Slang: Language and style

Slang: Language and style Lefteris Kailoglou University of Worcester E.Kailoglou@worc.ac.uk

Slang • Everybody talks about it • Can it be defined? • Does it exist? • If it exists, can we describe it and, therefore, define it?

Australia and New Zealand • Aussie VsKiwi slang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr4rQ5QpXrU&feature=related • (vocabulary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuRrp83jCuQ&feature=related • (slang) Aussie slang mate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uExUyhlP5o&feature=related • (Australian slang; controversial) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoE4xxW6U78&feature=related

Colloquial features: Are they slang? • Bald as a bandicoot: completely bald (<a rat) • Dinkum, dinky, dinky-di: genuine, right (dinkum Aussie: real Aussie) • Full as a goog: dead drunk (goog<egg) • Hoon/yobbo: loutish youth • Ocker: archetypical, uncultivated Aussie man • Prang: minor car accident • Sanger/Sanga: sandwich • Sheila: girl (a beaut Sheila: an attractive girl) • Shortening of words: Beaut <beautiful; Words ending in the suffix –o or –y/-ie . Examples: Arvo (afternoon), Tinnie (for a can of beer)

Slang must be distinguished from other subjects of the lexicon such as regionalisms or dialect words (you all/y’all in south US), jargon, profanity and obscenity, colloquialism, and cant or argot- although slang shares some characteristics with each of these and can overlap with them. (Eble 1996:19)

Cant/Argot: the specialised and sometimes secret language of thieves and other groups at the fringes of society • Polari • Sometimes words that start out as the jargon of a particular group become slang for a wider group (‘ice’ for ‘diamonds’) • In other instances, words pass from the jargon of a group into the general vocabulary without ever being slang (e.g. input, output) • Slang is colloquial but not all colloquial expressions are slang (‘Shut up’ is not slang)

Intra-speaker Variation • Dialect: variation according to region • Style: Variation according to user • Register: Variation according to use/topic • Jargon: specific vocabulary associated with a group, mostly professional, e.g. doctors, lawyers, linguists, or with a hobby/interest • Jargon examples (army jargon: jam, ejecta) • Where does slang fit in? (army slang: chicken colonel/full colonel, John Wayne/militarily exemplary) • Slang: specific words and phrases

Slang includes many obscene words but not all slang words/phrases are obscene • Patois (English pronunciation: /ˈpætwɑː/, pl. /ˈpætwɑːz/[1][2]) is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant. Class distinctions are embedded in the term, drawn between those who speak patois and those who speak the standard or dominant language used in literature and public speaking, i.e., the "acrolect". (wikipedia here, but it’s a nice description)

Standard English is: • a dialect. One variety among many. However it is not associated with any specific accent. • a purely social (not geographic) dialect. • is different from the other dialects not phonologically but in some of its grammatical forms.

Trudgill (2002:167-168) on Standard English • SE fails to distinguish between the forms of auxiliary forms of the verb do and its main verb forms. This is true both of the present tense, where many other dialects distinguish between aux. did and main verb done, as in You done it, did you? • SE has an unusual and irregular Present Tense verb morphology in that only the 3rd sing. receives morphological marking: he goes Vs he go. Many other dialects use either zero for all persons or –s for all persons. • SE lacks multiple negation, so that no choice is available between I don’t want none, which is not possible, and I don’t want any. Most non-standard variities of English around the world permit multiple negation. • SE has an irregular formation of reflexive pronouns, with some forms based on the possessive pronouns e.g. myself, and others on the objective pronouns, e.g. hisself, theirselves. • SE fails to distinguish between 2nd person sing. and pl. forms, having you in both cases. Many non-standard dialects maintain the older English distinction between thou and you, or have developed newer distinctions such as you versus youse. • SE has irregular forms of the verb to be both in the present tense (am, is, are) and in the past (was, were). Many non-standard dialects have the same form for all persons, such as I be, you be, s/he be, we be, they be, and I were, you were, he were, we were, you were, they were. • In the case of many irregular verbs, SE redundantly distinguishes between preterite and perfect verb forms both by the use of the auxiliary have and by the use of distinct preterite and past participle forms: I have seen Vs I seen. • SE has only a two-way contrast in its demonstrative system, with this (near to the speaker) opposed to that (away from the speaker). Many other dialects have a three-way system involving a further distinction, between for example that (near to the listener) and yon (away from both speaker and listener).

