Why do we use slang? (Biology/Philosophy)

[grayson]

Hello, my name is Grayson. I am more a scientific person than anything else. So, I don't use slang as much as any other foe. But why do people use slang? What is the evolutionary point of it? I don't know whether I should've put this in philosophy or biology, but treat this as both.

[joigus]

There is no evolutionary point in any change. Evolution comes into play when changes become stable through time.

Today's slang is not the same as 18th-century slang. 

 

[Genady]

Whereas jargon is specialized vocabulary used by those inside established social groups, often defined by professional status (e.g. legal jargon), slang is more typically used among those who are outside established higher-status groups. Slang, or “colloquial speech,” describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests. The word bucks (for dollars or money) has been a slang expression for more than a hundred years in the United States, but the addition of mega- (“a lot of”) in megabucks is a more recent innovation, along with dead presidents (whose pictures are on paper money) and benjamins (from Benjamin Franklin, on $100 bills). According to one recent description, “Slang is a highly informal and unconventional type of vocabulary. It is perceived as deeply expressive, attractively catchy, and deliberately undignified” (Widawski, 2015: 8). Like clothing and music, slang is an aspect of social life that is subject to fashion, especially among adolescents. It can be used by those inside a group who share ideas and attitudes as a way of distinguishing themselves from others. As a marker of group identity during a limited stage of life such as early adolescence, slang expressions can “grow old” rather quickly. Older forms for “really good” such as groovy, hip and super were replaced by awesome, rad and wicked which gave way to dope, kickass and phat. A hunk (“physically attractive man”) became a hottie and, instead of something being the pits (“really bad”), the next generation thought it was a bummer, harsh!, or said, That’s sucky!. The difference in slang use between groups divided into older and younger speakers provides some of the clearest support for the idea that age is another important factor involved in the study of social variation in language use.

Yule, George. The Study of Language (p. 295). Cambridge University Press.

[grayson]

1 hour ago, joigus said:

There is no evolutionary point in any change. Evolution comes into play when changes become stable through time.

Today's slang is not the same as 18th-century slang. 

 

I know slang evolves over time. But why do we use any slang at all? Is there an evolutionary point to it?

[iNow]

As our experiences change, so does the information we must transmit to fellow members of our pack or tribe. New words evolve to align with those new experiences, and the words which work best and most efficiently get selected for. 

[CharonY]

22 minutes ago, grayson said:

I know slang evolves over time. But why do we use any slang at all? Is there an evolutionary point to it?

I think this is one of the many cases where folks misinterpret what evolution is. Evolution is fundamentally the change of the gene pool in a population over time. What individuals do on a day-to-day basis really has little to do with evolution or evolutionary benefits. For example, the ability to vocalize can have evolutionary advantages, but the details of what is being said, is not genetically encoded.

2 hours ago, Genady said:

Slang, or “colloquial speech,” describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests.

Well, there is also slang within areas where jargon is used. In labs, for example we often use informal short hand (or sometimes lab-specific invented words) to refer to stuff which never translates into formal jargon. 

2 hours ago, grayson said:

I am more a scientific person than anything else. So, I don't use slang as much as any other foe.

Scientists, especially when talking informally amongst themselves rarely uses stilted high-brow language. That is mostly for papers and lectures (depending on your style). I think that is just a weird perception folks have.

[Sensei]

  

2 hours ago, grayson said:

But why do people use slang?

 

Source: Oxford Languages.

slang - "a type of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people."

 

Slang, typically, is shorter version than e.g. literary language. Saying less to express the same information saves energy and time.

Edited August 20, 2023 by Sensei

[iNow]

^word

[CharonY]

yo.

[Sensei]

https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+slang+dictionary

ADBB

 

[joigus]

4 hours ago, grayson said:

I know slang evolves over time. But why do we use any slang at all? Is there an evolutionary point to it?

You have to learn to distinguish  everyday language from  technical language.

As @CharonY said, "evolution" means something different from the use in sentence "slang evolves over time". Slang does not evolve over time; it's just replaced by a different slang, for reasons well explained in quote by @Genady.

Slang doesn't evolve over time in the sense that species evolve, or memes evolve (in the sense proposed by Dawkins).

And that's just swell.

Edited August 20, 2023 by joigus
minor correction

[mistermack]

I think that slang, like names and nicknames, comes about as a bonding mechanism in social groups, or populations. 

We tend to adopt and mimic things we hear from our peers, which produces a constantly evolving culture. In our evolutionary past, this bonding mechanism helped to preserve the genes of those who adopted it, and those genes tended to cause inheritance of the tendency. 

Humans are not unique in adopting culture, but we take it to extreme lengths compared to most other species. Bird species have been found to have regional accents, and I seem to remember that various whale or dolphin species have local accents too. Local accents and slang are pretty much the same thing, we acquire it subconsciously by hearing it from others. 

I suppose we humans are unique, in having what we consider a "proper" version, compared to a slang version.

[TheVat]

17 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Humans are not unique in adopting culture, but we take it to extreme lengths compared to most other species. Bird species have been found to have regional accents, and I seem to remember that various whale or dolphin species have local accents too.

Chinese cats tend to say "mao" instead of "meow," for example.

[geordief]

18 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Chinese cats tend to say "mao" instead of "meow," for example.

Ever since the Great Leap Forward?(too tragic to be funny ,really)

Edited August 20, 2023 by geordief

[Ken Fabian]

6 hours ago, grayson said:

I know slang evolves over time. But why do we use any slang at all? Is there an evolutionary point to it?

There would be evolutionary advantage to language that is changeable over language that is fixed. One of the things shared language does is make social connections and shared slang is shared social connections.

[Phi for All]

16 hours ago, mistermack said:

I think that slang, like names and nicknames, comes about as a bonding mechanism in social groups, or populations. 

