Базарова О., Татаринова Е

Базарова О., Татаринова Е.

Особенности молодежного сленга в свете субкультуры геймеров

There is no good definition of slang available in the literature. The linguist Paul Roberts said that slang was ‘one of those things that everybody can recognize and nobody can define’. This is a realistic characterization, but there are also several more colorful ones. The American poet Carl Sandburg said that ‘Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.’ It is evident, that the poet meant the importance of slang in everyday life.

Slang is an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed typically of coinages, arbitrary changes words, and extravagant figures of speech. The most important aspect of slang is its use below the level of stylistically neutral usage. The concept of stylistically neutral language is not well defined, and what is below this level must therefore also be vague. But it is below this level that we find an extensive stylistic scale ranging from colloquial to vulgar and obscene. As we use the term slang, it refers to colloquial as well as vulgar language. Swearing is always connected with taboos of some kind. Slang terms are not restricted in such a way. Many English swearing expressions are taken from the areas of sex and bodily functions. It is also the case that there are quite a few slang terms relating to these areas. Slang is emotional, colorful and semantically restricted.

People use slang in the following cases:

In high spirits, “just for the fun of the thing”, in playfulness or waggishness.

As an exercise either in wit and ingenuity or in humour.

To be “different”, to be novel.

To sound bright.

To be unmistakably arresting, even startling.

To escape from clichés, or to be brief and concise.

To enrich the language.

To ease a social intercourse.

To induce either friendliness or intimacy of a deep or durable kind.

To show that one belongs to a certain school, trade, profession or social class; in brief, to be “in the swim” or to establish contact.

To be secret – not to be understood by those around one.

It is suggested that the language acquires slang terms in three principal ways: new expressions are invented; old standard language expressions appear in new uses; and expressions are borrowed from one language or type of language by another.

You can hardly imagine any language without slang. Of course, it is hard to judge what slang is, and what is not when we look at foreign languages far back in time. In order to grasp which expressions is slang, we need a fairly good knowledge of the language. We are best at evaluating our own language today.

Most people think that teenagers are the prime users of slang, but this is hard to verify. According to one American investigation carried out by Willand Gore at Michigan University in 1896, students claimed that they used slang most when they were between sixteen and nineteen. However, it is not correct to regard slang as some kind of adolescent linguistic disease. Adults use a lot of slang, but, of course, there are differences between individuals as well as groups, depending on sex, social class and type of work. In this respect slang is no different from other types of ‘bad language’.

Aristophanes, who died in 385 BC, is usually said to have been the first writer who used slang extensively. His comedies feature many common people in good spirits using slang. Among the Roman writers, Plautus, Horace, Juvenal and Petronius are often mentioned as authors who knew how to use slang for stylistic purposes.

Today slang is a broad concept including colloquialisms, informalities and vulgarities of many types. Originally the term slang was used by British criminals to refer to their own special language.

Cant was the word used by the outside world and it is still used as a term for the language of criminals. Thus, slang has, as a concept, moved a long way from its origin.

Jargon, as this term is widely used today, refers to the insider’s specialized register as viewed by the (usually resentful) outsider.

The main reason for this is social. The language of a group functions as a kind of glue which maintains cohesion between the members of this group and acts as a wall between them and outsiders. By choosing the right words you show which group you belong to. You can probably even show that you are one of the core members of the group.

One of the functions of the language of thieves and drug addicts is to keep the content of their conversations secret – outsiders should not understand what is being said. It is sometimes called anti-language. Since most of words they use are not hard to understand, this claim is dubious. However, there are other ways to keep outsiders outside. Members of the narcotics police report that the language of drug addicts changes rapidly, which makes it very hard for the police to train informers for infiltration into these groups. It is easy to learn the slang words, but it is hard to keep up to date and use and combine words correctly. In this way it is easy for the group members to tell who is a true member of the group.

