On sophomore Megan Noll’s gymnastics team, the gymnasts often refer to weight lifting, conditioning or running as “chopped.” When Noll’s coach asked what “chopped” meant, the team described it as meaning “bad” or “not good.”
“As much as [slang] is a joke, it’s also a defining part of our generation,” said Noll. “There’s just certain things, like certain words or phrases, that people will immediately associate with a certain age group.”
Slang is about creating culture, Noll said.
According to author and lexicographer Kory Stamper, “Slang is really important because a language that doesn’t change is a language that dies, and slang is a constantly moving current in this big river that we call language.”
One way individuals can find community is through slang.
“Slang is a handful of words, or one word, that is tied to some community or some practice, some behavior,” said Kelly Wright, assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “So it’s deeper than just a term, [and] it has a lot to do with how groups of people make meaning and communicate with each other.”
According to Jonathan Dunn, director of undergraduate studies for linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, “The other reason that we choose one word over another is for identity. You’re doing it based on who you’re talking to, but you’re also doing it to signal who you are.”
A group of people who identify themselves as a community will create new features, new words and new phrases that mark themselves as being different, Dunn said.
Groups often create slang by clipping words.
“[Clippings are] shortened words, like ‘totally’ becomes ‘totes’ [and] ‘suspicious’ becomes ‘sus,’” said Xuehua Xiang, professor of linguistics and Chinese at University of Illinois Chicago. “Instead of saying, ‘totally,’ I’m going to be cool. I’m going to say ‘totes.’”
Slang is short, quick and easy to say, and its origin can be a swapping of words or a semantic shift where idioms become more abstract and take on a new metaphorical image, Xiang said.
“Slang has this feeling that it’s not only trendy [and] novel but also very vivid,” said Xiang. “This vividness can be an attitude, like ‘sus’ is an attitude. ‘I’m not gonna say the whole word. [I’m] gonna give you part of it, but you get it.’”
According to Wright, using slang has nothing to do with ignorance.
“So calling it slang, to me, maybe cheapens it in a way that people say, ‘Oh, don’t use slang,’” said Wright. “‘It’s not proper. It makes you seem unintelligent.’ But for me, when I hear slang, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is such a cool window in how people are making meaning.’”
We use slang with people we have common ground with, but slang is also used to speak funny or to close the gap between generations, Wright said.
According to Noll, when one of her siblings would say “six-seven,” her parents would ask what it meant, and she realized that she didn’t know what it meant herself.
“Sometimes slang gets so caught up in culture, or social media culture, where it just becomes a part of people’s vocabulary, but they don’t know where it actually came from,” Noll said.
According to Stamper, slang spreads really easily on social media and tends to be viral and “meme-like” in how it moves because everyone has immediate access to it.
“You can’t really plot when slang is going to become popular, and you can’t ever estimate when it’s not going to become popular anymore,” Stamper said.
Young people are huge generators of slang, Stamper said.
“Young people use slang, and they manage to grow up and live beautiful, productive lives,” said Stamper. “Slang is just a part of English.”
“Slang is actually the burner underneath the pot that helps keep everything bubbling,” said Stamper. “Even if that slang comes and goes and no one ever knows about it, it’s still vital to how the language moves.”