Common Non-Standard Forms Cf. Coupland 1988

Other non-standard features • What as a relative pronoun: the book what was on sale • There’s/There was + plural: there was loads of them • Be + Sat/Stood: She was sat/stood on the other side of the room Rhys 2007; Cheshire and Milroy 1993)

Innovation • Innovation is central to the notion of slang • Innovation is a general characteristic of slang • The rapid rate of innovation in slang just makes it more visible • Innovation in slang follows the same patterns/devices as in other aspects of language

Innovations on Shakespeare • Semantic Neologisms • Word-formation Derivation Compounding • Borrowing • The same means are used in slang

New words and phrases from Shakespeare Words: addiction, assassination, comply, consign,, compulsive, denote, discontent, domineering, exhale, generous, hostile, investment, luggage, obscene, pious, protester, retirement, survivor, supervise, tranquil, unreal, useful Phrases: neither here nor there, breathe one’s last, cheer up, a foregone conclusion, the long and the short of it, good riddance, household name, salad days, seamy side, tower of strength, with bated breath About half the words Shakespeare coined remain in English today. Others underwent semantic shift; some fell out of use, either immediately or gradually. 7

Multicultural London English (MLE) Linguistic Innovators: the English of Adolescents in London, (Kerswilland Cheshire ) : • the effects of a multiracial vernacular…on mainstream speech’ from a dialectal, a phonological point of view. • an emergent common vernacular, a dialect, heavily influenced by Afrocaribbeanand Asian speech patterns, spoken by young people across swathes of Greater London. • There is a possibility that this variety may well have a lasting effect because those social pressures that stop people taking their youthful language practices forward into middle age are no longer in place. • Factors: the print and broadcast media, other electronic interactions and peer-pressure on the street and in the playground actually encourage this blurring of generations and blurring of distinctions between ‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ usage (pp4-5) www.llas.ac.uk/cardiff2006

Main findings on teenage MG slang(Iordanidou & Anroutsopoulos 2001) • Word formation types common to other colloquial varieties of MG (e.g. derivational suffixes –ias, -akias, -atos, -iaris, -dhiko, -menos) • Some genuine nonstandard formation types specific to teenage slang and in certain argots of MG • Innovative use of known formation types, often with a shift in semantic function • Several suffixes can be combined with unusual bases (anetos<anet-ia ‘cool’) • Idiomatic construction patterns • Specific syntactic features • Semantic neologism • Back slang

slang is an ever changing set of colloquial words and phrases that speakers use to establish or reinforce social identity or cohesiveness within a group or with a trend or fashion in society at large (Eble 1996)

Criteria • Dumas and Lighter (1978, 14-16) reject the classical formula for definition and instead propose four identifying criteria for slang. 1. Its presence will markedly lower, at least for the moment, the dignity of formal or serious speech or writing. 2. Its use implies the user’s special familiarity either with the referent or with that less statusful or less responsible class of people who have such special familiarity and use of the term. 3.It is a tabooed term in ordinary discourse with persons of higher social status or greater responsibility. 4. It is used in place of the well-known conventional synonym, especially in order a) to protect the user from the discomfort caused by the conventional item or b) to protect the user from the discomfort or annoyance of further elaboration.

when something fits at least two of the criteria, a linguistically sensitive audience will react to it in a certain way. This reaction which cannot be measured, is the ultimate identifying characteristic of true slang”…None of the four criteria is formal, for slang is not distinct in form….

Function: The case of London (Sian 2010) • Similar to studies of their school-aged counterparts (Harris 1997, 2006; Leung, Harris, and Rampton 1997; Rampton 2005), the students display a strong affiliation to the local vernacular, in this case London English (Harris 2006), which they consistently refer to as ‘slang’. They construct a ‘slang/posh’ dichotomy to contrast the language practices of their peers with those of the academic community. • While some of the female students in my study appeared ready to balance their ‘slang’ and ‘posh’ selves, most of the students seemed reluctant to embrace the ‘posh’ language and literacy practices of the academic community and to display academic knowledge. • This may well be a hangover from schooling, in which students learn to balance (or not) popularity and high academic achievement to avoid the risk of being ostracized (Frosh et al. 2002; Jackson 2006; Francis 2009); as such, it seems related to life stage, gender and popular culture.

Summary of Characteristics • Slang is ephemeral • Sometimes a new slang form either replaces an earlier one or provides another synonym for a notion already named in slang • Sometimes new slang extends to new areas of meaning or to areas of meaning of recent interest to the group inventing the slang • Some slang terms come back for a second and third life

Insights on Slang (Iordanidou & Anroutsopoulos 2001) • Main ideas: • Interrelation between lexical innovation and grammaticalisation processes • Mostly lexical items and certain discourse items (terms of address, formulaic expressions, discourse markers) • Slang research not ideally conducted via questionnaires • Relation to adolescent networks and particular subcultures • Distinction between youth specific slang-items from general slang ones remains vague (Cf. Adams 2009) • Corpus of 2,000 words (face-to-face and mediated discourse); (1990-1995) recorded conversations, interviews, informal letters and youth magazines

