INTRODUCTION TO LINGUITCS American and Britishs Styles and Slang Words
Mawar Nurjannah 0912021013 VA
Fakultas Bahasa dan Seni Jurursan Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha Singaraja 2011
American and Britishs Styles and Slang Words
Language is spoken differently in the different parts of the world; dialects are a common phenomenon. When we are out with our friends, we talk one way; when we go on a job interview, we talk differently. These situations dialects are called styles. Nearly everybody has at least an informal and a formal style. In an informal style the rules of contraction are used more often, the syntactic rules of negation and agreement may be altered, and many words are used that do not occur in the formal style. One mark of an informal style is the frequent occurrence of slang. Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the
speaker's dialect or language. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo (euphemism). It is often used to identify with one's peers and, although it may be common among young people, it is used by people of all ages and social groups. Almost everyone uses slang on some occasions, but it is not easy to define the word. One linguist has defined slang as one of those things that everybody can recognize and nobody can define. The use of slang or colloquial language, introduces many new words into the language, by recombining old words into new meanings. Cop out, hangup, high rise, and rip-off have al gained a degree of acceptance. More rarely, slang will come up with an entirely new word for the language, such as gunk, chunder, goof, and pooped. Slang often consists of using old words with totally new meanings ascribed to them. Spoken language changes a lot even over a single generation. One generations slang is not another generations slang. Sometimes the slang is vulgar and crude but we still need to learn it because it is a real part of spoken English life. Some linguists make a distinction between slangisms (slang words) and colloquialisms. According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "slang refers to informal (and often transient) lexical items used by a specific social group, for instance teenagers, soldiers, prisoners and thieves. Slang is not the same as colloquial (speech), which is informal, relaxed speech used on occasion by any speaker; this might include contractions such as 'youre,' as well as colloquialisms. A colloquialism is a lexical item used in informal speech; whilst the broadest sense of the term colloquialism might include slangism, its narrow sense does not. Slangisms are often used in colloquial speech but not all colloquialisms are slangisms. One method of distinguishing
between a slangism and the colloquialism is to ask whether most native speakers know the word (and use it); if they do, it is a colloquialism. However, the problem is that this is not a discrete, quantized system but a continuum. In English words, there are some slang words that we can find. In the country using English language, they have different types of style, for example American and British English. Here are the explanations about the styles and slang used by those two countries. American Slang Cool, wicked, chill, dope, nerd. Young people around the world use this kind of slang to show theyre connected to American pop culture. Slangs main social function is to signal belonging: American slang marks the speaker or writer as an active and informed member of global youth culture. Be it Italy or Indonesia, words and phrases for groups or music styles (rapper, east coast, gangsta), music production (sampler, loops), or key cultural concepts (battle, freestyle, dissing, realness) are part and parcel of youth culture everywhere. In any host society, American slang lives in a world of linguistic and cultural knowledge not available at school or in mainstream media. (This also holds true for Jamaican English slang which is popular among fans of reggae and dancehall music.) American slang lives in the specialized media of the young, such as CD booklets, songs and video clips, magazines and Web sites. Through the media, young people enter fan communities where they learn to incorporate certain forms of English into both their speech and writing to show that theyre a part of youth culture. As a result, American slang and related resources have become a global code for youth worldwide embedded in a local code the national language. When host languages incorporate slang and jargon, speakers inflect loan nouns and verbs just like native items and build compounds of English and native nouns. For instance, flipped out comes asausgeflippt in German, flippato in Italian, flipp in French, and fliparismnos in Greek. In German, English verb phrases are partially translated, yielding abchecken (check out),ausflippen (flip
out), abhngen (hang out), abrippen (rip off), among others. Interestingly, American loanwords are easier to integrate into German. This is probably because German is more closely related to English than say, French or Hungarian. And since American culture is considered highly
prestigious among many Germans, American loanwords are absorbed into German culture at a high rate. How American slang is used abroad quickly signals social identity. For example, while items such as hi, cool and cu (as in see you) are spreading into general German slang, openers such as aight heads have a specific social meaning among hip-hop enthusiasts. They identify writer (and addressee) not only as trendy young people, but as members of the same fan community, (in this case, Hip Hop). British Slang British slang is English language slang used in Great Britain. While some slang words and phrases are used throughout all of Britain, for example knackered, meaning "exhausted", others are restricted to smaller regions, even to small geographical groups. The nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have their own slang words, as
does London. London slang has many varieties, one of the most well-known of which is Cockney rhyming slang. Some of these terms are used in other countries, such as Australia or Canada. Here are five British English words which are used in casual British English. They are all slang words that you will hear British people use in spoken English. Do not use them when you are writing and only use them when you are in an informal situation. All Right? (alright?) This is a popular greeting which means 'How are you?', 'Are you all right?' or 'Hello'. It is usual to respond by saying alright to the person who said it to you. Cheers Not only is cheers used as a toast when we are drinking alcohol (like salut in Spanish or prost in German), but it is also used to mean thanks or even good-bye.
Fiver / Tenner
In Britain, the currency is the pound sterling (). The five pound note is blue and called a fiver; the ten pound note is brown and called a tenner. Ta-ra In many parts of Britain ta-ra means 'good-bye'. Ta Ta means 'thanks' in many parts of Britain. Those American and British English slang words are only two examples of many slang words, because every language in every country has their own slang, like in Indonesia which is nowadays called as Bahasa Alay. The existence of slang words shown us the characteristics of language, such as: productivity and creativity (language is following or going along with the development of the community and culture in which it is used) and cultural transmission (language can be learn by new users). Slang words are produced differently in every generation. However, they can be learned by the new generations of a certain community so they will know the meaning and the use of that old slang words.
BIBILIOGRAPHY Fromklin, Victoria A, 1985, An Introduction to Language, Australia: Holt Saunders Pty Ltd. Seken, I Ketut, 1992. Diktat Introduction to Linguistics (KBP 1741): Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan. Universitas Udayana. Zuckermann, Ghilad, 2003, Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_slang http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/globalamerican/slang/ http://ezinearticles.com/?Learn-American-Slang---A-Great-Way-to-Improve-Spoken-EnglishQuickly&id=3908283
