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'Slang is subversive, conscious and ephemeral'. Discuss this definition of slang with reference to examples of slang and the different purposes of slang.
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'Slang is subversive, conscious and ephemeral'. Discuss this definition of slang with reference to examples of slang and the different purposes of slang. Once, "slang" was itself slang - a specimen of the very thing that it described. The entry on the word in Eric Partridge's original 1937 edition of his one-man dictionary reaches back towards the origins as a vulgar term for "the special vocabulary (e.g. cant) of low, illiterate, or disreputable persons; low illiterate language". Slang is used by everyone all the time. The use of slang is often been regarded by linguists as ephemeral and a conscious decision by the user. This is certainly true but many people confuse this with a person's dialect, which by definition would make their lexical choice an unconscious one. The use of slang by individuals in the past and increasingly more nowadays is considered as subversive, for example the use of Polari in...
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