My study (Kailoglou 2010) • Diminutives • Nominal endings • Compound words • Malapropism constructions • Greek and English compounds • Formations based on a new root + usual nominal endings • Formations based on an existing root + usual ending, combined in a new way • Words with obscure meaning • Obscene words about religion and the saints • Formations based on the change of gender • Back slang

The Method • Three groups with different socio-cultural styles • Invitation by an insider of the group • Ethnographic observation • Recordings took place between 2005-2008 (more than 20hrs) • Analysis of 12 hours of natural speech (4 each group); video and audio recordings • Three communities of practice (Wenger& Lave 1991, Wenger 1998, Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992, Eckert 2000)

The three groups • Trendy Group: mainstream, 9 persons, male majority, age 22-27, pop music, designer clothes, holidays: Paros & Mykonos, quest for not being uncritically mainstream • The Parea: alternative/non-mainstream, 15 persons, male majority, age 27-35, electronica/brit-pop/world music, mixed clothing style, holidays: Elafonissos & Gavdos, quest for differentiation from the mainstream, • The Cavemen: alternative/hard-core/non-mainstream, 8 persons, male, rock music, mixed clothing style, holidays: Gavdos, quest from differentiation from the mainstream

The linguistic styles • There are four main aspects which characterise the style of all three groups: • the construction of new words, • the use of unusual metaphors, • the use of slang, and • the use of taboo language • These are all means for creativity and are inextricably intertwined (e.g. Adams 2009:44-45 & 112-113, Eble 1996: 67-68, Kovezses 2010: 35, Kailoglou forthcoming) • Shannon (1992) sees metaphor as a prime instrument for the creation of novelty, too, and argues that “metaphor confronts one with incongruence” which is highly reminiscent of a typical feature of humour

The communities of practice • ‘’A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in some common endeavour.’’ (Wenger& Lave 1991, Wenger 2000, Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992, Eckert 2000) • Stylistic Practice (bricolage) • Bricolage consists of the processes by which people acquire objects from across social divisions to create new meanings(Hebdige 1979) • ‘’Jocks’’ and ‘’Burnouts’’ in Belten High (Eckert 2000) • Co-construction of linguistic and social meanings

Signs and their meaning in different subculturesExample A. Iron Cross Example B. Suspenders

Signs and their meaning in different subcultures(continue)Example C. Army jacket 1 Example D. Army jacket 2

Meaning • Signs have meaning as part of a system • Language: • Linguistic meaning (denotatio): Knackered (tired) • Social meaning (connotatio): (informal, familiarity)

Style and Identity • Social meaning is created in interaction and stylistic processes making use of connotational practices • Style is a combination of connotations • End product: One’s Identity • Identity as Distinction (i.e. as opposition to pre-existing signs and meanings) • The issue of authenticity

Central Notions • The approaches to style • Structure Vs Agency • Audience Vs Speaker • Fixed Social Categories Vs Fluid Formations • Identity Vs Personna • Indexical Processes • Bricolage

The study of variation • Correlation of IndependentSocial Variables with DependentLinguistic Variables • Aims: a) To describe linguistic variation b) To explain it • A linguistic variable is a linguistic unit (of any level of linguistic analysis) which consists of at least two variants. • The occurrence of each variant depends on linguistic (e.g. the linguistic context) and/or social (characteristics of the speaker, social context etc.) conditioning factors. • Inter-speaker variation → Dialect (different speaker) • Intra-speaker variation→ Style (different context) • Linguistic variation may lead to language change, but language change cannot occur without the prior existence of variation!

The first two waves of variation studies in a glance • The first wave : established broad correlations between linguistic variables and the macrosociologicalcategories of socioeconomic class, sex, class, ethnicity, and age. • The second wave: employed ethnographic methods to explore the local categories and configurations that inhabit, or constitute, these broader categories. • In both waves, variation was seen as marking social categories. Eckert 2012

Third Wave (a) variation constitutes a robust social semiotic system, potentially expressing the full range of social concerns in a given community; (b) the meanings of variables are underspecified, gaining more specific meanings in the context of styles, and (c) variation does not simply reflect, but also constructs, social meaning and hence is a force in social change.

Variation and Style (Eckert 2005) Variation also emerged as part of a broader stylistic complex including territory and the full range of consumption—such as adornment, food and other substance use, musical tastes— that jocks and burnouts exploit in constructing their mutual opposition

Meaning in Third Wave • stylistic practice: speakers make social-semiotic moves, reinterpreting variables and combining and recombining them in a continual process of bricolage(Hebdige 1984) • This leads to the mutability of indexical signs • Indexicality (Silverstein 1993; 2003) • Indexical Order • Indexical Field (Eckert 2008) meanings at any particular time constitute an indexical field (Eckert 2008)—a constellation of ideologically linked meanings, any region of which can be invoked in context.

