Peculiarities of Slang

Content 
 
Introduction………………………………………………………2 
 
1.Peculiarities of Slang…………………………………..3 
 
1.1. History of slang…………………………………………….3 
 
1.2. Characteristics of slang……………………………….6

 
1.3. Slang as phenomenon in modern linguistics. Slang and Jargon………………8 
 
2. Uses of  Slang.  Types of slang in Modern English……………………..10 
 
2.1. Rhyming slang…………………………………….13 
 
2.2. Internet slang………………………………..18 
 

2.3. Dictionary…………………………………………..20

2.3.1. Dictionary of youth slang during 1960-70's……………….21

2.3.2. Dictionary of modern British slang……………….23

2.3.3 Dictionary of modern USA slangs………………………..35

Conclusion………………………………. 
 
Bibliography……………………………………… 
 
 

Introduction 
Slang is an informal kind of language in which words and phrases are used in new or unusual ways. Many slang terms are expressive, humorous and vivid. Some are rude and offensive. 
  People use slang more often in speaking than in writing and more often with friends than with strangers. Slang thus resembles colloquialisms, which are expressions used in everyday conversation but considered appropriate for formal speech or writing. Unlike colloquialisms, however, most slang lasts only a few years. Also, nearly all colloquialisms are used- or at least understood- by the general population. But many slang expressions are limited to a certain segment of society or to a specific occupational group. For example, some slang is used only by criminals and other members of the underworld. Such slang is called argot and cant. The special slang and technical vocabulary of a profession or trade is known as jargon.

  Slang expressions change and spread so quickly that many people have difficulty determining what is slang and what is not. Dictionaries and language experts often disagree about whether a particular expression is slang, a colloquialism, or even standard language

  Speech activity has always been in the focus of interests of modern linguistics and is closely correlated with cognitive linguistics, first and foremost with psychology, sociology, cultural science. To this number is undoubtedly referred a linguistic notion of slang. There exist a great number of researches concerning slang and the authors treat this phenomenon in various scientific systems (Sh. Johnson, D. Crystal, I.R. Galperin, J.E. Lighter, A.Thorne, etc.). 
  The topicality of the given investigation is connected with the fact that at the beginning of the XXI-st century computers have became the integral part of our everyday life, therefore the necessity has emerged in developing interpretative techniques of the computer language processing. 
The scientific novelty of this work is in the investigation of the problems of translation of computer slang of the English language. 
The aim of the paper is defined as revealing the basic characteristics of the computer vocabulary of the English language. 
The given Qualification Paper is dedicated to one of the main problems of lexicology of the English language. 
Slang is a language of a highly colloquial type considered as below the level of educated standard speech and consisting either of new words or current word employed in some special sense. 
The aim of the research is based on detailed study of “Slang”, which is the most interesting and important for English Lexicology. 

The given purpose follows successive solution of the following tasks:

•  
  to define the subject of Slang;
•  
  to study the origin and sources of slang;
•  
  to present Slang forms and kinds;
•  
  to reveal slang dominions.

 
The actuality of the Qualification Paper is that the vocabulary of the English language is increasing. It is necessary to define the role of slang in colloquial speech. 
The novelty of the Qualification Paper is that in this investigation we have discussed the spread of slang, its kinds, role and usage among different youth fields of community. 
The theoretical significance of this Qualification Paper is that the theoretical position can be used in scientific works besides that they may be used in delivering lectures on Lexicology and Stylistics. 
The practical value of the Qualification Paper is that the practical results and conclusion can be used in seminars on Stylistics and Lexicology. 
The content of this Qualification Paper is as follows:  
Introduction, two chapters, conclusion, summary and the list of used literatures. 
Introduction deals with the description of the structure of a qualification paper. 
In the first chapter, subject to critical analysis of the different points of view on the problem of the definition of "slang," reveals status of slang in modern English, the concept of shared jargon and slang, slang reveals structural features. 
In the second chapter, we consider these types of slang, rhyming slang, Internet slang, and students try to understand the everyday slang, with which you can meet in everyday life. 
Conclusion deals with the theoretical and practical results . 
In the Bibliography, it is listed the used literatures in the paper.

