Slang and Sociability: In-Group Language Among College Students

ISBN-10: 1469610574
ISBN-13: 9781469610573
Category: Language Arts & Disciplines
Pages: 240
Language: English
Published: 2012-12-01
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Author: Connie Eble

Description

Slang is often seen as a lesser form of language, one that is simply not as meaningful or important as its 'regular' counterpart. Connie Eble refutes this notion as she reveals the sources, poetry, symbolism, and subtlety of informal slang expressions. In Slang and Sociability, Eble explores the words and phrases that American college students use casually among themselves. Based on more than 10,000 examples submitted by Eble's students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over the last twenty years, the book shows that slang is dynamic vocabulary that cannot be dismissed as deviant or marginal. Like more formal words and phrases, slang is created, modified, and transmitted by its users to serve their own purposes. In the case of college students, these purposes include cementing group identity and opposing authority. The book includes a glossary of the more than 1,000 slang words and phrases discussed in the text, as well as a list of the 40 most enduring terms since 1972. Examples from the glossary: group gropes -- encounter groups squirrel kisser -- environmentalist Goth -- student who dresses in black and listens to avant-garde music bad bongos -- situation in which things do not go well triangle -- person who is stupid or not up on the latest za -- pizza smoke -- to perform well dead soldier -- empty beer container toast -- in big trouble, the victim of misfortune parental units -- parents

Get the book

Similar books

Language and Pop Culture
By Fred Goodwin
Her most recent book, "Slang and Sociability" is published by the University of North Carolina Press. Welcome to THE INFINITE MIND, Dr. Eble. Dr. EBLE: Thank you. GOODWIN: Now we've all heard slang words and phrases.
Slang: The People's Poetry
By Michael Adams
Indeed, the item simply reminds us of the conventions for infixing and interposing in English as described in McMillan's classic article on the subject. The matrix ticktock is recorded in every standard dictionary; -frickin'- is just ...
Translation Practices: Through Language to Culture

Gamble, Cynthia J., Proust as Interpreter of Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Translation (Birmingham: Summa, 2002). Garth, Samuel, ed., Ovid's Metamorphoses in fifteen books. Translated [into English verse] by the most eminent hands [viz., ...
Slang across Societies: Motivations and Construction
By Jim Davie
Androutsopoulos, J.K. (2000) 'Extending the concept of the (socio)linguistic variable to slang', in T. Kis (ed.) Mia szleng, Debrecen: Kossuth ... Eble, C. (1996) Slang and Sociability, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Global English Slang: Methodologies and Perspectives
By Julie Coleman
The book illustrates the application of a range of different methodologies to the study of slang and demonstrates the interconnection between the different sub-fields of linguistics.
Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon
By Michael Adams
He then moves to the main body of the work: a detailed glossary of slayer slang, annotated with actual dialogue and recorded the style accepted by the American Dialect Society.
A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries: Volume III: 1859-1936
By Julie Coleman
John Allan Benedict Wyeth's This Man's Army (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1928) is a sonnet sequence. The volume includes a glossary that ranges from military jargon to slang, and also lists snatches of French and German found in ...
Forever Young: The Teen-aging of Modern Culture
By Marcel Danesi, Ph.D., Director of the Program in Semiotics and Communication Theory Marcel Danesi
So argues semiotician Marcel Danesi in Forever Young, an unforgiving and controversial look at modern culture's incessant drive to create a 'teen-aging' of adult life.
American English: An Introduction
By Zoltan Kovecses
It is suggested that after the early settlement of North America by the English-speaking settlers, the language of ... Several scholars have shown that what is known as American English today owes a great deal to many of the contact ...
Bad Language: Are Some Words Better Than Others?
By Edwin Battistella
In her 1996 book Slang and Sociability, Connie Eble sees the key function of slang use among college students as that of establishing group identity and distinguishing student values from the values of those in authority.