Ways to form jargon. Concept and history of slang Classification of slang vocabulary

Interest in the study of youth slang arose as early as the slang itself. Work on the analysis of “colloquial speech” (namely, linguists attributed jargon to this style of speech) was carried out back in the 19th century. For the first time, an attempt to describe and classify slang vocabulary was presented in Mikutsky’s dictionary (Mikutsky S. Materials for a comparative and explanatory dictionary of the Russian language and other Slavic dialects. - St. Petersburg, 1832). The famous Dahl Dictionary provides even more data on this topic. From which Vladimir Dahl’s explanatory dictionary it is known that the jargon arose from the language of peddlers. Hence another name for the slang - fenya (to work on a hairdryer). These traders formed a separate class. And since they always had different goods and money, they were very often attacked by robbers. The Ofeni came up with a unique language that only they themselves could understand - argot. There is also an assumption that they arose from an almost extinct nation - the Athenians. This people, now living only in legends, consisted of several ethnic groups, including African and Greek. This encrypted language was passed on to children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And ordinary people liked it so much that it gradually began to be used by beggars, horse thieves and simply highway robbers, against whom Fenya was originally intended. But they not only used it to communicate, but also to encrypt oral and written information, not wanting to divulge secrets. This is how slang vocabulary arises, the origin of which is closely connected with socio-political processes in society as a whole.

During the 20th century, the Russian language fell into serious crisis situations three times, giving rise to three powerful waves of jargon development.

The first is associated with the First World War, the revolution of 1917 and the civil war and devastation that followed.

A period not only of decisive oblivion of the classical Russian language of the 19th century, but also a time of the most powerful streams of new words and grammatical updates. All revolutionary grammar, stylistics and vocabulary were introduced into the Russian language not only and not so much by the leaders of the revolution, but by young revolutionaries.

An equally powerful stream of development of the language was its criminal and hooligan democratization. This linguistic wave was brought about by the class of street children, which in numbers is quite comparable to the class of proletarians. According to TSB data, in 1921 their number was in the region of 4-6 million people https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_homelessness_and_neglect_in_the_USSR, or about five percent of the country's total population.

It was then that a unique phenomenon of a mixture of jargon and slang arose - a fundamentally open speech of self-expression. This phenomenon is the Russian “fenya” on the one hand, accessible, natural and commonly used speech of all levels of society, on the other hand, a language that has made the entire country closed, behind the iron curtain of outside understanding. “Fenya” became, first of all, the language of the young and, sometimes similar to Lenin-Stalinist political curses and slander, then, exploding in the darkness of the Gulag with scatterings of new words and constructions, it began to form a new type of people - the “Soviet person.”

The second wave is associated with World War II. Actually, almost everything was repeated again: state-owned children (Suvorov and Nakhimovites) homeless children, fatherlessness... “The influence of the war and the adversities associated with it is reflected, unfortunately, in other ways. The boys had a break in their studies. They wandered from city to city, were in evacuation, and parents did not always have enough time to monitor the correct development of their children. Many people’s speech suffers from errors against the laws of the Russian language, it is sloppy, abrupt, overloaded with unnecessary words" http://speakrus.ru/mix/fesenko/fesenko.htm ( A. and T. Fesenko, Russian language under the Soviets, New York, 1955).

If the first, revolutionary, situation of abandoned and abandoned children was hooligan due to the complete orphanhood of children, then the second, military, was thieves due to fatherlessness.

At that time, reflexive verbs arose like: “to study” - to study, “to wash” - to wash, “to show off” - to say hello.

The third wave turned out to be the most powerful and longest. It has been going on for more than 10 years and it is unknown how long it will last.

With perestroika and the subsequent openly criminal democratization, not only the Soviet state collapsed, but also the Soviet people that stuck to it. The Soviet man, the Soviet morality, the Soviet family - the ideological unit of society - collapsed. Parents turned out to be mostly morally bankrupt in the eyes of their children. This moral orphanhood of an entire generation is a much more terrible phenomenon than it seems.

