美国俚语概述

1、美国俚语- 美国社会与文化的镜子american slang-a mirror of american society and culture作者：王婷author: wang ting专业：英语major: english班级：200505class: 200505指导老师：李君文副教授supervisor: assistant prof. li junwen完稿日期：2009 年 2 月date of completion: february, 2009.contentsabstract.摘要 .introduction.chapter one the features of americ

2、an slang.1.1 definition of slang.1.2 being highly colloquial.1.3 brevity.1.4 novelty.1.5 instability.chapter two american slang and american subculture groups.2.1 language and culture.2.2 characters of americans.2.3 origin of american slang.2.4 american subculture groups.2.4.1 drug culture and its s

3、lang.2.4.2 gay culture and its slang.2.4.3college students culture and its slang.2.4.4army culture and its slang.chapter three status quo of american slang.3.1attitude to american slang.3.2the future of american slang.conclusion.bibliography.acknowledgements.;.abstractamerican slang is one of the la

4、nguage varieties in english language. it used to be considered as low, vulgar language, which ought not to be admitted as legitimate language. but there is a strong relationship between language and culture, and even the society. one language could just come into being in a very society and culture.

5、 american slang words manifest american culture and characters of american people. with the development of globalization, economy and social system, american slang gets more and more influential. this thesis puts american slang under the discussion of language and culture, and can help us achieve be

6、tter understanding of american culture and society. the first part of this thesis talks about the basic perspective and features of slang, which gives us a brief introduction to american slang. the second part of this thesis is the keystone. in this part, we will analyze the relationship of language

7、 and culture and the sub-culture groups in america. along with the discussion, we will get clearer understanding of the origin of american slang, and get further knowledge of the development of american culture and society. in the last part of this thesis, discussion will be focused on the status qu

8、o of american slang and the attitude people hold to it.key words: american slang, origin, sub-culture groups;.摘要语言和社会文化是相互影响的。俚语是语言的变体，也是社会文化的一种变体，在美国英语中扮演着举足轻重的角色。从语言学或社会学的角度看对俚语进行分析和研究都是极其有价值的工作。俚语不仅仅是重要的交际工具 ,同时还蕴含着丰富的文化涵义。 随着传播媒介的高度发展，美国俚语也会随着美国英语的发展而发展，因此美国俚语可以作为一面反映美国社会镜子，帮助我们对美国以至西方语言和社会文化更深刻

9、的了解 。本论文将从社会与文化角度探讨美国俚语，通过对文化、社会和语言关系的探讨来讨论美国俚语在美国社会和文化中的重要作用。本文拟从，讨论美国俚语的定义及特点入手。使我们对美国俚语有一个具体而准确的认识，为后面部分的深入讨论做好铺垫。第二部分是本论文的重点部分。讨论美国俚语的主要使用群体，即美国社会亚文化团体，深入探讨俚语在亚文化团体中产生并兴盛的历史文化根源。通过这一系列的探讨，说明美国俚语是美国文化和社会的特有产物。第三部分就美国俚语的现状及发展趋势稍作分析。对许多学者专家，英语教师及社会大众对俚语所持的态度以及态度的转变也有所涉及，说明美国俚语地位的转变。关键词：美国俚语，起源，亚文化团

10、体;.introductionas english major, i have to learn many new words everyday. when i see a new word, i just simply remember its pronunciation and meaning,but ignore the origin of it, especially when it is labeled as slang. i think it is common among the students, even among some english teachers. during

11、 all these years of my english learning, my teachers have merelyexplained what slang really means. since i realized it, i decided to study on it. the more i studied it，the more i was interested in it. and the more i was interested in it ，the more i wanted to know about it. therefore，i collected the

12、materials about slang. i feel the need to make it clear to myself, as well as to the students learning english like me ，and it is this need that pushed me ahead in this direction.we may safely argue that the correct use and understanding of englishslang can better the communication between two speak

13、ers，especially between the native english speakers and the english language learners. this thesis puts american slang under the discussion of language andculture, and can help us achieve better understanding of american culture and society. slang originally denoted cant, or the restricted speech of

14、the low ， often criminal classes of society. however ， the idea of slanggradually evolved to denote more sub cultural speech，both high and low， as well as more general but unconventional vocabulary.american slang has been examined and discussed by many scholars in their respective fields of research