1.Peculiarities of  slang

1.1. History of slang

Most of us think that we recognize slang when we hear it or see it, but exactly how slang is defined and which terms should or should not be listed under that heading continue to be the subject of debate in the bar-room as much as in the classroom or university seminar. To arrive at a working definition of slang the first edition of the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang approached the phenomenon from two slightly different angles. Firstly, slang is a style category within the language which occupies an extreme position on the spectrum of formality. Slang is at the end of the line; it lies beyond mere informality or colloquialism, where language is considered too racy, raffish, novel or unsavory for use in conversation with strangers … So slang enforces intimacy. It often performs an important social function which is to include into or exclude from the intimate circle, using forms of language through which speakers identify with or function within social sub-groups, ranging from surfers, schoolchildren and yuppies, to criminals, drinkers and fornicators. These remain the essential features of slang at the end of the 1990s, although its extreme informality may now seem less shocking than it used to, and its users now include ravers, rappers and net-heads along with the miscreants traditionally cited. There are other characteristics which have been used to delimit slang, but these may often be the result of prejudice and misunderstanding and not percipience. Slang has been referred to again and again as ‘illegitimate’, ‘low and disreputable’ and condemned by serious writers as ‘a sign and a cause of mental atrophy’(Oliver Wendell Holmes), ‘the advertisement of mental poverty’(James C. Fernal). Its in-built unorthodoxy has led to the assumption that slang in all its incarnations (metaphors, euphemisms, taboo words, catchphrases, nicknames, abbreviations and the rest) is somehow inherently substandard and unwholesome. But linguists and lexicographers cannot (or at least, should not) stigmatize words in the way that society may stigmatize the users of those words and, looked at objectively, slang is no more reprehensible than poetry, with which it has much in common in its creative playing with the conventions and mechanisms of language, its manipulation of metonymy, synechdoche, irony, its wit and inventiveness. In understanding this, and also that slang is a natural product of those ‘processes eternally active in language’, Walt Whitman was ahead of his time.  
More recently some writers (Halliday being an influential example) have claimed that the essence of slang is that it is language used in conscious opposition to authority. But slang does not have to be subversive; it may simply encode a shared experience, celebrate a common outlook which may be based as much on (relatively) innocent enjoyment (by, for instance, schoolchildren, drinkers, sports fans, Internet-users) as on illicit activities. Much slang, in fact, functions as an alternative vocabulary, replacing standard terms with more forceful, emotive or interesting versions just for the fun of it: hooter or conk for nose, mutt or pooch for dog, ankle-biter or crumb-snatcher for child are instances. Still hoping to find a defining characteristic, other experts have seized upon the rapid turnover of slang words and announced that this is the key element at work; that slang is concerned with faddishness and that its here-today-gone-tomorrow components are ungraspable and by implication inconsequential. Although novelty and innovation are very important in slang, a close examination of the whole lexicon reveals that, as Whitman had noted, it is not necessarily transient at all. The word punk, for example, has survived in the linguistic underground since the seventeenth century and among the slang synonyms for money - dosh, ackers, spondulicks, rhino, pelf - which were popular in the City of London in the 1990s are many which are more than a hundred years old. A well-known word like cool in its slang sense is still in use (and has been adopted by other languages, too), although it first appeared around eighty years ago.  
Curiously, despite the public’s increasing fascination for slang, as evinced in newspaper and magazine articles and radio programs, academic linguists in the UK have hitherto shunned it as a field of study. This may be due to a lingering conservatism, or to the fact that it is the standard varieties of English that have to be taught, but whatever the reasons the situation is very different elsewhere. In the US and Australia the study of slang is part of the curriculum in many institutions, in France, Spain, Holland, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe slang, and especially the slang of English, is the subject of more and more research projects and student theses; in all these places slang is discussed in symposia and in learned journals, while in Russia, China and Japan local editions of British and American slang dictionaries can be found on school bookshelves and in university libraries.

Slang was the main reason for the development of prescriptive language in an attempt to slow down the rate of change in both spoken and written language.   Latin and French were the only two languages that maintained the use of prescriptive language in the 14th century.   It was not until the early 15th century that scholars began pushing for a standard English language. 

During the Middle Ages, certain writers such as Chaucer, William Caxton, and William of Malmesbury represented the regional differences in pronunciations and dialects.  The different dialects and the different pronunciations represented the first meaning for the term “slang.” 

However, our present-day meaning for slang did not begin forming until the 16th or 17th century.  The English Criminal Cant developed in the 16th century.  The English Criminal Cant was a new kind of speech used by criminals and cheats, meaning it developed mostly in saloons and gambling houses. The English Criminal Cant was at first believed to be foreign, meaning scholars thought that it had either originated in Romania or had a relationship to French.  The English Criminal Cant was slow developing.  In fact, out of the four million people who spoke English, only about ten thousand spoke the English Criminal Cant.  By the end of the 16th century this new style of speaking was considered to be a language “without reason or order” (Thorne 23).   During the 18th century schoolmasters taught pupils to believe that the English Criminal Cant (which by this time had developed into slang) was not the correct usage of English and slang was considered to be taboo. 

However, slang was beginning to be presented in popular plays.  The first appearance of the slang was in a play by Richard Brome’s and later appeared in poems and songs by Copland.  By the 1700’s the cultural differences in America had begun to influence the English-speaking population, and slang began to expand. 

Almost all of the slang words during this time were anatomical and well known all through Britain and in America due to the British colonists.   Furthermore, certain events happened in the 18th century that helped the development of slang such as, Westward expansion, the Civil War, and the abolitionist movement.  By this time scholars such as Walt Whitman,  W. D. Whitney, and Brander Matthews all considered slang to be anything that sounded new, and that was not in the “glossaries of British dialects” (Thorne 26).  Walt Whitman considers slang to be the life of the language.  Whitman wrote “that slang was a wholesome.....of common humanity to escape the form bald literalism, and express itself illimitably” (Thorne 26). 