We tend to adopt and mimic things we hear from our peers, which produces a constantly evolving culture. In our evolutionary past, this bonding mechanism helped to preserve the genes of those who adopted it, and those genes tended to cause inheritance of the tendency.

Slang for names is partly bonding, but it can also be used to highlight or hide special relationships. You might introduce yourself to others as Mister McDonald, but I get to call you Mack, or perhaps I've nicknamed you The Farmer so I can make reference without actually naming you, and only those who know you equally well will understand.

A lot of slang is used to hide meaning to avoid trouble or judgement. In that way, it can be a survival tactic. You can't prove I was bad-mouthing the king when I said "His Nibs couldn't find his arse with both hands!" A modern equivalent in the US is "tea" meaning "gossip", as in "we spilled some tea together".

I'm honestly unsure of the correlation to evolution. Certainly the genes that give us cooperative and communicative tendencies are at play here, but I'm not sure there's evidence that slang has, as CharonY puts it, been actually encoded into our genes.

[iNow]

Part of the challenge is it’s perfectly acceptable to discuss the evolution of language and slang without ever involving the ideas of DNA or genetics. 

Evolution here in this context just means change and selection over time across tribes and social groups, but is unrelated to passing on offspring who are themselves more reproductively fecund. 

[Phi for All]

10 minutes ago, iNow said:

Part of the challenge is it’s perfectly acceptable to discuss the evolution of language and slang without ever involving the ideas of DNA or genetics. 

Evolution here in this context just means change and selection over time across tribes and social groups, but is unrelated to passing on offspring who are themselves more reproductively fecund. 

Mentioning reproduction reminded me that some slang has been preferred over the more correct terminology. I know a LOT of folks don't use the clinical names for body parts and sexual activity because they think only a Pollyanna uses terms like "penis" and "vagina". That seems to be changing though, and the latest generations are dropping most of the cruder terms as childish and repressed.

[TheVat]

Interesting how pudendal slang carries different weights in different English speaking countries.  In the UK, I noticed that c--t was in wide usage and for a vast range of tones and often very casual.  Contrast with the U.S. where it is still considered more foul than a lot of the usual suspects.  I remember seeing a film where F-bombs and similar dropped frequently, zero audience reaction, but then one character turned to another and called her a "magnificent c--t," and I heard audible gasps from several quarters.  It may have been the character who spoke it, partly, who was a mayor at some elegant occasion, so the word is also a sudden reveal about him.  If Ray Winstone had said it, perhaps no one would have batted an eye.  

 

[CharonY]

49 minutes ago, iNow said:

Part of the challenge is it’s perfectly acceptable to discuss the evolution of language and slang without ever involving the ideas of DNA or genetics. 

Evolution here in this context just means change and selection over time across tribes and social groups, but is unrelated to passing on offspring who are themselves more reproductively fecund. 

The issue I see here is that many folks conflate the various issues. And suddenly somehow everything is being explained by evolution, like a magic theory for everything. "I am being an arse because evolution made me to do so, please come to my TED talk."

[mistermack]

A lot of slang originates with kids, getting it wrong. They confuse it, and then the adults copy the infants. That's how a lot of nicknames come about. An infant will call Michael Mike and it sticks, Same with Peter to Pete, Geoffrey to Jeff and so on. 

My youngest sister was always losing her favourite rag. We all had to hunt for it, when she realised it wasn't there, and went ballistic. Then someone would find it, and we would all crow "there it is" to stop her crying. So next time, she wanted us to find her "dere's it is" and the name stuck, and we still call it that now, years later. Those family things can migrate to other families. 

Words like car probably came from a baby trying to say carriage, and bus from one trying to say omnibus. It's probably more common to come down that way, than from adults shortening it. Adults adopt baby talk all the time. Maybe sometimes it comes down both ways. In England we say telly, for television, which might well have come from baby talk, whereas in the US they say TV, which probably came from adults trimming it.

The word cunt is very old, many hundreds of years, there was an old narrow lane in England somewhere called "gropecunt lane" which used to be a haunt for prostitutes hundreds of years ago. 

Found it : Gropecunt Lane - Wikipedia     It goes back about 800 years or more.

[studiot]

There are many sorts of slang.

One not mentioned so far is Cockney Rhyming slang.

[TheVat]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

There are many sorts of slang.

One not mentioned so far is Cockney Rhyming slang.

We should have a butcher's, then.

(which brings up an interesting feature: removing the original rhyming portion of the slang, rendering it more obscure.  So "look" was butcher's hook, then the hook was dropped.)

Similarly "berk" was originally Berkeley Hunt, a rhyme for cunt.  Berk is not as offensive as cunt, partly due to its full rhyming form being forgotten.

 

[mistermack]

In reality, Vagina and Penis are just as much slang as cunt and cock. It's likely they came into use after cock and cunt, and they are the "in" words for a certain gang, in this case, the middle and upper classes. We tend to regard words used by lower classes as the slang, but really, it's all slang. 

[TheVat]

But aren't they the Latin words that were adopted as the formal medical terminology back when Latin and Greek were the languages of scholars?  I think of slang as more "street."  It has a different meaning from jargon or terminology, forms which tend to be established in a more formal way.   Without being snobby, I just think slang has a particular meaning and way it differs from more formal terms.  In the US, we might say she's got a bun in the oven and that's slang.  She has a fetus in her uterus is NOT slang, is it?  Nor is she's pregnant.  She wouldn't visit her OB-Gyn and be told "one change you will notice is bigger boobs, and they may be all tingly..."  Likely a nurse, PA, or doctor would say "you may notice some breast enlargement and sensitivity..."  (not to say there aren't doctors who develop a rapport with a patient by sometimes using humorous slang - that would depend on the patient I expect)