Slang - Extent and Origins of Slang

Extent and Origins of Slang

Slang can be regional (that is, used only in a particular territory), but slang terms are often particular instead to a certain subculture, such as music or video gaming. Nevertheless, slang expressions can spread outside their original areas to become commonly used, like "cool" and "jive." While some words eventually lose their status as slang (the word "mob", for example, began as a shortening of Latin mobile vulgus), others continue to be considered as such by most speakers. When slang spreads beyond the group or subculture that originally used it, its original users often replace it with other, less-recognised terms to maintain group identity.

One use of slang is to circumvent social taboos, as mainstream language tends to shy away from evoking certain realities. For this reason, slang vocabularies are particularly rich in certain domains, such as violence, crime, drugs, and sex. Alternatively, slang can grow out of mere familiarity with the things described. Among wine connoisseurs (and other groups), for example, Cabernet Sauvignon is often known as "Cab Sav," Chardonnay as "Chard" and so on; this means that naming the different wines expends less superfluous effort; it also helps to indicate the user's familiarity with wine.

Even within a single language community, slang, and the extent to which it is used, tends to vary widely across social, ethnic, economic, and geographic strata. Slang may fall into disuse over time; sometimes, however, it grows more and more common until it becomes the dominant way of saying something, at which time it usually comes to be regarded as mainstream, acceptable language (e.g. the Spanish word caballo), although in the case of taboo words there may not be an expression which is considered mainstream or acceptable. Numerous slang terms pass into informal mainstream speech, and sometimes into formal speech, though this may involve a change in meaning or usage.

Slang very often involves the creation of novel meanings for existing words. It is common for such novel meanings to diverge significantly from the standard meaning. Thus, "cool" and "hot" can both mean "very good," "impressive," or "good-looking".

Slang terms are often known only within a clique or ingroup. For example, Leet ("Leetspeak" or "1337") was originally popular only among certain Internet subcultures, such as crackers and online video gamers. During the 1990s, and into the early 21st century, however, Leet became increasingly more commonplace on the Internet, and it has spread outside Internet-based communication and into spoken languages. Other types of slang include SMS language used on mobile phones, and "chatspeak," (e.g., "LOL", an acronym meaning "laughing out loud" or "laugh out loud" or ROFL, "rolling on the floor laughing"), which used to be widely used in instant messaging on the Internet in the early 2000s.