Attitudes toward slang. With the rise of naturalistic writing demanding realism, slang began to creep into English literature even though the schools waged warfare against it, the pulpit thundered against it, and many women who aspired to gentility and refinement banished it from the home. It flourished underground, however, in such male sanctuaries as lodges, poolrooms, barbershops, and saloons.
By 1925 a whole new generation of U.S. and European naturalistic writers was in revolt against the Victorian restraints that had caused even Mark Twain to complain, and today any writer may use slang freely, especially in fiction and drama.
It has become an indispensable tool in the hands of master satirists, humorists, and journalists. Slang is now socially acceptable, not just because it is slang but because, when used with skill and discrimination, it adds a new and exciting dimension to language. At the same time, it is being seriously studied by linguists and other social scientists as a revealing index to the culture that produces and uses it. 11. Formation Slang expressions are created by the same processes that affect ordinary speech.
Expressions may take form as metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech dead as a doornail. Words may acquire new meanings cool, cat. A narrow meaning may become generalized fink, originally a strikebreaker, later a betrayer or disappointer or vice-versa heap, a run-down car. Words may be clipped, or abbreviated mike, microphone, and acronyms may gain currency VIP, awol, snafu. A foreign suffix may be added the Yiddish and Russian -nik in beatnik and foreign words adopted baloney, from Bologna. A change in meaning may make a vulgar word acceptable jazz or an acceptable word vulgar raspberry, a sound imitating flatus from raspberry tart in the rhyming slang of Australia and Cockney London Sometimes words are newly coined oomph, sex appeal, and later, energy or impact . 12. Position in the Language Slang is one of the vehicles through which languages change and become renewed, and its vigor and color enrich daily speech.
Although it has gained respectability in the 20th century, in the past it was often loudly condemned as vulgar.
Nevertheless, Shakespeare brought into acceptable usage such slang terms as hubbub, to bump, and to dwindle, and 20th-century writers have used slang brilliantly to convey character and ambience. Slang appears at all times and in all languages.
A persons head was kapala dish in Sanskrit, testa pot in Latin testa later became the standard Latin word for head. Among Western languages, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Yiddish, Romanian, and Romany Gypsy are particularly rich in slang. II. YOUTH SUBCULTURES Main Entry sub cul ture Pronunciation s b- k l-ch r Function noun Date 1886 1 a a culture as of bacteria derived from another culture b an act or instance of producing a subculture 2 an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others within an embracing culture or society a criminal subculture - sub cul tur al - k lch-r l k l-ch - adjective - sub cul tur al ly adverb - subculture transitive verb Source Webster s Revised Unabridged Dictionary 1.