An Adaptive Analysis Of American Slang And Its Implications For TEFL

As a common phenomenon in American English, American slang is a linguistic choice that is used to meet some communicative needs and then to realize some communicative goal. Up to now, many scholars at home and abroad have probed into its origin and development, essential characteristics and pragmatic functions, etc from perspectives of semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, etc and have made brilliant achievement. But compared with Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, all those approaches are more or less not universally acceptable. According to the Adaptation Theory, the use of language must consist of the constant making of linguistic choices, which can be done consciously or unconsciously and should adapt to the context. Only with the appropriate choice can the expected goal and result be fulfilled in communication. Considering that American slang is a kind of linguistic choice made by the language user to adapt to a certain context and a linguistic strategy to fulfill some communicative goal, it is very necessary and meaningful to use the Adaptation Theory to make a systematic analysis of it.Based on the above-mentioned understanding, this thesis begins with an introduction of the origin, the definition and the nature of slang, presents that the choice of American slang must have adapted to such communicative context factors as different language users, their social and mental worlds on the basis of the Adaptation Theory, figures out the reasons why American slang should adapt to the communicative context and makes research on the current situation of its learning and teaching in TEFL fixated on the improvement of the intercultural communicative competence, then points out the challenges of using American slang and makes approaches to the teaching of it,and finally sums up the implications of this adaptive analysis of American slang for college English teaching.This study shows that the adaptation-based approach can reduce pragmatic failures, ensure successful communication, enrich the general linguistic theories, shed light on other subjects like cross-cultural science and language learning and teaching, etc.