... The term slang describes a diverse array of ever-changing words and phrases people use to establish or reinforce social identity and group cohesiveness, and the use of slang is central to various socialisation processes (Davie 2019;Eble 1996). However, certain slang words are sometimes taken up by people outside of the original socio-linguistic setting in problematic ways that constitute cultural appropriation. ...
... This may be because most students came from a nearby metropolitan area that is home to large numbers of people from these communities and where these linguistic influences are strong (Denis 2021;Wilkinson 2019). It also reflects the process of linguistic diffusion, whereby slang terms are carried over from one geographical setting to another through processes like population movement, social change (Davie 2019), and global celebrity media that draws heavily on Black culture (Martis 2020). This finding may also be linked to the problematic consumption of selective elements of Black culture that are deemed 'cool' and 'woke', which often occurs without adequate consideration of how this form of cultural appropriation can feed back into anti-Black racism (Davis 2019), albeit in subtle and unintended ways. ...
Despite decades of research and education, sexual and gender-based violence remain distressingly prevalent on university and college campuses globally. The taboos associated with sex, gender inequity, and living in a patriarchal world where misogyny is glorified and criminalised are key socio-cultural determinants driving these forms of violence. Less is known about the ways in which sexual slang or terminology impact how students experience and talk about these events. This paper reports on findings from a participatory action study that explored sexual slang use among female and male undergraduate students (n = 23) with the aim of creating more responsive sexual and gender-based violence policies and practices. The terms identified (n = 59) provide a window into the daily lives of these young people, who display remarkable socio-linguistic adaptation and creativity. They also demonstrate how cultural appropriation, the exclusion of queer students, toxic masculinitycontribute to ongoing incidents of sexual and gender-based violence on campus. These findings contribute new insights into sexual terminology among post-secondary students, particularly in the Canadian context where few studies of this nature exist. They also acknowledge the critical role universities can play in making meaningful structural change to prevent traumatic events from occurring.
Previous research has focused on thematic and semantic descriptions of slang expressions in the Nigerian educational context. Morphological and semantic analyses of slang expressions have received little attention. This study addresses this gap by identifying different slang expressions used by students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, accounting for the morphological processes involved in their formation, and exploring how the meanings of these slang expressions are derived. The microethnography research design was adopted, and data were drawn from participant observation and semi-structured interviews involving 50 students. Data are analysed descriptively following linguistic analytical procedures. The analysis indicates that slang expressions used by students in the study population are formed using these morphological processes: abbreviation/acronym, clipping, borrowing, calquing, reduplication, compounding, back-formation, and blending. The study shows that the meaning of slang words is manipulated through generalisation, particularisation, and pejoration. This study contributes to the literature on slang usage by establishing that calquing and reduplication are also morphological processes involved in slang formation. This article contributes to the understanding that slang expressions can also be borrowed from languages within a country and not necessarily from outside.
I explore the ways in which language ideologies are transformed when they are transplanted to diasporic settings as a result of migration. I examine the labelling of Cypriot Greek features as slang by young British-born speakers of Greek Cypriot heritage. Drawing on the analysis of data collected in a Greek complementary school in London, I suggest that slang is applied to Cypriot Greek through a process of re-enregisterment that redefines the contrast it forms with Standard Greek in the model of the slang vs posh English binary, which is local to the London context and is constructed along the lines of the ideological schemata of properness and correctness that also define the opposition between Cypriot Greek and Standard Greek in Cyprus. I propose that the policy and practice of teaching Greek in the school is a key enabler in this process as it constructs Standard Greek as a language that can and must be written and Cypriot Greek as a language that can only be spoken but never written. This allows complementary school pupils to draw links with institutional discourses they are exposed to in mainstream education about the inappropriateness of including elements labelled as slang in their writing.
Tsotsitaal in South Africa has many characteristics in common with other African 'urban youth languages'), for example, it incorporates lexical innovation, metaphor and neologisms, its origins are in criminal argot, and it is used primarily by male youth in urban centers possibly as a marker of modernism and being 'streetwise'.
Introduction: Professional and common usage of language names This chapter critically analyses the labelling of youthful language use in Belgium and the Netherlands. Urban youthful speech practices have in recent years been assigned a variety of labels, some of which have gained currency among insiders as well as outsiders. Linguists have not infrequently contributed to (the success of) this labelling process through their scholarly descriptions and public communication about their work (see e.g. Labov 1969, 1972a, on ‘Black English vernacular’ or ‘ebonics’). We argue, however, that regardless of the terms chosen, the practice of labelling language use has epistemological and ideological implications that must be addressed in sociolinguistic research. Our chapter presents two case studies to illustrate this. The first shows how linguists’ labels can begin to live lives of their own as they are ideologized in public discourse (cf. Chapter 2). The second demonstrates how an ostensibly technical labelling attempt may be resisted and de-neutralized by those who are labelled. We suggest that making a principled distinction between labels as ethnographic facts and labels as professional acts is a prerequisite for engaging with the intricacies of labelling youth vernaculars. Attending to language names or linguistic labels appears to be caught, on the one hand, between the growing awareness among (socio)linguists and linguistic anthropologists that the concept of a language as an identifiable object is highly problematic, and, on the other hand, the importance that language names have for speakers as they navigate their social, cultural and political worlds.
