英语毕业论文50美国俚语中的文化特征

Culture Features in American Slang

美国俚语中的文化特征

Abstract

With the development of the society, slang is accepted by more and more Americans. This

thesis analyses features and functions of American slang. The author draws a conclusion that American slang reflects the cultural characteristics of Americans? humor, informality, self-confidence, anti-authority, innovation consciousness and pursuit for time efficiency. Key Words

American slang; feature; culture

摘要

随着社会的发展，俚语越来越多地为美国人所接受。本论文分析了美国俚语的语言特色等。

此分析反映出了美国人幽默，非正式，反权威，追求时间效率，自信和具有创新意识独特的

文化特征。

关键词

美国俚语;特点;文化

Introduction

English slang can be defined to common colloquial language, and according to the definition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1985), slang is usually used as colloquial words and phrase. It cannot be regarded as Standard-English, thus this shows that, slang is Nonstandard-English. However, slang is very popular in the English-speaking

countries nowadays. Slang is spoken by people in daily speech, and even magazine and literary works may find a large number of them. With the development of the society, slang

is widely used by more and more people, especially in America, slang can be found favorable in the Americans? eyes. It is accepted by both upper-class and lower-class, and especially the college students who tend to use up-to-date words that form a kind of characteristic style of themselves. Slang plays an important part in American English. It

is

reported that slang accounts for one of the tenth of American average vocabulary. People?s attitude toward slang varies from person to person. Some think that slang cannot be used on the formal occasion, for it is spoken by the illiterate people only and the slang terms are so coarse. Some even think that slang is the filthy language, and advocate abandoning using it. However, others hold the opposite idea. They think that slang play an

important role in English language, because of its fresh, lifelike, humor and adequate expressions. One must admit the undeniable fact that slang is spoken by more and more people.

In modern times, if one is not familiar with American slang he or she could not capture the

slang expressions in the movie and common fictions, and, what worse, one would make mistakes when they are talking with the Americans. An example will clarify the fact. A

guide asks the tourist “anybody wants to take a leak?”(Does anybody want to go to the restroom?), and, of course, what the guide said would make the tourist surprise. It is the uneducated vulgarity of expression at all. Therefore, one should bear in mind that it is very

important to study language in a sociocultural context; the language has existed in close contact with culture. From the example one can know that misusing slang would result in misunderstanding in the communication. It can not tell others that one is good at English. It is not thus; moreover it shows that one just has half-back knowledge about slang. Americans speak colorful, idiomatic English that may have little resemblance to the language one studied in school. Even a native English speaker might be confused by the combination of slang that characterizes American conversation. So it is very important to capture the American slang expression in order to know others correctly.

This thesis starts with the analysis of the cultural condition of American slang, and its purpose is to probe into the features of slang so as to bring the relationship between slang and society culture to light.

Ⅰ.American Slang

Slang is quite a controversial language, people have different attitude toward it. It is no wonder that the definition of slang is so variety. However, the slang terms have their own characters, and, of course, the definitions of it are more or less described in the same way.

A. The Definition of Slang

Slang is a rather special parole. It is neither the word that beyond the regular role of grammatical usage, nor rural dialect. Although it is quite different from acrolect which used

on the formal occasion, people quite like to use it in daily speech. As a matter of fact, the meaning of most slang is similar to the words of colloquial style. Some consider one word is

slang, while others might not think so. For example, the old may believe the word bike is slang, but the youth might not .Bicycle is trisyllabic, while bike is monosyllabic, it is so troublesome to pronounce the word with trisyllabic, and of course, the youth prefer to omit

some other two syllables, and bike is spoken by the youth more often.

To some certain slang, it is hard to tell the differences between slang and colloquial style.

One of the definitions of it is, “the body of words and expression frequently used by or intelligible to a rather large portion of the general public, but not accepted as good; formal

usage by the majority” (Flexner, 1975:3). Another saying, “slang is used to denote the frequently vivid or playful lexical usage typical of casual discourse, usually indicating membership in a particular social group”. (Quirk et al, 1985:76)

According to Oxford Linguistic Dictionary（2000）, “slang used especially of vocabulary specific

for example, to a particular generation of younger speakers; also as in ordinary usage, specific to a

group or a profession (e.g. ?army slang?), to colloquial style, etc”.

From all above, even though people have different idea about slang, one still can find out some