The Analysis Of American College Slang From Subcultural Perspective

This thesis aims at analyzing the American college slang on the basis of cultural context, and tries to study the relationship between American college slang and American subculture.The framework of this thesis mainly focuses on cultural context. When context is endowed with cultural factors, it becomes cultural context. Cultural context plays an important role on communication with others.American slang is formed and developed with the history of the United States. It has its unique characteristics and functions. Language can tell a lot about a country and its culture. American slang is just a reflection of American society and culture. American college slang is unique to American students with the emergence since the time when universities and colleges first appeared in the US. In America, there are a variety of sub-cultural groups, American college students are just one group among American sub-cultural groups. The language spoken by them can reflect the popularity, exaggeration and satirizing characteristics of American college slang. Moreover, college slang showed different features in different times. Through the study of these different periods, we can see that college slang is a subcultural language, it can have a certain effect on the society, it still can not strike against the mainstream culture. In brief, the thesis is just trying to analyze American college slang from sub-cultural perspective on the bases of combining linguistic knowledge, the knowledge of American slang and American college slang with the knowledge of subculture, it is helpful for English learners to learn American English better.