社会语言学论文.

从社会语言学角度分析美国俚语

一．Definitions of slangs

二．Characteristics of American slangs

三．Social analysis of slangs from the perspective of gender, age, occupation and social settings to use slang

四．Social functions of slang

五．Social reasons for the use of slang

1.Introduction

To study slang scientifically,we can take the anthropological tradition of cultural relativism.“According to Bryjak and Soroka(1994:57),‘cultural relativism is the belief that there is no universal standard of good and bad or right and wrong and that an aspect of any given culture can be judged only within its own context.’Cultural relativists appear to suggest that all cultures or institutions are equally valid or fitting and tend to assume that the mere presence of a cultural trait warrants our valuing it”(Lin Dajing,1997).

俚语作为语言的一种，引起特殊性发挥着自己独特的作用，然而很多人并未对俚语有正确的认识，很多人把俚语作为地俗语对待，笔者认为，语言作为一种社会现象，尤其存在的合理性，从社会语言学的角度讲，任何语言种类都是平等的，没有层级之分。本文将从社会语言学的角度对俚语这一语言特殊现象做一粗浅分

析，希望能是大家改变对俚语的歧视态度。俚语常被定义为粗俗的语言，这种语言有其特定的使用群体，虽然使用者大多为知识水平不高的人群，但不能因此就对此语言有贬低，正是基于此观点，本文进行了如下分析。

2.Definition of slang

2.1 definitions

During the history of language development, people’s attitudes toward slang have changed a lot. In 1828 Webster defined it as “low,vulgar, unmeaning language.” Slang is very informal language that includes new and something not polite words and meanings and is often used among particular groups of people, and is usually not used in serious speech or wring (Longman dictionary of English Language and Culture 2004). Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary defines slang as “very informal words, phrases, etc commonly used in speech, esp between people from the same social group or who work together, not considered suitable for formal contexts and often not in use for long.”From these three definitions, we can see that in the past slang suffered abuse from people and nowadays this discrimination has disappeared and is regarded as informal and highly colloquial language.

2.2attitudes

Slang is acknowledged to be one of the most active and sensitive parts of language and an effective weapon in communication. However, the

attitudes toward slang are very contradictory among common people and especially scholars. This can be detected from the above three definitions of slang.(qtd.in Partridge 1954:7,3) can also reflects the contradiction of people’s opinions:

“The language of slang is the conversation of fools. Men of discretion will not pervert language to the unprofitable purposes of conversational mimicry…The friends of literature will never adopt it,as it is actively opposed to pure and grammatical diction” and “it is impossible to acquire a thorough knowledge of English [or of any other language, for that matter] without being familiar with slang and vulgarism. Whoever is uninitiated…will be at a loss to understand many of the masterpieces of English literature. Nay…he will scarcely be able even to understand an English newspaper.” These remarks remarks sum up the paradox of slang very well: “Slang is the foe and the friend of the English language”(qtd.in Partridge 1954:21).

2.3sociallinguistic approach to slang

as we have mentioned, slang a important component of language, and as language, it, in itself, can not be evaluated as right or wrong. It is just a social phenomenon reflected in language, so we should take an objective attitude to analyze it. This paper will do it from the perspective of sociolinguistics, because sociolinguistics is that part of linguistics which is concerned with language as a social and cultural