This paper gives an overview of the Randuk language, its use, development and the role it plays in marking speakers' identity. The paper is based on data collected from youths belonging to three different social groups: Shamasha (street boys), mechanics and university students. This data was collected through interviews and participant observation and the resulting analysis demonstrates that Randuk contains all the features of urban youth languages in Africa outlined by Kießling and Mous (2004). The language reveals strategies of linguistic manipulation (phonological, morphological and semantic) of pre-existing forms from Arabic and other languages – principally English. Metathesis, prefixation, suffixation, coinage, borrowing, metaphors, metonymies, onomastic synecdoches and dysphemisms are frequently used in Randuk. The use of these forms clearly indicates the identity of the speakers. This means that shamasha, mechanics and university students employ linguistically manipulated forms derived from their respective environment or community of practice. As such, one can observe the coexistence of different varieties of Randuk as realized by students, mechanics, shamasha, blacksmiths, soldiers and footballers. The analysis also shows that Randuk is gradually gaining new domains represented by the daily newspapers, whose writers, especially the sarcastic ones, resort to Randuk words to serve certain functions. The ultimate consequence of this tendency will be an increasing spread of Randuk among a number of communities , leading to some form of standardization of the language.
Introduction Contemporary urban multilingual settings in Europe lead to rich sources of language contact involving the majority languages and a range of typologically diverse minority languages, such as Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Kurdish, Croatian and Sranan. The linguistic outcomes of these settings may result in the emergence of what we shall refer to as contemporary urban vernaculars (see Chapter 2). By choosing this label, we make clear that this is a way of speaking related not to a particular ethnicity, but rather to contemporary urban areas in Europe (see also Chapter 3 for a discussion of terms such as ‘ethnolect’, which assume pre-existing social categories such as ‘ethnicity’). Multilingual urban settings constitute a linguistic environment that is particularly open to linguistic variation and innovation, and might also support a faster pace of language change – in comparison not only to national standard varieties that are more restricted by normative processes, but also compared to informal varieties and styles that are set in more monoethnic/monolingual speech communities and that cannot draw on this kind of language diversity. This linguistic dynamics makes contemporary urban vernaculars particularly interesting for investigations that target the linguistic system and the interactions of different grammatical and extragrammatical subsystems in the emergence of new patterns. This chapter is devoted to a case study from this domain that brings together similar lexical items from three Germanic languages, namely Swedish sån, Norwegian sånn and German so (‘such (a)’). We will show that these items can be used in a similar way across the three languages as grammatical and pragmatic markers, building on a pattern of semantic bleaching and functional gain.
The concept of authenticity has received some attention in recent academic discourse, yet it has often been left under-defined from a sociolinguistic perspective. This volume presents the contributions of a wide range of scholars who exchanged their views on the topic at a conference in Freiburg, Germany, in November 2011. The authors address three leading questions: What are the local meanings of authenticity embedded in large cultural and social structures? What is the meaning of linguistic authenticity in delocalised and/or deterritorialised settings? How is authenticity indexed in other contexts of language expression (e.g. in writing or in political discourse)? These questions are tackled by recognised experts in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and contact linguistics. While by no means exhaustive, the volume offers a large array of case studies that contribute significantly to our understanding of the meaning of authenticity in language production and perception.
There is a growing body of research on language and the social values associated with minority and majority languages among Turkish-speaking, mainly second and third generation, young people in homes, schools and communities in Europe (see Chapter 11). Jørgensen (2008, 2010), Møller (2009) and Møller and Jørgensen (2011) investigated the polylingual languaging practices of Turkish-Danish youth in instructional and recreational school settings. They showed how young people deployed linguistic resources from different languages and drew on the evaluative relationship between majority and minority languages in ways that reproduced but also contested norms of appropriate language use in school settings. Keim (2008) examined the language-mixing practices of a group of young women of Turkish origin in Mannheim, Germany. She illustrated how they iconically linked German and Turkish vernaculars to social categories located in the Turkish-speaking immigrant worlds of their parents' generation and the local German-speaking majority from which they sought to distance themselves. Lytra and Baraç (2008) and Blackledge and Creese (2010) showed how Turkish-speaking young people used their multilingual resources to respond to two seemingly contradictory positions in the ideology and practice of Turkish complementary schools in London, where mainly British-born children learn the community language, culture and history. On the one hand, these young people kept languages separate and focused on standard Turkish language use; on the other hand, they combined linguistic resources from standard Turkish and English and vernaculars, such as regional, youth-oriented and social-class-based varieties of Turkish and English (see Chapter 8).