This was a turning point for slang it was starting to escape the harsh criticism of being associated with criminals or foreigners.  It was not until the early 1920’s that slang had gained the interest of popular writers.  It was during the post-World War I era that society gained new attitudes about slang.  There was now a demand for entertainment, mass media, and slangy fiction. 

Today modern American slang has been shaped and reshaped by the different cultures and the emergence of technology, which has left our society with varieties of slang from extremes like Street/Drug Slang to African-American Slang. 

1.2.Characteristics of slang

Psychologically, most good slang harks back to the stage in human culture when animism was a worldwide religion. At that time, it was believed that all objects had two aspects, one external and objective that could be perceived by the senses, the other imperceptible (except to gifted individuals) but identical with what we today would call the "real" object. Human survival depended upon the manipulation of all "real" aspects of life--hunting, reproduction, warfare, weapons, design of habitations, nature of clothing or decoration, etc.--through control or influence upon the animus, or imperceptible phase of reality. This influence was exerted through many aspects of sympathetic magic, one of the most potent being the use of language. Words, therefore, had great power, because they evoked the things to which they referred.

Civilized cultures and their languages retain many remnants of animism, largely on the unconscious level. In Western languages, the metaphor owes its power to echoes of sympathetic magic, and slang utilizes certain attributes of the metaphor to evoke images too close for comfort to "reality." For example, to refer to a woman as a "broad" is automatically to increase her girth in an area in which she may fancy herself as being thin. Her reaction may, thus, be one of anger and resentment, if she happens to live in a society in which slim hips are considered essential to feminine beauty. Slang, then, owes much of its power to shock to the superimposition of images that are incongruous with images (or values) of others, usually members of the dominant culture. Slang is most popular when its imagery develops incongruity bordering on social satire. Every slang word, however, has its own history and reasons for popularity. When conditions change, the term may change in meaning, be adopted into the standard language, or continue to be used as slang within certain enclaves of the population. Nothing is flatter than dead slang. In 1910, for instance, "Oh you kid" and "23-skiddoo" were quite stylish phrases in the U.S. but they have gone with the hobble skirt. Children, however, unaware of anachronisms, often revive old slang under a barrage of older movies rerun on television.

Some slang becomes respectable when it loses its edge; "spunk," "fizzle," "spent," "hit the spot," "jazz," "funky," and "p.o.'d," once thought to be too indecent for feminine ears, are now family words. Other slang survives for centuries, like "bones" for dice (Chaucer), "beat it" for run away (Shakespeare), "duds" for clothes, and "booze" for liquor (Dekker). These words must have been uttered as slang long before appearing in print, and they have remained slang ever since. Normally, slang has both a high birth and death rate in the dominant culture, and excessive use tends to dull the lustre of even the most colourful and descriptive words and phrases. The rate of turnover in slang words is undoubtedly encouraged by the mass media, and a term must be increasingly effective to survive.

While many slang words introduce new concepts, some of the most effective slang provides new expressions--fresh, satirical, shocking--for established concepts, often very respectable ones. Sound is sometimes used as a basis for this type of slang, as, for example, in various phonetic distortions (e.g., pig Latin terms). It is also used in rhyming slang, which employs a fortunate combination of both sound and imagery. Thus, gloves are "turtledoves" (the gloved hands suggesting a pair of billing doves), a girl is a "twist and twirl" (the movement suggesting a girl walking), and an insulting imitation of flatus, produced by blowing air between the tip of the protruded tongue and the upper lip, is the "raspberry," cut back from "raspberry tart." Most slang, however, depends upon incongruity of imagery, conveyed by the lively connotations of a novel term applied to an established concept. Slang is not all of equal quality, a considerable body of it reflecting a simple need to find new terms for common ones, such as the hands, feet, head, and other parts of the body. Food, drink, and sex also involve extensive slang vocabulary. Strained or synthetically invented slang lacks verve, as can be seen in the desperate efforts of some sportswriters to avoid mentioning the word baseball--e.g., a batter does not hit a baseball but rather "swats the horsehide," "plasters the pill," "hefts the old apple over the fence," and so on.

The most effective slang operates on a more sophisticated level and often tells something about the thing named, the person using the term, and the social matrix against which it is used. Pungency may increase when full understanding of the term depends on a little inside information or knowledge of a term already in use, often on the slang side itself. For example, the term Vatican roulette (for the rhythm system of birth control) would have little impact if the expression Russian roulette were not already in wide usage.

1.3.Slang as a phenomenon in modern linguistics. Slang and Jargon. 
 
In linguistics there is no clear notion of slang. 
The whole vocabulary of a language is divided into literary and non-literary. By literary include: 
 
.1. Ink-horn term 
2. Standard spoken words 
3. Neutral words 
 
The whole vocabulary is used either in literature or in a speech in a formal setting. There is also a non-literary vocabulary, we divide it into: 
 
1.Professionalism 
2.Vulgarism 
3.Jargon 
4.Slang 

This part of the lexicon is distinguished by its conversational and informal nature. 
 
Professionalism - words used by small groups of people united by a particular profession. 
 
Vulgargomy - it's harsh words, not usually employed by educated people in society, the special vocabulary used by people of lower social status: prisoners, drug dealers, homeless, etc. 
 