It is interesting that some narcotics terminology often finds its way out of this register and into general slang vocabulary – there may in fact be no other area of modern life which influences slang as much as the narcotics trade. Such words as high, stoned, freaked out, turned on, which have to do with the effects of drug abuse, seem frequently to find their way into general usage. On the other hand; terms for equipment such as bhang (water pipe) and chillum (pipe) seem to have remained within the specialist register, although fix (dose) is now used more generally in connection with non-narcotic substances such as chocolate and sunshine.

It is not the case that each group has a unique type of slang. There may be some items unique to a group, but most terms are taken from the great pool of general slang terminology.

It is true, that different groups make different use of slang. Slang terms are not all equal. Some are more slangy or vulgar than others. Some social groups, moreover, use slang more than others. Every occupation and activity has its own specialized vocabulary or register. Lawyers, doctors, sailors and footballers all have their own specialized words or uses of words. Football-players use words like header (blow to the ball with the head) and park (pitch). Miners have special words such as goaf (worked-out part of the mine) and steeps (incline). And lawyers have words like heretofore (up until now) and hereinafter (from this point onwards). Since today’s society is far more specialized than yesterday’s, there has been a great increase in the number of specialized vocabularies in society. This process of specialization, which still continues, is probably one of the most important factors in vocabulary development in the modern world.

Register is not the same thing as slang, but it may contain slang, in so far as the specialized vocabulary is informal. In most types of jobs there is both an official terminology and an unofficial terminology or specialized slang within the register,

Sometimes slang words may pass from slang to neutral language through an intermediate state of being vogue words. By vogue words, we mean words and phrases which become popular and very frequent for a short period of time. Vogue words share two important characteristics with slang terms. First, they become very popular and frequent for a short period of time, a couple of years or so. Secondly, they receive a wider meaning or function than the ordinary usage of the word. Look at hot, for example. We know the original meaning of «hot». As a slang or vogue word it means far more than ‘having a high temperature’. In slang hot can mean things like ‘urgent’, ‘wanted by the police’, ‘stolen’, ‘performing well’, ‘angry’, ‘sexy’ and ‘popular’. As a vogue word, it is most common in the first and last senses: ‘urgent’, as in a hot line between Washington and Moscow or discussing a hot potato; and ‘popular’ as in a hot record, movie or performer.

Youth jargon represents special interest for researchers as the youth is the most sensitive to changes in language, high extent of mobility of communicators distinguishes this numerous social group, that leads to interaction of units of special slang and forming common slang vocabulary.

The following peculiarities are characteristic of youth slang:

Openness, i.e. adoption

Discussing properties of youth slang linguists point to openness, penetration of its lexical and phraseological system, that makes youth slang the basis of interjargon vocabulary, which loans jargon from different spheres. Thus the adopted youth slang includes loans from computer slang bogus – липовый, clone – имитатор, from drug addict’s slang zombie – заядлый курильщик марихуаны, gate – хата, bank – деньги, from street slang mobile – красивый, привлекательный, J.O. – работа.

Abridgement and abbreviation, which is the most typical for formation nouns in standard language shows more activity in adjective sphere in youth slang G. Q. – стильный, модный, from magazine Gentleman’s Quarterly. Shortenings are found among nouns (10.2%) rents (parents) – родители, tude (attitude) – высокомерное, недружелюбное отношение, in group of adjectives (7%) rad (radical) – “что надо”.

Numerous synonymic chains have been formed for representing the ideas of “good” – ‘bad”, “beautiful’ – “ugly”, for representing the state of euphoria, alcoholic intoxication, depression. Pretty girl is usually called as prat (pretty hips and thighs), nectar, treat, fillet, fly girl, betty; and handsome guy god, fly boy, Clydesdale, Adonis. Nouns babe and babe magnet can be used towards both sex. Adjectives fine, babelicious, mobile, nasty are used towards girls; and studly, buff towards guys. A person in alcoholic intoxication condition is called as hammered, trashed, totaled, ripeed, polluted, heated, wrecked, wasted; in euphoria condition stocked, hyped, jacked, jazzed, amped up, wipped. About forty adjectives are used in meaning “отличный, первоклассный” – golden, decent, toxic, hype etc; and in opposite meaning gnarly – отвратительный, beige – скучный, wack – плохой, cheesy – липовый etc.

