Some Characteristics of Slang

These are some features that define a 'prototype' slang word or expression. They are not necessary or sufficient conditions to call something slang, but define a 'prototype', the human kind of human category. The more characteristics of slang a word has, the better example it is of slang.

• Register characteristics
  • not part of the Standard language
  • informal. Not likely to be used in formal contexts (borders here on professional jargon, which can be used in more formal contexts, cf. dead cat bounce by economists)
  • typically oral, rather than written
  • can be taboo (borders here on set of conventional taboo words that lack other slang characteristics: cf. crap vs. shit)
• Group characteristics
  • associated with certain social groups that are not part of "establishment"
  • favored by young
  • often found with groups DISfavored by society: criminals; poorer groups; minority ethnic groups; drug addicts; hobos; other itinerant groups that the settled majority fears; in general, the powerless
  • typically used as a marker of an 'in-group' (borders here on jargon, which is the technical terminology of a community of experts); i.e. slang terms can be shibboleths marking group membership.
  • typically marks a subculture, an elaborated set of behaviors associated with a group within a larger group.
• Semantic characteristics
  • Often found in taboo semantic domains such as sex, drugs, violence, bodily elimination (including defecation, vomiting, burping, etc.), body parts associated with sex and elimination, and death (this semantic characteristic often goes with taboo register)
  • often vividly metaphorical. Picturesque (e.g. Australian liquid laugh)
  • often involve exaggeration
• Formal characteristics-some typical types of form
(some of these characteristics also used in advertising/marketing)
• often short, punchy words (e.g. smack, dope, screw) or compounds of these (blow job, jerk-off (n.), pizza-face
• certain sounds favored (language-specifically). In English, oral stops; final /z/ and /ts/, spelled with z or zz (fizz, shizz )non-conventional clusters (e.g. in English, schl-, schm-, as in schlong 'penis', schmuck 'jerk' from Yiddish)
• can involve creative respellings (e.g. warez 'pirated software')
• reduplication often favored (bling-bling, now simplified to bling)
• language game formation often favored (e.g. Cockney rhyming slang); rhyme, alliteration, systematic deformations (e.g. -izzle addition, as in shizzle)
• Other characteristics
  • Often a novel creation
  • Often conventionalized only in a subgroup
  • very subject to change in form, degree of conventionality, meaning (e.g. swell, swag).
  • novelty highly prized; hence slang words rather transient
  • often designed to be offensive to out-group members or "establishment"
  • can be regional (e.g. Cockney Rhyming Slang) but more often dispersed geographically and associated with a subculture.

© 2001-2011 Suzanne Kemmer
Last modified 2 Dec 11