Jargon - words that are used by certain social or common interest groups, which are secret, incomprehensible to all make sense. 
 
Slang - words that are often viewed as a violation of the standard language. This is a very expressive, ironic words serve to indicate items being talked about in everyday life. 
 
It should be noted that some scholars refer to the slang jargon, thus not releasing them as a separate group, and slang is defined as a specific vocabulary used to talk a group of people with common interests. 
 
The term "slang" in the translation from English (Sov. congruence. Dictionary, ed. S. Kovaleva, - M., "Soviet Encyclopedia", str.1234) means: 
 
A. 
it socially or professionally isolated groups opposed to the literary language; 
 
B. 
version of the conversation (including painted expressive elements of the speech) that do not coincide with the standard literary language. 
 
 
Slang consists of words and phraseology, which originally emerged and were used in separate social groups, and reflect the holistic orientation of these groups. Having become a commonly used, these words remain largely emotional assessment, although some "sign" of evaluation varies. For example, the "trash" (an actor's use of Wednesday) - stands for "perquisite." 
 
On the problem of allocation of unallocated or slang of a number of others, and as a concept and as a term for local linguists, there are several points of view: 
 
A. 
I.R. Halperin, in his article "On the term" slang "," referring to the uncertainty in this category, denies its existence. 
His argument is based on the results of studies of British scientists lexicographers, mainly on their experience in compiling dictionaries of English, which showed that the same word in different dictionaries have different linguistic recognition, the same is given to the litters of "slang," "vernacular" or without litter, indicating that under normal literary language. 
I.R Halperin does not admit the existence of slang as a separate category of self-offering, the term "slang" used as a synonym, the English equivalent of jargon. 
 
B. 
Opinion about the identity of the two terms (slang and jargon), but beyond that - a sharp

rejection of the presence of this phenomenon in the Russian spoken language (Elena Borisova-Lunashanets, A.N. Mazurova, L. Radzihovsky). 
 
 
It is interesting to use in this aspect the opinion of Academician AA Shakhmatova, who offered to point to the attention of such a phenomenon, and not get involved in propaganda denying slang and showing how to speak. 
 
It should not be approached solely from the perspective of slang scholar and linguist, as the language - not a static phenomenon, but versatile, and above all in the way of (slang is present mainly in speech). 
 
In terms of style - the jargon, slang or sociolect - it is not harmful parasitic excrescence on the body language, which is vulgarized spoken language of the speaker, and organic and to some extent a necessary part of the system. 
 
Some researchers believe that the term is slang used here in two senses: as a synonym for jargon (but with reference to English-speaking countries) and as a collection of slang words, slang values ​​of well-known words, slang phrases, belonging by birth to the different jargon, and become, if not commonly used , it is sufficient wide range of understandable. The authors of the various slang dictionaries in this way understand the slang. 
 
The great interest in this study are slang dictionaries. Interesting demonstration of the facts, not found in the vast majority of cases reflected in the standard dictionaries. Interesting as a document of time, definite evidence of taste and language age, and socio-psychological processes generated by extralinguistic factors. Speaking of these processes and circumstances, the authors of these papers point out that the prison-camp slang was not affected by the official ideology. And that in a totalitarian state made it an attractive "for everyone, one way or another, did not suit the Soviet reality: from the dissidents - to fans of jazz and non-objective painting." In addition, "a country that for decades was an almost one giant concentration camp, where people constantly, directly or indirectly, faced with prison life, could not learn manners and customs of this world in all spheres of social and cultural life." Once Joliot-Curie said: "The truth is traveling without a visa." But nothing of the word and say nothing.

2. Uses of slang.

Why People Use Slang?

Because most people are individuals who desire uniqueness, it stands to reason that slang has been in existence for as long as language has been in existence.  Even so, the question of why slang develops within a language has been hotly debated.  Most agree that the question is still unanswered, or perhaps it has many answers.  Regardless, there is no doubt that we can better explain slang's existence by analyzing how and why it exists. 

Foreign words are a common resource for the development of slang, as are regional variations of standard words.  David Crystal, author of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, calls the introduction of foreign words into a language "borrowings."  Likewise, slang may incorporate "elements of the jargons of special-interest groups (e.g., professional, sport, regional, criminal, and drug subcultures)."  The Historical Dictionary of American Slang says that "Slang is lexical innovation within a particular cultural context."  Sometimes these foreign words and regional variations become part of the standard language. 

The Historical Dictionary of American Slang points out that many groups "use slang largely because they lack political power."  It is simply a safe and effective way that people rebel against the establishment.  Often, however, it appears that slang is ever present and exists even in complacent times.  It is created by individuals and perpetuated based upon its usefulness and applicability. 

The Columbia Encyclopedia notes that slang is often "well developed in the speaking vocabularies of cultured, sophisticated, linguistically rich languages."  Whereas slang was once considered as the lowest form of communication, many now consider slang to be an intelligent and insightful variation to the blandness of the standard language.  Gerald Parshall, in a 1994 article for U.S. News & World Report, describes this as "proletarian poetry."  The Oxford English Dictionary points out that George Eliot's character in Middlemarch, written in 1871, says that "Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays."  For some, it is enough that Shakespeare often used slang. 

