British slang TimPed

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English 41- 60p

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The Use of Slang in British English

- A Study of the Slang used in Football Factory and Little Britain

Tim Pedersen

C-paper, 10p The University of Kalmar Spring, 2007

Supervisor: Maria Estling Vannest?l School of Human Sciences

Abstract

Spring 2007

The languages of the world are constantly changing and slang intrudes the vocabulary of many people all over the world. But what is slang and where does it come from? Are there differences in the slang that men and women use? And what is the point of using slang? It seems that the slang that was used by previous generations has either gone out of use or has now become a part of accepted standard language; basically, the youth of today reject the slang that their parents used. This would indicate that it is not "cool" to use the same slang as one's parents did and to avoid this, new slang is invented to replace old slang aiding the youth of today to be able to be shocking or amusing by speaking in a certain way.

In this essay the focus lies on the slang of British English and this is investigated by an analysis of a contemporary film and a TV-show to see how common the use of slang is in these kinds of medias. The intention is also too see if slang differs according to gender and in what different areas slang is used.

The film "Football factory" and the TV-show "Little Britain" were closely watched and all slang was noted down and categorized in terms of users and areas of use. To make this easier and to make sure not to lose any parts of the dialogues scripts were found on the internet and used as aids when analyzing. "Football factory" is a movie about British football hooligans which is a very male-dominated world. "Little Britain" is a TV-show consisting of many small sketches with very different characters of both genders but mostly played by male actors.

The results were somewhat surprising as the expectation was to find some slang in the chosen material but the amount of slang use exceeded the expectations. Slang seems to be something that people use in many different areas of use, such as, when talking about sex, drugs or other things that might be taboo. It seems that slang is a big part of the language that both men and women use. However, in the material used for this study, young men were the ones who used slang the most.

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Table of contents

1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 5 2. Background .................................................................................................. 6

2.1 The creation of slang.....................................................................................................6 2.2 Slang and gender...........................................................................................................7 2.3 Functions of slang.........................................................................................................8 2.4 Where do we find slang?...............................................................................................9 2.5 Cockney Slang..............................................................................................................9

3. Method and Material ................................................................................. 10

3.1 Method .......................................................................................................................10 3.2 Material ......................................................................................................................11 3.3 Problems and limitations.............................................................................................12

4. Results ......................................................................................................... 13

4.1 Football factory...........................................................................................................13 4.1.1 Areas of use .............................................................................................................14 4.1.1.1 Talking to or about someone .................................................................................14 4.1.1.2 Talking about sex and other taboos........................................................................15 4.1.1.3 Talking about drugs and alcohol............................................................................15 4.1.1.4 Talking about violence ..........................................................................................16 4.1.1.5 Talking about mood ..............................................................................................16 4.1.1.6 Talking about ethnicity..........................................................................................16 4.1.1.7 Miscellaneous .......................................................................................................17 4.1.2 Users........................................................................................................................17 4.2 Little Britain ...............................................................................................................18 4.2.1 Areas of use .............................................................................................................19 4.2.1.1 Talking to or about someone .................................................................................19 4.2.1.2 Talking about sex and other taboo areas ................................................................19 4.2.1.3 Talking about mood ..............................................................................................20 4.2.1.4 Miscellaneous .......................................................................................................21 4.2.2 Users........................................................................................................................21

5. Conclusion .................................................................................................. 22 6. References ................................................................................................... 24 Appendix 1...................................................................................................... 26 Appendix 2...................................................................................................... 31

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1. Introduction

-"Slang is language which takes off its coat, spits on its hands- and goes to work." ? Carl Sandburg

Slang has, whether appreciated or not, always been a part of our everyday language. Even before the birth of Christ, ancient Greek writers wrote about slang. But, as pointed out by Partridge (1970:1) "Slang is easy enough to use but very hard to write about". This is a true statement as most people use slang, but if asked to define slang, would probably have a hard time in doing so. Slang is used in many different types of media and situations. In computer medicated communication, such as instant messaging, a lot of the language used is slang, such as writing "lol" instead of "laughing out loud" or "C U" instead of "see you". However, slang occurs in oral communication all over the world. But where does this slang come from? It is likely that some of it comes from loanwords from other languages such as the word guzz which is Turkish and means "girl" and which many Swedes would know because of the Turkish immigrants in Sweden.

Another important part in the development of slang is the invention of new words; this phenomenon is very obvious within the hip-hop-culture, but it can also be words that are substitutes for already existing words such as pub, which originated from "public house", but when used frequently enough and by an increasing amount of people gains status (Andersson & Trudgill 1990:70). Today, as slang is used by more and more people one can even find dictionaries of slang on the internet to aid in the understanding of these new words.

Why is slang so popular then? Many groups use slang as a way of defining who they are and what group they belong to. Also in music, slang is very important for many artists to show which genre, be it hip hop or rock, they belong to. Another possible reason can be the film- and television-industry. Actors who are role-modals to many people use this "new cool" language all the time and wanting to be like them many people copy this language and take it "to the street".

Slang is just like any other part of language changing over time. Slang has a very definite expiry date and the slang of one generation is very often replaced with new slang by the following generation.

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Aim

The overall aim of this essay is to investigate British slang as it is reflected in a contemporary film and TV-show. More specific research questions are: - What different areas of use are represented in the slang that is being used? - What differences are there between the way men and women use slang?

2. Background

According to Andersson & Trudgill (1990:80), slang can be traced as far back as 385 BC when Aristophanes was the first writer to use slang extensively. Also Shakespeare used a lot of slang in his plays, such as, clay-brained instead of stupid. In the sixteenth century the English word blockhead was first used, and it is still in use today. Some words originate in Latin, since slang versions of Latin words have become standard versions in other languages, such as tete which means "head" in French but origins from the Latin word testa which means "pot" or "bowl"(Andersson & Trudgill 1990:70). The term "slang" itself was used by British criminals to refer to their own language whereas "cant" was the word used by the outside world (Ibid: 77).

2.1 The creation of slang

Andersson & Trudgill (1990:143) claim that slang is often considered to be bad language usage and the decay of language, rather than a necessary change. A phenomenon typical of language, however, is that the people has the power and if enough people choose to use certain words then these words gain status and are soon accepted parts of our everyday language e.g. pub and phone which were once slang versions of "public house" and "telephone". Geographical location also matters in deciding what is slang or not. The word lad (meaning "boy" or "son") is accepted in the northern parts of England but is considered as slang in the southern parts. Even journalists are beginning to use slang in their writing (Ibid: 70) which of course aids in the acceptance of such language. Slang is mainly a question of vocabulary usage as there are not many grammatical features of slang (Ibid: 73).

Hip-hop is a culture that has a language of its own (jargon) which is very hard to understand if you are an outsider, e.g. shackles and Seatown which means "handcuffs" and "Seattle" (hip-hop dictionary [www]). Within the hip-hop culture, a lot of newly invented 6

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