Slang Language

Definition

Slang is a specific word, phrase, or utterance, which is commonly used by young people in their community. It refers to unconventional words, so it is not appropriate to be spoken in a formal situation, such as in the school, university, or in the office. Frommer and Finegan (2004) wrote “Slang terms are often found in movies and music reviews, lifestyle pieces, and people columns” (p.243). While Anderson and Trudgill in Ulfa (2003) wrote that actually, slang is not language ordialect, it can be said as a code that produced by changing the existing language to the common one. Every language has a vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, whereas slang has not. It just has vocabulary which is not profanity and ungrammatical. Dialect refers to the different language caused by geographical area, whereas slang is not restricted to one region or country (p. 24)

Slang that was widely used in the early twentieth century, firstly appeared in 1800’s when it was used by criminal classes in London (Maurer:2003). It was produced largely by social group, such as criminal classes, narcotic addicts, sexual deviant community, racial minority community, political organization, armed forces, rapper, etc, rather than by individual speakers. The first reason why they used slang was to make the expressions secret. Nowadays, teenagers often use it

in their daily communication with their community. By using slang, teenagers feel free in conversation with their community, every time and everywhere without anyone who understands the meaning.

Recently, slang is not only used by certain communities as secret expressions but also used commonly by teenagers. It is considered as a simple word or phrase which is not profanity and ungrammatical. Goodword (2006) stated that slang is a crucial part of a young person “coming of age,” one of the first detectable signs of their breaking away from their parents and their parents’

values. It is a cheap second language that express as the differences between young people who are about to enter adulthood from his or her parents’ generation (p.1). On the other hand, Mulyana (2001) said that “slang are words or phrases, which have specific, meaning, unique, deviate, even opposite with the real meaning used by certain community” (p. 280). However, some slang may be accepted as a standard speech, although in its original meaning, for example, bus from omnibus, jazz, which originally had sexual connotation, and VIP (Very Important Person).

Whereas some expressions of Indonesian slang are makan gengsi, (obstinate), udah (finish), PDKT (aprroach), naksir (love) as Faruq (2004) examined in his research A Study of Play of Words and Slang on “The ABG Problem” Section in Jawa Pos daily newspaper