The language of young people is central in sociolinguistic research, as it is seen to be innovative and a primary source of knowledge about linguistic change and the role of language. This volume brings together a team of leading scholars to explore and compare linguistic practices of young people in multilingual urban spaces, with analyses ranging from grammar to ideology. It includes fascinating examples from cities in Europe, Africa, Canada and the US to demonstrate how young people express their identities through language, for example in hip-hop lyrics and new social media. This is the first book to cover the topic from a globally diverse perspective, and it investigates how linguistic practices across different communities intersect with age, ethnicity, gender and class. In doing so it shows commonalities and differences in how young people experience, act and relate to the contemporary social, cultural and linguistic complexity of the twenty-first century.
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
In addition to borrowing from various foreign sources, the main origins of slang terms are the activation and revitalization of existing morphological and lexical material. Metaphorical manipulation of lexical items, as the main device used for the production of slangisms, shows remarkable similarities in languages otherwise quite different from each other. Slang is analyzed as a kind of substandard language variation which any full-fledged language is bound to develop because it is experimental in that it is born from insubordination and protest against the stress experienced in the speech communities of large cities and is always characterized by that element of playfulness which is the hallmark of creative language in general.
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
Introduction At first glance, Sweden and South Africa might seem to share very few traits. We could go as far as to suggest that they are opposite poles in a geographical, historical and sociopolitical sense, with Sweden as an ‘old’ democratic welfare state in the very north of the world at one end of the continuum, and South Africa at the other as a ‘young’ democracy of the South in which urban opulence exists next to extreme poverty. Despite these differences, the main argument of this chapter is that Sweden and South Africa do have something in common: in both contexts, particular forms of non-normative linguistic practices traditionally associated with youth have been ‘strategically recontextualized’ (Gal and Woolard 2001: 8) in mainstream advertising for consumerist purposes. In order to illustrate this, we will bring into the spotlight three TV commercials that employ Tsotsitaal, on the one hand, and rinkebysvenska (‘Rinkeby Swedish’) and Swedish interlanguage, on the other. In no way do we mean to imply that these advertisements are representative of the entire marketing landscape in the two countries in question. We have chosen them because they are very popular, repeatedly broadcast through a variety of channels in Sweden and South Africa. The main point we make on the basis of this data set is that these advertisements provide us with ‘local’ vantage points from which to tap into larger ‘global’ sensitivities about ethnic and racial identities in late modernity.
The language of young people is central in sociolinguistic research, as it is seen to be innovative and a primary source of knowledge about linguistic change and the role of language. This volume brings together a team of leading scholars to explore and compare linguistic practices of young people in multilingual urban spaces, with analyses ranging from grammar to ideology. It includes fascinating examples from cities in Europe, Africa, Canada and the US to demonstrate how young people express their identities through language, for example in hip-hop lyrics and new social media. This is the first book to cover the topic from a globally diverse perspective, and it investigates how linguistic practices across different communities intersect with age, ethnicity, gender and class. In doing so it shows commonalities and differences in how young people experience, act and relate to the contemporary social, cultural and linguistic complexity of the twenty-first century.
The language of young people is central in sociolinguistic research, as it is seen to be innovative and a primary source of knowledge about linguistic change and the role of language. This volume brings together a team of leading scholars to explore and compare linguistic practices of young people in multilingual urban spaces, with analyses ranging from grammar to ideology. It includes fascinating examples from cities in Europe, Africa, Canada and the US to demonstrate how young people express their identities through language, for example in hip-hop lyrics and new social media. This is the first book to cover the topic from a globally diverse perspective, and it investigates how linguistic practices across different communities intersect with age, ethnicity, gender and class. In doing so it shows commonalities and differences in how young people experience, act and relate to the contemporary social, cultural and linguistic complexity of the twenty-first century.
Mandelbaum-Reiner Françoise - "Butchers' secrets and actual largonji des louchébèm".
Paris butchers are still using, along with common French, an ancient professional slang call largonji du louchébèm, in order to mask secrets from their customers. Based on written sources and oral data, the multidimensionnal function of this double object (slang and referential) is studied using the points of view that delimit it : sociological (limited group of initiates, everybody and some experts), linguistic (history, status, use and morphological procedure of oral deformation of French popular lexical units), psychological (defensive function of separation and orificial process of retention and incontinence of secret), social images referring to the mysteries of the rear butchery.