If in the two previous waves official morality was opposed to disadvantaged childhood and its language, now there is nothing like that, and the media are working not against, but openly for moral permissiveness, a new language, for turning the new “feni” into the native language of the new generation. “Lawlessness”, “obshchak”, “strelka”, “tusovka”, “trunks”, “prostitute”, “greens” - all this poured into newspapers and on television. All this was discussed and used by comedians, politicians, rulers, businessmen, and commentators.

Classification of slang vocabulary

Jargons are lexically and stylistically heterogeneous, characterized by instability and rapid change of the most popular vocabulary.

Jargon can arise in any stable and more or less closed group. This is a kind of collective language game that ends when a person leaves a given group (for example, a student who graduates from school and enters university stops using school jargon, but begins to actively use student jargon).

There is school jargon, college jargon, army jargon, musician jargon, sportsman jargon, salesman jargon, computer jargon, junkie jargon, and so on.

The most clearly expressed are:

1. Slang - youth jargon (for example, “damn”, “teacher”)

2. Argo - the secret language of declassed groups of society - thieves, tramps and beggars L.I. Rakhmanova, V.N. Suzdaltseva. Modern Russian language. With. 223. (some researchers define argot as a dialect that can be used regardless of profession and social status).

3. Professional jargons (professional languages) - characterized by a highly developed and fairly accurate terminology of a particular craft, industry, etc.

In addition to jargons that arise on the basis of the common language, there are jargons that appear as a result of communication between multilingual populations in border areas (for example, in seaports).

Scientists distinguish this type of jargon as interjargon. It combines words included in different jargons. This jargon is “belonging not to one, but to many (including already disappeared) social groups. Moving from one jargon to another, the words of their “common fund” can change form and meaning: “to darken” in the slang - to hide the loot, then - “to be cunning (during interrogation)”, in modern youth jargon - to speak unclearly, to evade from the answer.

In the modern language of youth, it is slang that has become widespread" https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon.

Slang vocabulary in the Russian language has long become a generally accepted phenomenon. But many people, upon hearing this phrase, immediately think of criminal expressions that an ordinary person cannot immediately understand. But an example of jargon can be found in everyday life. And, by the way, there are many more of them.

What is slang vocabulary

Before looking at an example of jargon, you should understand what this terminology is. So, these are words that are used only by certain people. They can be united by one profession, specialty, interests, age, common views, etc. In other words, jargon in the Russian language is a completely separate speech that can only be understood by certain people. And, based on the fact that today there are a huge number of social groups, jargon, accordingly, also flourishes.

Types of jargons

It should be noted that today an example of jargon can be found in almost any one. They arise in almost any team that is moderately stable. For example, one can observe jargon in the speech of schoolchildren, students, military personnel, musicians, athletes, alcoholics, criminals, etc. As you can see, the social “dispersion” is quite large. Needless to say, even the expressions of the intelligentsia can be called jargon with full confidence - and this will be correct. After all, their expressions are understandable only to them, and they were not formed out of nowhere. So everything is fair.

Popular words

Many people don't even know that they are using slang words. They have become so firmly established in our lives that they have already become completely normal and acceptable expressions and we pronounce them without thinking. Take as an example the speech of schoolchildren or students. The word “physical”, “couple”, “physical”, “stupid”, “straining”, “clear”, “I don’t get it”, etc. - we hear all this every day and understand what these expressions mean.

However, there are also words “stronger”. We are talking about the jargon of people associated with the criminal sphere. Or, as it is also called, “thieves”. Perhaps the most frequently encountered word in this area is “zone”. Everyone definitely heard him. It means, as one might already understand, prison. By the way, in fairness it is worth noting that thieves and criminal jargon is the richest of all existing ones. It really is a separate language. “Fart” (luck), “Kent” (close friend), “Olive” (bullet), “Kipishnut” (indignant), “Zhigan” (desperate) - there are many more such words. There is no need to go deeply into their meaning - you can already understand that this “language” is really complex.

Emotionality

It is worth noting that the jargon discussed above differs in some features. Whatever field they belong to, they have one thing in common - a high level of expressiveness. Many jargons appeared due to the fact that it was necessary to come up with some word that successfully describes a particular situation (or person). When there are no longer standard expressions that would convey the full emotional degree of delight or disapproval. It should be as emotional as possible - this is the main characteristic of jargon. For example, the phrase “What kind of attack?”, pronounced with the appropriate intonation, sounds much more serious than “What are you doing?” By the way, this is quite a striking example of jargon.

