Slang in English Today we’ll discuss a common linguistic phenomenon in English—slang. The features of slang are listed as fo

Slang in English
    Good afternoon, everyone. Today we’ll discuss a common linguistic phenomenon in English—slang. For hundreds of years, English has been continuously changing. Words that were unacceptable 300 years ago are now commonplace. English has always had a trademark of being a comfortable language, the language of the common people. Change in the grammar and diction of a language is natural, and English is always confronted with changes. Among them are the use of slang, clipped word endings, and new dialects. Some conservatives do not like changes because they claim that standard English is a perfect language; they do not want to corrupt it. Others simply do not like change. So, let’s have a look at the features of slang in the English language.
    First, slang affects the vocabulary of English. American English, especially, is always adding new words to its vocabulary for social, scientific, or artistic reasons. The scientific and artistic words do not bother the public a lot, for they only concern a limited group of people. But the social slang words do trouble linguists, especially the conservative ones. They do fear that after slang continues to thrust new words to the English vocabulary, it will not remain pure and clean as standard English.
    Second, slang indicates young people’s urge of say in society. Slang is usually created by children or teens who seek social status. Since kids are the source of new slang, some adults look down on it with the assumption that kids are unintelligent and simply rebelling against established English grammar and diction. However, most of the adults did the same thing when they were children. Adults have been frowning on slang for generations.
    Some conservatives claim that the lack of standard English is due to an education deficiency. They explain that the reason some slang is created by kids in inner-city areas is that the kids drop out of school, because the kids are stupid, and therefore never learn standard English. In reality, the kids drop out of school because they are told that the way they speak is stupid. The conservatives are not willing to help the kids with "bad" dialects. Perhaps this is because of a prejudice, sort of "once slang, always slang" mentality. The conservatives should use the kids’ dialects to help the kids learn standard English.
    Third, slang is usually not used by people of high social status and this is another reason why conservatives look down upon slang. If they hear someone speaking in Jive, they will be angry because Jive is not the way that high class people speak. People who do not like slang are usually prejudiced as well. They do not want to hear other ways of talking because it deviates from the way they talk. Also, much slang comes from other languages, of which conservatives might also be prejudiced. The dialect that a person uses may make him comfortable, but this is not considered. If a language is not comfortable, why would you want to speak it?
    Fourth, slang equals change of language. As is known to all, language is a live thing that embraces any change to fit the paradigms of society. For example, in Shakespeare’s time, many contractions used today were considered poor English. Rarely could a person of high social status be found using "don’t" in a sentence. Today, however, people may use contractions without fear of being scorned by society. This simply illustrates the same types of people who opposed contractions in the past are opposing slang and new dialects of English. They do not realize that the way they speak differs from the way that their predecessors spoke, People opposed to language change only defend their dialect, which will die out anyway, and prove their intolerance of change.
    Furthermore, language will be thought of differently in the future because new mediums of communication will be used, the largest one being the Internet. Today, many people are using the Internet to "talk" to people all over the world. The Internet has its own language, which conservatives view as computer slang. No matter what diction or dialect you speak, you still have to type out an Internet message in standard Internet. There are words used specifically for the Internet, usually acronyms that are universally understood by the Netizens. Those acronyms could be called part of the cyber-slang, which is of course not accepted by conservatives, but who knows whether after several years, it will probably appear in standard dictionaries. Actually, conservatives have no reason to bother with whether a person’s dialect or diction will be understood in spoken language, because most communication will be typed, not spoken, in a neutral Internet language.
    However, is this change really as horrible as conservatives predict? Conservatives have one reason to oppose language progression: fear. Conservatives have a fear that the language they speak will not be the primary one. For this reason, they will put down slang and other dialects simply because slang and dialects are not standard English. As a matter of fact, standard English is just another dialect) however, and thinking one dialect greater than another is mere prejudice. If any change of language is prohibited, people would never be able to express themselves in new ways because there would never be any new words.
    Now, to sum up today’s lecture, we have reviewed some characteristics of slang in English. Since slang is often coined by the youth and usually used by people of low social status, conservatives cast scorn on it. However, slang indicates that language is rather a vital life that is full of changes and slang best fills in the role to bring vigorous changes to the English language. So, prejudice against it is groundless. Ok, this brings us to the end of today’s lecture. Thank you for your attention.