Others, however, condemn the use of slang, believing that it undermines the standard language and reflects poorly upon its users.  Parshall notes that Ambrose Bierce, in his dictionary, called slang "the grunt of the human hog."  Even The Oxford English Dictionary's 1989 edition defines slang as "the special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low or disreputable character; language of a low and vulgar type."  In fact, both Crystal and The Historical Dictionary of American Slang point out that Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift produced the very first dictionaries partly out of great concern for the corruption of the standard English language. 

Whatever the reason(s), slang is here to stay, and its longevity demands attention and explication.  Below is an excerpt from David Crystal's book.  Crystal cites examlpes from Eric Partridge's  Slang, Today and Yesterday to illustrate the many uses of slang.  Partridge, according to The Historical Dictionary of American Slang, is "perhaps the century's best-known collector of unconventional English."  Of Partridge's "fifteen important impulses behind the use of slang," Crystal notes that he considers numbers 13 and 14 to be the most significant: 

"According to the British lexicographer, Eric Partridge (1894-1979), people use slang for any of at least 15 reasons: 

1.  In sheer high spirits, by the young in heart as well as by the young in years; 'just for the fun of the thing'; in playfulness or waggishness. 

2. As an exercise either in wit and ingenuity or in humour.  (The motive behind this is usually self-display or snobbishness, emulation or responsiveness, delight in virtuosity). 

3. To be 'different', to be novel. 

4.  To be picturesque (either positively or - as in the wish to avoid insipidity - negatively). 

5. To be unmistakably arresting, even startling. 

6. To escape from clichés, or to be brief and concise.  (Actuated by impatience with existing terms.) 

7.  To enrich the language.  (This deliberateness is rare save among the well-educated, Cockneys forming the most notable exception; it is literary rather than spontaneous.) 

8.  To lend an air of solidity, concreteness, to the abstract; of earthiness to the idealistic; of immediacy and appositeness to the remote.  (In the cultured the effort is usually premeditated, while in the uncultured it is almost always unconscious when it is not rather subconscious.) 

9a. To lesson the sting of, or on the other hand to give additional point to, a refusal, a rejection, a recantation; 

9b. To reduce, perhaps also to disperse, the solemnity, the pomposity, the excessive seriousness of a conversation (or of a piece of writing); 

9c. To soften the tragedy, to lighten or to 'prettify' the inevitability of death or madness, or to mask the ugliness or the pity of profound turpitude (e.g. treachery, ingratitude); and/or thus to enable the speaker or his auditor or both to endure, to 'carry on'. 

10.  To speak or write down to an inferior, or to amuse a superior public; or merely to be on a colloquial level with either one's audience or one's subject matter. 

11.  For ease of social intercourse.  (Not to be confused or merged with the preceding.) 

12.  To induce either friendliness or intimacy of a deep or a durable kind.  (Same remark.) 

13.  To show that one belongs to a certain school, trade, or profession, artistic or intellectual set, or social class; in brief, to be 'in the swim' or to establish contact. 

14.  Hence, to show or prove that someone is not 'in the swim'. 

15.  To be secret - not understood by those around one.  (Children, students, lovers, members of political secret societies, and criminals in or out of prison, innocent persons in prison, are the chief exponents.) 

(From Slang:  Today and Yesterday, 1933, Ch. 2.)"

Types of  slang. Rhyming slang

Rhyming slang is a form of phrase construction in the English language and is especially prevalent in dialectal English from the East End of London; hence the alternative name, Cockney rhyming slang (or CRS). The construction involves replacing a common word with a rhyming phrase of two or three words and then, in almost all cases, omitting the secondary rhyming word, in a process called hemiteleia, making the origin and meaning of the phrase elusive to listeners not in the know.

The most frequently cited example—although it is almost never employed by current users—involves the replacement of "stairs" with the rhyming phrase "apples and pears". Following the usual pattern of omission, "(and) pears" is then dropped and "stairs" becomes "apples". Thus the spoken phrase "I'm going up the apples" means "I'm going ['up the stairs'/'upstairs']".

In similar fashion, "telephone" is replaced by "dog" (= 'dog-and-bone'); "wife" by "trouble" (= 'trouble-and-strife'); "eyes" by "minces" (= 'mince pies'); "wig" by "syrup" (= 'syrup of figs') and "feet" by "plates" (= 'plates of meat'). Thus a construction of the following type could conceivably arise: "It nearly knocked me off me plates—he was wearing a syrup! So I got straight on the dog to me trouble and said I couldn't believe me minces."

In some examples the meaning is further obscured by adding a second iteration of rhyme and truncation to the original rhymed phrase. For example, the word "Aris" is often used to indicate the buttocks. This has been subjected to a double rhyme, starting with the original rough synonym "arse", which was rhymed with "bottle and glass", leading to "bottle". "Bottle" was then rhymed with "Aristotle" and truncated to "Aris".

The use of rhyming slang has spread beyond the purely dialectal and some examples are to be found in the mainstream British English lexicon and internationally, although many users may be unaware of the origin of those words. One example is "berk", a mild pejorative widely used across the UK and not usually considered particularly offensive, although the origin lies in a contraction of "Berkeley Hunt", as the rhyme for the significantly more offensive "cunt".