This vocabulary is also much more variable and flexible. Also, jargons die quite quickly - they are replaced by other, new expressions. For example, youth slang of the 60s has practically disappeared - today young people speak completely differently.

Formation of jargons

So, why such expressions appear is understandable, but how are they formed? It's actually very simple. The first way is through borrowing. So, for example, the word “man” (guy, man), “fen” (fan, admirer), “people” (people, society), etc. came into our modern language. As you might guess, the listed words are taken from the English language.

They also often simply take and reinterpret some popular word. To "buzz" - it means "to drink." Why this particular expression? Because it very successfully emphasizes the duration of this process.
There is also another popular method, which is word formation. There is such a word as “to enjoy” (to enjoy). This is where the slang “baddyozh” (pleasure) came from. And there are many more such examples.

Jargon has always existed and it will continue to exist. This vocabulary constantly interacts with the national language, “snatching” certain expressions from it and transforming them in its own way. The most important thing is to know when to stop using such words. Still, you shouldn’t litter your speech with such expressions too often. Otherwise, we will have to forget about the purity of our mighty Russian language if everyone switches to jargon.

The etymology of the word "slang" is one of the most controversial and confusing issues in English lexicography. The difficulty is that it is extremely difficult to determine the time of its appearance.
Slang as such probably arose with the advent of human society, that is, when social stratification and professional affiliation arose, when the need for communication that was incomprehensible to outsiders arose. Slang originated as a special language intended for specific purposes, and remains so to this day. It is hardly possible to determine even the approximate date of its appearance, but we cannot have any doubt that it has existed since ancient times.
Initially, there was no division into slang, jargon, and argot. All this has been one thing for a long time. But over time, these words began to denote specific concepts that were different from each other. Their differentiation occurred much later than the emergence of the specialized language itself.
There are still doubts about the origin of the word “slang”. As you know, this is the English word slang. According to one version, it comes from the verb to sling, which means “throw”, “throw”. This verb was used in the expression to sling one's jaw, which means "to speak offensive speech." Knowing the expressive nature of slang, as well as the familiarity that is often inherent in it, we find a certain grain of truth in this hypothesis. According to another existing version, slang goes back to slanguage, a word that appeared as a result of the partial disappearance of the word thieves in the phrase thieves’ language. That is, the word slang originally meant the language of thieves. Therefore, slang was probably synonymous with the word "argo" for a long time. This version seems more plausible to us, since the definition of the word “slang” as a thieves’ language is in many ways close to its modern meaning.
It is not known for certain when the word “slang” appeared in England. It first appears in writing in the 18th century. Back then it meant “insult.” Presumably in 1850, this word expanded its meaning and began to mean colloquial vocabulary. Around the same time, synonyms for the word slang appeared, namely lingo and argot. Since then, the meaning of this word has expanded significantly and began to designate a whole layer of vocabulary.
For a long time, various hypotheses about the origin and purpose of slang have been put forward. It was seen both as the language of the lower strata of society, and as a gypsy language, and as a reflection of one of the Scandinavian languages. These kinds of theories still arise to this day, some are scientifically based, while others are not. But this does not change the essence of slang. It was and remains a completely unique, constantly evolving part of the language, without which modern language is no longer conceivable.

The same goes for borrowing words. For example, the word “hai” is shorter and simpler than the word “hello,” and the word “good” is happy to replace approval (good, excellent, great, wonderful). It is noteworthy that most of the newly formed slang words over time become so tightly integrated into general speech that they become ordinary words, losing the status of jargon.

Professional area

For example, programmers have their own jargon, which is a mixture of English technical and Russian languages ​​(“bug”, “bot”, “dos”, etc.). Among drivers, there are expressions like “turn the steering wheel”, “drove”, “bombed”, “nine”, “six”, etc. Schoolchildren love the words “teacher”, “bad”, etc. Students add to them the expressions “”, “glasses”, “”, “nerd”, etc.

Particularly different from others is criminal jargon, which includes dozens of words and expressions that are incomprehensible to the average person.

Also, new words and expressions appear in certain groups of people united by some common cause. For example, in the army (“spirits”, “demobilization”, “AWOL”).

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