15、. based on the past research on american slang，my thesis aims to propose an alternative approach. it focuses on the origin of american slang and the major using;.groupsamerican subculture groups. through this we can get a clearerand closer insight of american slang.;.chapter 1 features of american s

16、lang1.1 definition of slangwhat is slang? as a rough-and-ready label for an abstraction that encourages as much appreciation as dispraise， slang has frequently inspired discordant， sometimes antagonistic， definitions. the public employs the term simply as a synonym for a subjectively bad“” english.i

17、t may well be that the word most often appears in the parental admonition“ don t slang!.no ”commonly accepted definition of slang has won much favor among linguists ，who mostly regard the boundaries between slang and other levels of discourse as too insubstantial for analysis. yet different interpre

18、tations of the word slang do not come about because it designates an exterior phenomenon of ineffable or elusive qualities; they arise instead because the interpreters-dictionary makers，schoolteachers，and arbiters of diction-differ in their preconceptions about language，view language from varying an

19、gles，and examine it for very different purposes. items as dissimilar as snack bar，ain t，gentrification ，sandwich，bikini ，redcoat，daterape，motel，and wuss have now and again been cited as slang or former slang by various commentators，as has the interjectionalsay!( “oh，say，can you see by the dawn s ear

20、ly light，a claim ?)that lumped with all the others.in deriving a definition of slang so as to limit the scope of the present work and to keep its contents as much of a piece as possible，we may define slang briefly as: an informal ， non-standard， non technical vocabulary composed chiefly of novel-sou

21、nding synonyms for standardwords and phrases .;.but slang has a vital social dimension as well: it turns up especially in the derisive speech play of youthful，raffish，or undignified persons andgroups; and partly owing to this and partly because of the unconventional images slang often evokes，the use

22、 of slang often carries with it striking overtones of impertinence or irreverence，especially for idealized values and attitudes within the prevailing culture. often too，the use of slang suggests, as standard speech can not，an intimate familiarity with areferential object or idea(compare，for example，

23、the difference between professional dancer and hoofer, wait tables and sling hash，prison and the joint ，beer and sude，intellectual and wonk).the use of slang also suggests something about the slang orientation tothe interlocutor. it implies that the other person identifies fully with thespeaker s at

24、titudes.in fact ，a truly unexpurgated collection of slang reminds usthat theworld of discourse，like the world of sense，is savage as well as sublime. for slang，romanticized as ”the poetry of everyday，lifehas a regrettable” side too，a side often stupidly coarse and provocative. the cultural focus of s

25、lang in britain，america，australia，and else where as an adversary of dignity and taste has always inclined toward the ignoble.slang even in a restricted sense is a rowdy category; its existence hinges entirely on its contrast with a cultivated standard lexicon. without the contrast of a recognized st

26、andard vocabulary, any basis for distinguishing slang from something else disappears. this is not to say that the entire populace must be equally discerning of that standard，stillness that the lowest common denominator of taste be consulted when judging the status of a given expression. public educa

27、tion and continual exposure;.to mass media have presumably sensitized all of americans to verbal and stylistic nuance more thoroughly than could any phenomena of prior centuries，and so the slang effect remains salient especially for those whose training or experience has encouraged them to attend cl

28、osely to verbal nuance in general.1.2 being highly colloquialslang is always defined as a non-standard informal linguistic variety， as concise oxford dictionary of current english does:“ words and phrases，or particular meanings of these，that are in common or in formal use，but generally considered no

29、t to form part of standard english ，and often used for picturesqueness or novelty or unconventionality ”this. definition clearly informs us that slang is a highly informal and colloquial form of language.slang and colloquial expressions come in different forms: single words, compound words, simple p

30、hrases, idioms, and complete sentences. slang is rarely the first choice of careful writers or speakers or any one attempting to use language for formal, persuasive or business purposes. nonetheless, expressions that can be called slang or colloquial make up a major part of american communication in

31、 movies, television, radio, newspaper, magazines and informal conversations.1.3brevitybrevity may not be the soul of american slang, but it is perhaps the chief feature. this is attained either by apo cope, as in vamp for vampire, mult for multtonhead, fan for fanatic (apparently), ect, or by the su

32、bstitution of an expressive monosyllable or compound of monosyllables for a longer word or description. simp (stupid persons), veep (vice;.president), classy (fashionable), etc, are brief and easy to speak out. when they defined a communist as either acrank or a crook, the subject is really exhauste

