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 the young
  • often found with groups DISfavored by society or at least mainstream society: criminals; poorer groups; minority ethnic groups; drug addicts; hobos; other itinerant groups that the settled majority fears; in general, the powerless; also teen-agers and students, particularly those who like to break taboos, experiment with illicit substances, and in general behave in ways their parents and the society at large do not favor
  • 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, alcohol (shit-faced, hammered), illicit drugs, violence, bodily elimination (including defecation, vomiting, burping, etc.), body parts associated with sex and elimination, and death (this semantic characteristic often goes along with taboo)
  • often vividly metaphorical. Picturesque (e.g. Australian liquid laugh = puking)
  • often involve exaggeration (shit a brick; kill someone or something)
  • often used for negative references to people (particularly body parts: dickhead, cunt, etc.
• 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.
  • can rapidly fall out of fashion (groovy, tubular)

© Suzanne Kemmer