This research examines linguistic features of slang and ways in which it affects the language experience of English language learners (ELLs). The research will set forth the context in which slang becomes relevant to and reaches meaning with nonnative speakers of English and then discuss issue fronts that can have an impact on such speakers' experience of comprehension.
At a time when unprecedented numbers of immigrants are entering the United States, the need for effective communication is difficult to overstate. That entails learning English, the operative language in the United States. And learning English entails learning not only formal language but also slang, which is bound up with both social and linguistic conventions that may be unfamiliar to the ELL but essential for comprehension. It is both necessary and challenging to make connections between words, symbols, and expressions and those who use them, and to reach linguistic clarity based on shared understandings between speakers and auditors about the social context in which certain words are used and certain meanings are structured. It is the thesis of this research that context--physical, social, psychological, emotional--is the decisive sociolinguistic factor of communication effectiveness, and that mastering context may prove more important for mastering the language than mere attention to linguistic phonemes.
All language, of course, is symbolic. Slang, however, is a special case. It signals formal meanings in an informal way, and it may also symbolize a whole range of beliefs and/or attitudes of a subculture. Fowler (1950, p. 307) characterizes slang as a jargon variation, or a whole range of words "that are in different senses interchangeable, and under it [jargon] the distinctions between them [types of jargon] may be pointed out." That is its linguistic attribute. But it is also social. Fowler cites young people's practice of "playing with words and renaming t...