Most of the words changed by this process are nouns. A few are adjectival e.g. 'bales' (of cotton = rotten), or the adjectival phrase 'on one's tod' (Tod Sloan, a famous jockey).

History

Rhyming slang is believed to have originated in the mid-19th century in the East End of London, with several sources suggesting some time in the 1840s.

According to Partridge (1972:12), it dates from around 1840 and arose in the East End of London, however John Camden Hotten in his 1859 Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words states that (English) rhyming slang originated "about twelve or fifteen years ago" (i.e. in the 1840s) with 'chaunters' and 'patterers' in the Seven Dials area of Westminster. (The reference is to travelling salesmen of certain kinds. Chaunters sold sheet music and patterers offered cheap, tawdry goods at fairs and markets up and down the country). Hotten's Dictionary included a "Glossary of the Rhyming Slang", the first known such work. It included later mainstays such as "Frog and toad—the main road" and "Apples and pears—stairs" as well as many that later grew more obscure, e.g. "Battle of the Nile—a tile (vulgar term for a hat)", "Duke of York—take a walk", and "Top of Rome—home".

It remains a matter of speculation whether rhyming slang was a linguistic accident, a game, or a cryptolect developed intentionally to confuse non-locals. If deliberate, it may also have been used to maintain a sense of community. It is possible that it was used in the marketplace to allow traders to talk amongst themselves in order to facilitate collusion, without customers knowing what they were saying. Another suggestion is that it may have been used by criminals (see thieves' cant) to confuse the police.

Evolution

At any point in history, in any location, rhyming slang can be seen to incorporate words and phrases that are relevant at that particular time and place. Many examples are based on locations in London and, in all likelihood, will be meaningless to people unfamiliar with the capital e.g. "Peckham Rye", meaning "tie" (as in necktie), which dates from the late 19th century; "Hampstead Heath", meaning "teeth" (usually as "Hampsteads”), which was first recorded in 1887 and "Barnet Fair", meaning "hair", which dates from the 1850s. (In these examples and many subsequent ones the final step of hemiteleia has been omitted in order to allow the reader more readily to trace the origin of the substituted words).

By the mid-20th century many rhyming slang expressions used the names of contemporary personalities, especially actors and performers: for example "Gregory Peck" meaning "neck" and also "cheque"; "Ruby Murray" meaning "curry"; "Alans", meaning "knickers" from Alan Whicker; "Max Miller" meaning "pillow" when pronounced /ˈpilə/ and "Henry Halls".

The use of personal names as rhymes continued into the late 20th century, for example "Tony Blairs" meaning "flares", as in trousers with a wide bottom (previously this was "Lionel Blairs" and this change illustrates the ongoing mutation of the forms of expression) and "Britney Spears", meaning "beers".

Many examples have passed into common usage. Some substitutions have become relatively widespread in England in their contracted form. "To have a butcher's", meaning to have a look, originates from "butcher's hook", an S-shaped hook used by butchers to hang up meat, and dates from the late 19th century but has existed independently in general use from around the 1930s simply as "butchers". Similarly, "use your loaf", meaning "use your head", derives from "loaf of bread" and also dates from the late 19th century but came into independent use in the 1930s.

Rhyming slang, in keeping with the rest of the language, is at the mercy of what one might loosely refer to as "false etymology". An example occurs that involves the term "barney", which has been used to mean an altercation or fight since the late 19th century, although without a clear derivation. Thus, in 1964, in A Hard Day's Night, John Lennon taunts the road manager into “having a barney”.^[ In the 2001 feature film Ocean's Eleven Don Cheadle uses the term "barney" and the claim is made that this rhyme is derived from Barney Rubble, ("trouble") with references to a character from the Flintstones cartoon show. This usage can be seen as either an abuse of history, or as a good example of the ever-changing nature of rhyming slang.

Regional and international variations

Rhyming slang is used mainly in London in England but can to some degree be understood across the country. Some constructions, however, rely on particular regional accents for the rhymes to work. The term "Charing Cross" for example (a place in London) has been used to mean "horse" since the mid-19th century^[3] but does not rhyme unless "cross" is pronounced /ˈkrɔːs/ to rhyme with "course". A similar example is "Joanna" meaning "piano", which is based on the pronunciation of "piano" as "pianna" /piˈænə/). Unique formations also exist in other parts of the United Kingdom, such as in the East Midlands, where the local accent has formed "Derby Road", which rhymes with "cold", a conjunction that would not be possible elsewhere in the UK.

Outside England, rhyming slang is used in many English-speaking countries. In Australian slang the term for an English person is "pommy", which has been proposed as a rhyme on "pomegranate" rhyming with "immigrant". A more recent Australian invention is the term "reginalds" to describe underpants, from "Reg Grundies" after Reg Grundy, the Australia media tycoon. In Australia and South Africa, the colloquial term "China" is derived from "mate" rhyming with "China plate" (the identical form, heard in expressions like "me old China" is also a long-established Cockney idiom).