Distinction

Goth or Pirate?

Lifestyle in late modernity • A lifestyle can be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity (Giddens 1991) • the new heroes of consumer culture make lifestyle a life project and display their individuality and sense of style in the particularity of the assemblage of goods, clothes, practices, experiences, appearance and bodily dispositions they design together into a lifestyle. (Featherstone 2007)

Lifestyle: why it matters • …Nor is it any more legitimate to attempt to explain the contemporary subcultural scene with a conception that assumes a homological unity of class-based practices, particularly one that ‘imposes a hermeneutic seal around the relationship between musical and stylistic preference” (Bennet 1999:599). • It is common for members of a nebulous neo-tribal grouping to demonstrate their enthusiasm for a wide range of musical dance genres (Bennet 2000). • This somewhat paradoxicall expression of ‘widespread tastes’ in underground sounds is one tactic by which ‘liminal’ youth cultures attempt to accumulate ‘subcultural capital’ thereby maintaining distinction from other, more “restrictive” (sub-)groups and claiming authenticity of identity (Muggleton 2000) Weinzierl & Muggleton 2003:7

Authenticity • Language and authenticity; how people lay claim to authenticity through their speech • Postmodernism: The end of authenticity? • The role of media; subcultures are not authentic since they are formed ‘inside the media’ (cf. Thornton 1995) • Claims to authenticity: Widdicombe and Woofit (1995) interviewed members of subcultures who contrasted their ‘deepness’ and ‘authenticity’ to the claimed ‘inauthenticity’ and ‘shallowness’ of others

Subculture and late modernity • The end of subcultures? A) increasingly fragmented, and B)there can be no authentic subculture which is media-free (Redhead 1997) • Despite post-modern assertions that hybrid eclectic styles today make it more problematic for young people to distinguish between themselves and other youth cultures (Muggleton 1997:199), many young people have no such difficulty in identifying varied nightlife spaces inhabited by different social groups”. (Chatterton and Hollands 2003) • Moreover, youth cultures are not unified but they have internal hierarchies (with claims to authenticity) (Thornton 1995)

Distinctions of Taste • distinctions are never simply statements of equal difference they entail claims to authority, authenticity and the presumed inferiority of others (Thornton 1996; cf Bourdieu 1984)) • Cultural hierarchies: ‘authentic’ vs ‘phoney’; ‘hip’ vs ‘mainstream’; ‘underground’ vs ‘the media’ (Barker 2000)

Subcultural Capital (Thornton 1996) • can be objectified “in the form of fashionable haircuts and well-assembled record collections (full of well-chosen, limited edition ‘white label’ twelve inches and the like)”; • or embodied “in the form of being ‘in the know’, using (but not over-using) current slang and looking as if you were born to perform the latest dance styles”. • “Both cultural and subcultural capital put a premium on the ‘second nature’ of their knowledges. Nothing depletes capital more than the sight of someone trying too hard”.

Socio-cultural Style and Space • Three main types of nightlife consumption spaces: mainstream, residual, and alternative (Chatterton and Hollands 2003) • Athens • Exarheia Square, (Anarchists, Rockers, Students, Hardcore, Electro) • Kolonaki Square, (businessmen/businesswomen, intellectuals, stars, artists, politicians) • Mavili Square (“Alternative” youth, Rockers, Students, Hardcore, Electro)

Map of Athens Map: www.athens-greece.us

Alternative and Mainstream • Alternative: originally a sub-genre of rock (Rock FM 96.9 ‘the alternative radio of town’); extension: what is non-mainstream • Mainstream: Pop music (Greek and foreign, MTV, Radio stations with hit lists); Urban, hip-hop etc. • Alternative tourism; Alternative cultivations (agriculture) • Socio-cultural terms and subcultural classifications do not have the same meaning in different societies (e.g alternative, hard-core, goth, emo); Global subcultures are reified differently in local contexts (Chatterton and Hollands 2003); (cf. Pennycook 2010) • Time lapse: Brit-Pop in the UK mid-1990s, in Greece ‘2000s • Greece since the 1990s • Introduction of lifestyle magazines had already begun (late’80s): Nitro, Klik, Men etc. • Private TV channels: Mega Channel, Antenna, Star Channel • New radio stations (private) • From a ‘society of need, to a society of consumption’ (Karakousis 2006)

Overview • The styles of the 3 groups are characterised by the use of slang, neologisms, humour and unusual metaphors • Each of these features can be used to increase the distance from the conventional/mainstream • Each group chose to use them to a different degree according to what they perceive to be a desired level of divergence from the conventional/mainstream

Slang: Language and style