33、d. it is difficult now to imagine how we got on so long withoutthe word stunt, how they expressed the characteristics so conveniently summed up in dope-fiend or high-brow, or any other possible way ofdescribing that mixture of the cheap pathetic and the ludicrous which is now universally labeled sob

34、stuff. one slang term can briefly express the meaning which can bet done by one standard usage such as doodle (scribble absent-mindedly) and frisk (make a body search especiallyrefers to patting or touching someone s pockets or places where somethincan be hidden and carried about). as the dictionary

35、 of american slang demonstrates, slang seems to prefer short words, especially monosyllables. many such formations are among their most frequently used slang words. as listed in it, bug has 30 noun meanings, shot 14 noun and 4 adjective meanings, can 11 noun and 6 verb, fish 14 noun, and sack 8 noun

36、, 1 adjective and 1 verb meanings.1.4 noveltyslang is the diction that results from the favorite game among theyoung and lively of playing with words and renaming things and actions； some invent new words , or mutilate or misapply the old, for the pleasure of novelty, and others catch up such words

37、for the pleasure of being in thefashion. for example, live wire,smoke eater and flying coffin refer to“ living man” ,“ fireman” ,“ plane ” respectively. these similes are so noand vivid thattheycan bet made withoutgoodimagination, whilethink-machine(brain), sparkler(diamond),pickersi (hands), canned

38、music (musicaldisk) are morevividand expressive. sometimes slang;.words are invented by a few people for the pleasure of novelty and imitated by others who like to be in fashion. a mouthpiece (or legal beagle), pencil pusher, sawbones, boneyard, bottle washer,or a course on biochemistry, are more vi

39、vid and forceful than a lawyer, clerk, doctor, cemetery, laboratory assistant, or a course in biochemistry and is much more real and less formidable than a legal counsel, junior executive, surgeon, necropolis (or memorial park), laboratory technician, or a course in biological chemistry.1.5 instabil

40、itywhereas the words which form the backbone of the language have for the most part had a life more than a thousand years and still show no signs of failing variety, it is unusual for slang words to remain in use for more than a few years, though some slang terms serve a useful purpose and so pass i

41、nto the standard language. the vocabulary of slang changes rapidly: what is new and exciting for one generation is old-fashioned for the next. old slang often either drifts into obsolescence or becomes accepted into the standard language, losing its eccentric color. flapper for instance, started lif

42、e in the late nineteenth century as a slang term for a young unconventional or lively woman, but subsequently moved into the general language as a specific term for such a vogue woman of the 1920s. similarly, the use of gay in the sense homosexual sroothas itfirmly in slang of the 1930s, but is now

43、widely accepted as standard terminology. generally speaking ,people seldom know that the words jeep, babysitter, cold war were originally slang words, nor do they know slang words as abc, bus, lab, brunch , have become standard usage or colloquialism.;.chapter 2american slang and american subculture

44、 groups2.1 language and cultureculture is whatever one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its member, and to do in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. culture is thus whatever a person must know inorder to function in a particular society, including

45、 language and conventional behavioral norm that a person must follow or that other people in the society accept you to follow, to get through the task of dailyliving.language and culture are closely related to each other: the understanding of one requires the understanding of the other. one long-sta

46、nding claim concerning the relationship between language andculture is the sapir-whorf hypothesis，which in essencestates“languageisa guide to socialrealityand implies that it is not implyinga means ofreporting experience but ， more importantly ， a way of defining experience ” (samovar and porter,199

47、5:153).however, the strong claim of the hypothesis has met with much criticism. less controversial is the one-way relationship that operates on the opposite directionthe effect of society on language，and the way in which environment is reflected in language.thus, language and culture are in a dialec

48、tical relationship: language is an integral part of culture and influenced by culture. it is the primary vehicle by which a culture transmits its beliefs, values and norms. yet, language is not a passive reflector of culture. even assuming that culture is;.in many cases the first cause in the langua

49、ge-culture relationship, language as the effect in the first link of the causal chain will in turn be the next link, reinforcing and preserving beliefs and customs and conditioning their future course.therefore, language and culture are inseparably intertwined. language is essentially rooted in the

50、reality of the culture, and it can not be explained without constant reference to the broader context of verbal utterance.2.2characters of americansthe first feature of americans is optimism. the united states boasts its vast territory and abundant resources. in its vast area the united states comprehends most of the physical conditions known to men: heat and cold,forest and desert, tropical swamp and arcticwastes, mountainsandendless plains, empty spaces and megalopolis, and the world