and an effective weapon in communication. However, the attitudes toward slang are very contradictory among common people and especially scholars. This can be detected from the above three definitions of slang. (qtd.in Partridge 1954:7,3) can also reflects the contradiction of people s opinions:

“The language of slang is the conversation of fools. Men of discretion will not pervert language to the unprofitable purposes of conversational mimicry…The friends of literature will never adopt it, as it is actively opposed to pure and grammatical diction” and “it is impossible to acquire a thorough knowledge of English [or of any other language, for that matter] without being familiar with slang and vulgarism. Whoever is uninitiated…will be at a loss to understand many of the masterpieces of English literature. Nay…he will scarcely be able even to understand an English newspaper.” These remarks remarks sum up the paradox of slang very well: “Slang is the foe and the friend of the English language”.