In London rhyming slang is continually evolving, and new phrases are introduced all the time. As mentioned new personalities replace old ones (as in Lionel/Tony Blairs—flairs), or pop culture introduces new words—as in "I haven't a Scooby" (from Scooby Doo, the eponymous cartoon dog of the cartoon series) meaning "I haven't a clue".

Rhyming slang and taboo terms

Rhyming slang is often used as a substitute for words regarded as taboo, often to the extent that the association with the taboo word becomes unknown over time. "Berk" (often used to mean "foolish person") originates from the most famous of all fox hunts, the "Berkeley Hunt" meaning "cunt"; "cobblers" (often used in the context "what you said is rubbish") originates from "cobbler's awls", meaning "balls" (as in testicles); and "hampton" meaning "prick" (as in penis) originates from "Hampton Wick" (a place in London).

Lesser taboo terms include "pony and trap" for "crap" (as in defecate, but often used to denote nonsense or low quality); "D'Oyly Carte" for "fart"; "Jimmy Riddle" for "piddle" (as in urinate), "J. Arthur Rank" (a film mogul), or "ham shank" for "wank", "Bristol Cities" for "titties", etc. "Taking the Mick" or "taking the Mickey" is thought to be a rhyming slang form of "taking the piss", where "Mick" came from "Mickey Bliss".

Rhyming slang terms for Jew have included "Chelsea Blue", "Stick of Glue", "Four by Two" and "Buckle my shoe".

In December 2004 Joe Pasquale, winner of the fourth series of ITV's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, became well known for his frequent use of the term "Jacobs", for Jacob's Crackers, a rhyming slang term for knackers i.e. testicles.

Rhyming slang in popular culture

Rhyming slang is used, then described and a number of examples suggested as part of dialogue in one scene of the 1967 film To Sir With Love starring Sidney Poitier. The English students are telling their foreign teacher that the slang is a drag and something for old people.^[

In Britain rhyming slang had a resurgence of popular interest beginning in the 1970s resulting from its use in a number of London-based television programmes such as Steptoe and Son, Mind Your Language, The Sweeney (the title of which is itself rhyming slang—"Sweeney Todd" for "Flying Squad", a rapid response unit of London’s Metropolitan Police), Minder, Citizen Smith, Only Fools and Horses, and EastEnders. Minder could be quite uncompromising in its use of obscure forms without any clarification. Thus the non-Cockney viewer was obliged to deduce that, say, "iron" was "male homosexual" ('iron' = 'iron hoof' = 'poof'). One episode in Series 5 of Steptoe and Son was entitled "Any Old Iron", for the same reason, when Albert thinks that Harold is 'on the turn'.

In The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, a comic twist was added to rhyming slang by way of spurious and fabricated examples which a young man had laboriously to explain to his father (e.g. 'dustbins' meaning 'children', as in 'dustbin lids' = 'kids'; 'Teds' being 'Ted Heath' and thus 'teeth'; and even 'Chitty Chitty' being 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', and thus 'rhyming slang'...).

In modern literature, Cockney rhyming slang is used frequently in the novels and short stories of Kim Newman, for instance in the short story collections "The Man from the Diogenes Club" (2006) and "Secret Files of the Diogenes Club" (2007), where it is explained at the end of each book. Also, in the novel Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett, this slang is frequently used.

In popular music, London-based artists such as Audio Bullys and Chas & Dave (and others from elsewhere in the UK, such as The Streets, who are from Birmingham) frequently use rhyming slang in their songs. The UK punk scene of the late 1970s introduced bands that glorified their working-class heritage: Sham 69 had a hit song "The Cockney Kids are Innocent". The idiom made a brief appearance in the UK-based DJ reggae music of the 1980s in the hit "Cockney Translation" by Smiley Culture of South London; this was followed a couple of years later by Domenick and Peter Metro's "Cockney and Yardie". The 1967 Kinks song "Harry Rag" was based on the usage of the name Harry Wragg as rhyming slang for "fag" (i.e. a cigarette).

In movies, Cary Grant's character teaches rhyming slang to his female companion in the film Mr. Lucky (1943) and describes it as Australian rhyming slang. The closing song of the 1969 Michael Caine crime caper, The Italian Job, ("Getta Bloomin' Move On" a.k.a. "The Self Preservation Society") contains many slang terms. In present day feature films rhyming slang is often used to lend authenticity to an East End setting. Examples include Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) (wherein the slang is translated via subtitles in one scene); The Limey (1999); Sexy Beast (2000); Snatch (2000); Ocean's Eleven (2001); and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002); It's All Gone Pete Tong (2004), after BBC radio disc jockey Pete Tong whose name is used in this context as rhyming slang for "wrong"; Green Street Hooligans (2005).

Internet slang

Internet slang (Internet short-hand, Cyber-slang, netspeak or chatspeak) refers to a variety of everyday languages used by different communities on the Internet. It is difficult to provide a standardized definition of Internet slang due to the constant changes made to its nature.^[1] However, it can be understood to be a type of slang that Internet users have popularized, and in many cases, have coined. Such terms often originate with the purpose of saving keystrokes. Many people use the same abbreviations in texting and instant messaging, and social networking websites. Acronyms, keyboard symbols and abbreviations are common types of Internet slang. New dialects of slang, such as leet or Lolspeak, develop as ingroup internet memes rather than time savers.

