Dictionary of Contemporary Slang
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Slang is language deliberately selected for its striking informality and is consciously used in preference to ‘proper’ speech (or, more rarely, writing). It usually originates in small social groups. For these groups, it is a private code that embodies their particular values and behaviour and reinforces their exclusivity. Slang expressions may escape the originating group and become more widely used, and although slang draws much of its effect from its novelty, some terms (booze, punk, cool) may stay in the language for many years....
510p minhtuan 23-07-2009 255 96 Download
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Slang and Society Slang derives much of its power from the fact that it is clandestine, forbidden or generally disapproved of. So what happens once it is accepted, even in some cases embraced and promoted by ‘mainstream’ society? Not long ago the Oxford English Dictionary characterised slang as ‘low and disreputable’; in the late 1970s the pioneering sociolinguist Michael Halliday used the phrase ‘anti-language’ in his study of the speech of criminals and marginals. For him, theirs was an interestingly ‘pathological’ form of language.
510p truongdoan 22-07-2009 794 626 Download