American Slang As A Mirror Of American Culture

People's impression of slang may be that slang is rude, dirty, and indecent, even if they themselves use a lot daily. To write about slang is even more unimaginable. Eric Partridge, in the preface to Slang Today and Yesterday, told such an awkward situation: "A friend, when I told him that I was writing a book on slang, looked at me with surprise and exclaimed: ' Splendid! But what the devil can you find to say about it?'" The underlined question would be: why does a serious scholar devote himself to this uncouth sort of language? However, theoretically, in linguistics any corpus or body of vocabulary is worth recording, and all are equally worthy. Linguistics is a science in that its values have to do with accuracy, completeness, and demonstrability rather than with moral or social good. Actually, many linguists admit that slang is a vital and active part of language. And another fact is that slang causes a great difficulty in communication and reading, especially for EFL learners. So it's normal, justifiable, and challenging to study slang. The second reason for me to choose the topic is that linguists do not seem to have made a thorough exploration of the relationship between slang and culture. It's the strong cultural implications American slang carries that make me attempt to approach American slang from cultural perspective as well as linguistic one.This paper consists of five parts: an Introduction and four chapters. The Introduction and Chapter One, "Topics Related to Slang," provide basis for my thesis, while Chapter Two, Characteristics of American Slang Embodied in American Dominant Culture, and Chapter Three, Subgroups of American Slang Mapping American Subculture and Counterculture, are the main concerns of my research. Chapter Four, The Future of American Slang, serves as both conclusion and prediction. The opening part, "Introduction", starts with two contradictory views of slang. It's necessary to classify words into different levels in order to put slang into the right place, and make it clear that slang belongs to informal, colloquial and non-standard speech. Because of many abuses about slang, it's also of significance to adopt scientific attitude toward slang. The theory of linguistic and cultural relativism proves that slang is not "bad" or "incorrect" language but as normal and useful as any other speech form. Besides an effective way of communication, it also carries rich cultural associations. So I will make the paper mainly a cultural study, which is built up on sociolinguistics, that part of linguistics which is concerned with language as a socio-cultural phenomenon. In my introduction, I adopt "the metaphor of city" put forward by the philosopher Wittgenstein (Gozzi 1990:8). He compared language to a city. Then I modify the metaphor to call it "a city of American slang." So the next three chapters are my three tours through the city and its suburbs of American slang.The first chapter, "Topics Related to Slang", is a brief but overall tour of the city to offer some general and basic pictures of its origin, definition, nature, function, difference from other speech forms and its role in American English. As to the origin of slang, scholars differ in their opinions. In this paper, I appreciate the view that its origin is respectable, not vulgar and it's a product of an exuberance of mental activity, and therefore connotes personalities. In linguistics, where definitions at best are often imprecise and leaky, that of slang is especially notorious. There emerge many definitions with different focuses. Slang, in this thesis, is defined as "a peculiar kind of highly colloquial language, responding to new concepts in a novel way, racy of the national soil and saturated with the virtues and vices of a people, a society and a culture."The nature of slang is also one of complexity. But one thing is certain, that is, the novelty, vivacity, and vividness of slang determine the active nature or essence of slang. Another difficult thing is to distinguish slang from other simi...