To show the loyalty to a group, young people use words expressing fixed appraisal: sympathy or antipathy, accepting or aversion something or somebody. This opposition of “своих”– “чужих” finds its reflection in the following synonymic chains: dork, dweeb, fred, geek, goob, goof, nerd, swivel neck (неуклюжий человек, “чайник”); spud, dipstick, cheesehead, dode, dolt, gumby, bagger, barney (идиот, “осёл”); mouth breather, sped, tard, simp, mental giant (олух, тупица); space cadet, air head, trip out (рассеянный человек); girly mon, wuss, butt, weenie wimp (“мямля”, слабак); pond scum, lowlife, cretin maggot, scum sucking bag, sleazebag (мерзкий человек). This group of words have higher expression, which is achieved by conciseness (most words have one syllable leech – “липучка”, knob, nut – глупый человек).

It is interesting to view slang as an aspect of a youth subculture. Subcultures began to appear together with the beginning of the industrial revolution, which demanded the extension of a phase from childhood to maturity. This change led to detachment of youth into a separate social group. The first research of subcultures started in 1930s. According to the researchers of subculture (Парсон 1930, Айзенштадт 1956, Брейк 1980, Коуэн 1965, Миллер 1958, Холл 1968), youth culture helps the young to get knowledge and skills, necessary for adult life. Subculture forms norms, styles, values often opposite to those existing in the society.

Subculture – a group of people whose beliefs and ways of behaving make them different from the rest of society (Macmillan Dictionary for Intermediate Learners).

In a broadest sense, a subculture is any group within a larger complex culture who has interests that vary from those of the mainstream (or dominant) culture. But in a more specific sense, a subculture is a group with a distinct style and identity. Different subcultures have their own beliefs, value system, fashion, and favorite music.

Gamers are a growing subculture of teenagers, who don’t imagine their lives without computers. They spend all their time stuck to a monitor, playing computer games, without noticing anything around them. They are people, who use computers only for playing. Most of them are mad about computer games.

Computers are a kind of addiction for them, which tightens young people, causing harm not only to health, but to their psychics. No screen of a monitor can completely protect from computer radiation. In general our teenagers are not very healthy, because they don’t lead regular life. They usually have to eat fast food and fizzy drinks.

In our cruel world, the most popular theme is war, murders, and assault. Playing such games forms hostile attitude to our society. Young people want to escape from reality, being in virtual world. Computer games lead to emotional and nervous overstrain. Games discover new world, in which teenagers imagine themselves as great leaders, space warrior; they learn to be artful, smart and wise, but not realistic. Only in such world gamers can be rulers of universe, racers, pilots, builders, explorers, discoverers, etc. When they come up against obstacles in real world, they will hardly be able to overcome them those ways as in games. As a result, to our mind, playing such games forms inferiority complexes and insularity in themselves, in their virtual world, where everything is as they want.

Gamers are not very sociable young people, but they have to communicate with like-minded persons while playing on-line, chatting (writing to each other at forums, ICQ and chats) or speaking in computer clubs.

As any other subculture, the subculture of gamers has its own slang. Most slang words are loans from the English language. The sauce of the loans are unlocalised or badly translated ‘pirate’ computer games and software. It is interesting to note that gamers playing a certain type of game (3D Actions shooters, races, etc, Logic quests, strategies, arcades) may have different slang terms characteristic only of a particular game and understood only by them. There are, however, words and expressions understood and widely used by all gamers.

The slang of gamers has the following peculiarities: technical terms connected with computers; abbreviations; transliteration typical of Russian gamers; metonymy (rephrasing); unquotable (unprintable) teenage slang; deliberate neglecting grammar and spelling rules.

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