With unique and powerful data from within a big city prison, this book clarifies the role that conversational analysis can have within a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. In a detailed linguistic analysis of the language use of prison officers and prisoners involved in a prison based course, the author charts the shifting power relations of control and resistance and situates the findings in a broader sociological analysis of the prison as an institution. The study will interest sociolinguists, discourse analysts, and researchers in communication studies, criminology and counselling.
This in-depth study of the use of pragmatic markers by Spanish and English teenagers offers insight into the currently under-investigated area of teenage talk through the analysis of the Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid and The Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Talk.
The article deals with synchronic analysis of the main characteristic features of youth jargon and their historical determination. The authors disclose and compare such terms as ?youth jargon?, ?youth slang?, ?argot? and analyze some tendencies in their studies.
Yabacrâne is a Kiswahili-based youth language practice used by youths in Goma, Eastern Democratic Republic (DR) of the Congo, where distinctive language usage marks speakers’ identity and community of practice. Yabacrâne reveals salient features which do not coincide with characteristics typical of other youth language practices in Africa. The gangster image and violent behavior, aggravated by the prevailing conflict zone in Eastern DR Congo, as well as a tough ‘street image’, are the central points of reference for Yabacrâne speakers. Unlike neighboring youth languages in the Great Lakes region, Yabacrâne is no longer limited to urban spaces; furthermore, speakers draw heavily on other (remote) youth languages in DR Congo such as Lingala-based Yanké (spoken in Kinshasa), especially through music and social media. Besides speakers’ phonological and semantic manipulations, the present paper aims to take cross-geographical fluidity into account in order to describe the trajectories that new terms pass through before they are eventually diffused within the community. Moreover, as an innovative approach, the paper also takes some deliberate modifications in pragmatics, namely politeness strategies and linguistic taboos, into consideration.1
The life stage of adolescence now occurs in most corners of the world, but it takes different forms in different regions. Peers, with such a central role in Western adolescence, play a comparatively minor role in the lives of Arabic and South Asian adolescents. Emotional turmoil and individuation from family occur in some societies but not others. Adolescent sexual revolutions are sweeping through Japan and Latin America. In this 2002 book, scholars from eight regions of the world describe the distinct nature of adolescence in their regions. They draw on research to address standard topics regarding this age - family and peer relationships, schooling, preparation for work, physical and mental health - and show how these have a different cast across societies. As a whole, the book depicts how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and concerned others.
"Caló" refers to the criminal argot associated with the gypsies in nineteenth-century Spain. It is also the predecessor of a Mexican-American slang popularized by bilingual youths in the 1940s known as Pachuco caló or simply Pachuco. This article discusses the known history of gypsy "caló" and examines borrowings from it into the slang of several Spanish dialects. The path of gypsy influences on Pachuco "caló" is traced from the Old World to the New and the probable origin of the latter speech variety is discussed. Its in-group nature coupled with the Spanish and English bilingualism of its speakers in the U.S. setting has created a lexicon of slang terms, some of which persist in modern-day communities. The characteristics of this lexicon, which include old "caló" terms, neologisms, metaphor, word-play, and taboo words, are investigated and illustrated.
During recent years, much linguistic research has been done on the emergence of what Rampton (2011a; Chapter 2, this volume) calls ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’. Although the term in itself is not so transparent as to exactly what kind of linguistic practice it describes, it gives a thorough picture of what characterizes urban vernaculars and the contexts in which they emerge. An important criterion in Rampton's discussion of what the term should include is that it can be characterized as a set of linguistic forms and enregistering practices (including commentary, crossing and stylization) … that has emerged, is sustained and is felt to be distinctive in ethnically mixed urban neighbourhoods shaped by immigration and class stratification (Rampton 2011a: 291; Chapter 2, this volume). The present contribution draws exactly on this criterion, viz. the connection of urban vernaculars to a neighbourhood, or more generally to a place that is shaped by cultural and linguistic diversity and is marked by social class differences. The aim of this chapter is to get a clearer view on this complex link between contemporary urban vernaculars, the urban neighbourhoods in which they have emerged, and the way in which they are being constructed in ‘talk about talk’ (Johnstone, Andrus and Danielson 2006: 93). Our point of departure will be two particular urban vernaculars, which have emerged in two different multicultural urban contexts: the city of Genk (Belgium) and the city of Oslo (Norway). In both cities these vernaculars are used by youngsters both with and without immigrant background. As for Oslo, previous analyses (Opsahl and Nistov 2010; Svendsen and Røyneland 2008) clearly indicate that there are grounds for assuming that adolescents in multiethnic settings have at their disposal a way of speaking Norwegian that distinctly differs from the standard-like southeastern Norwegian commonly spoken in the Oslo area.
