African American Slang Culture

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As it was written in the former chapter, African American slang developed with the African American culture. Slang could be treated as one of the most characteristic features of the culture of African American people. At the beginning, slang was a slaverya slavery thing. However, nowadays, it is characteristic feature of all the people who belong to the Black nation, especially the hip- hop subculture. A lot of people try to define the notion of slang and there are some of definitions that are presented below. According to the Dictionary of English language and culture (Summers D., 1992), slang could be determined as a language that is informal. It is a group of words, phrases and so on. Their denotations and meanings are new and they are …show more content…

It says that slang is the kind of language that is typical for the peculiar group of people. In the dictionary it is also treated as a some kind of jargon and is determined as a set of vocabulary that is prepared for a group. The explanation of the term is adapted briefly, but in understandable way. Another definition is included in Cambridge International Dictionary of English (Aguilar A., et al., 2000). It is very similar to the first definition and it tells that a slang is a kind of language that is not formal. It contains vocabulary and interpretations that are not clear for people who are not users of the slang. Moreover, such phrases might appear in a particular group for a very brief time. Such language is used among people rather in speaking than in written language. The dictionary also presents the term slanging match, which means that somebody uses very rude and uncontrolled kind of language. In the Merriam- Webster Dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com) , it can be found that slang again is treated as a language that is characteristic for a peculiar group and jargon and argot also belong to the slang. The dictionary characterized it as an informal vocabulary that is not standard for common speakers that are prepared in an extravagant way of …show more content…

It claims that slang is a cant characteristic for a particular group in a given environment. It comes from criminal environments. The language is used in peculiar cultures in order to hide the purpose of the conversation by using the vocabulary that is widely difficult or impossible to understand. According to that dictionary, slang is frequently used among youth. In spite of appearances, the slang used by the young is much more rude than slang used among prisoners. The dictionary claims that children try to show their false

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