Origins

The exact origins of Internet slang terms originate largely on the Internet, but the selection process remains seemingly irregular or abstract. The process of coinage is therefore also difficult to describe. The author of Netiquette, Virginia Shea, admits that many parts of her book were made up as she went along.^[2] Slang seems to be commonly sourced, however, from online games, video games and general pop culture. In the English-speaking world, examples include the word ‘bazinga’ from the CBS show The Big Bang Theory and, in Japanese, the term moe has come into common use among slang users to mean something extremely cute and appealing. Aside from the more frequently found abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons, Internet slang is also based on archaic words or the lesser-known dialectal counterparts of a term in mainstream language. Regular words can also be altered into something with a similar pronunciation but altogether different meaning, or attributed new meanings altogether. Phonetic transcriptions of foreign words, such as the transformation of ‘impossible’ into ‘impossibru’ in Japanese and then back to English, is also observed. In places where logographic languages are used such as China, a visual variety of Internet slang is also observable, where a character has a duality in meaning- direct and implied^[

Motivations

The primary motivation behind using a slang unique to the Internet is to ease communication. However, while Internet slang shortcuts save time for the writer, they take two times as long for the reader to understand, according to a study by the University of Tasmania. On the other hand, similar to the use of slang in traditional face-to-face speech or written language, slang on the Internet is often a way of indicating group membership.

Internet slang provides a channel which facilitates and constrains our ability to communicate in ways that are fundamentally different from those found in other semiotic situations. Many of the expectations and practices which we associate with spoken and written language are no longer applicable. The Internet itself is ideal for new slang to emerge because of the richness of the medium and the availability of information. Slang is also thus motivated for the “creation and sustenance of online communities”. These communities in turn play a role in solidarity or identification or an exclusive or common cause.

Crystal distinguishes between five Internet situations: The Web, email, asynchronous chat (for example mailing lists), synchronous chat (for example Internet Relay Chat) and virtual worlds. The electronic character of the channel has a fundamental influence on the language of the medium. The options of communication for the user are constrained by the nature of the hardware needed in order to gain Internet access. Thus, productive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be sent) is determined by the preassigned characters on a keyboard, and receptive linguistic capacity (the type of information that can be seen) is determined by the size and configuration of the screen. Additionally, both sender and receiver are constrained linguistically by the properties of the internet software, computer hardware and networking hardware linking them. Electronic discourse refers to writing that is "very often reads as if it were being spoken – that is, as if the sender were writing talking".

Views on Internet slang

There have been ongoing debates about how the use of slang on the Internet influences language usage outside of technology. Even though the direct causal relationship between the Internet and language has yet to be proven by any scientific research, Internet slang has invited split views on its influence on the standard of language use in non-computer-mediated communications.

Prescriptivists tend to have the widespread belief that the Internet has a negative influence on the future of language, and that it would lead to a degradation of standard. Some would even attribute any declination of standard formal English to the increase in usage of electronic communication.  It has also been suggested that the linguistic differences between Standard English and CMC can have implications for literacy education. This is illustrated by the widely reported example of a school essay submitted by a Scottish teenager, which contained many abbreviations and acronyms likened to SMS language. There was great condemnation of this style by the mass media as well as educationists, who expressed that this showed diminishing literacy or linguistic abilities.

On the other hand, descriptivists have counter-argued that the Internet allows better expressions of a language. Rather than established linguistic conventions, linguistic choices sometimes reflect personal taste. It has also been suggested that as opposed to intentionally flouting language conventions, Internet slang is a result of a lack of motivation to monitor speech online. Hale and Scalon describe language in Emails as being derived from "writing the way people talk", and that there is no need to insist on 'Standard' English. English users, in particular, have an extensive tradition of etiquette guides, instead of traditional prescriptive treatises, that offer pointers on linguistic appropriateness. Using and spreading Internet slang also adds on to the cultural currency of a language. It is important to the speakers of the language due to the foundation it provides for identifying within a group, and also for defining a person’s individual linguistic and communicative competence. The result is a specialized subculture based on its use of slang.

In scholarly research, attention has, for example, been drawn to the effect of the use of Internet slang in ethnography, and more importantly to how conversational relationships online change structurally because slang is used.

Internet slang today

Although Internet slang began as a means of “opposition” to mainstream language, its popularity with today’s globalized digitally literate population has shifted it into a part of everyday language, where it also leaves a profound impact.

Frequently used slang also have become conventionalised into memetic "unit[s] of cultural information". These memes in turn are further spread through their use on the Internet, prominently through websites. The impossible task of dialog analysis in chatboxes. The Internet as an "information superhighway" is also catalysed through slang. The evolution of slang has also created a 'slang union as part of a unique, specialised subculture. Such impacts are, however, limited and requires further discussion especially from the non-English world. This is because Internet slang is prevalent in languages more actively used on the Internet, like English, which is one of the Internet’s lingua franca.