what is slang

[Thomas M. Paikeday]

I goofed about the orality of slang, all right, but I am impressed by the
style with which it was/is being conducted, with absolutely no "ad hominem"
comments that I can recall!

ABOUT "BOOBS"
Thanks, Joanne, for your comments. I can't wait to see the next edition of
your MWD.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Abate" <abatefr at EARTHLINK.NET>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 1:50 PM
Subject: what is slang


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Frank Abate <abatefr at EARTHLINK.NET>
> Subject:      what is slang
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
> Geoff N said, in reply to mine, what follows below.  I think he may well
be
> right -- things like "IMHO" and "btw" were invented for writing a sort of
> shorthand in a very informal register (email and instant messages), and
> function only as written (pretty much), and yet are very like slang if not
> actually so.  So we seem to have written slang, from the e-universe.
>
> So I sit corrected.  Now having rethought, in the light of Geoff's
examples,
> IMHO, slang can be written in origin, sometimes.
>
> Frank Abate
>
> PS: Don't you just love email, and discussion groups (some of the time)?
>
> *********************
> At 09:53 AM 6/20/2003 -0400, Frank Abate wrote:
> >still hold out, saying that slang is fundamentally and essentially
oral --
> >in its **origin**.  Please reply if you can show that this is not the
case.
>
> IMHO there is now **written** slang.  I'm not sure what other category we
> could put things like what you see at the beginning of this sentence, not
> to mention things like
>
> cu, l8r, ymmv
>
> and all the stuff used in Instant Messaging.  (I note, incidentally, that
> Eudora 5.2 did not flag the first two items above (i.e. the spell-checker
> didn't underline them), which, I suppose, counts against my claim that
this
> stuff is slang.  AFAIK linguists haven't classified this stuff yet (but I
> may be wrong--I'm a newbie on this list).
>
> Geoff
> Geoffrey S. Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>
> Faculty Liaison, Computing and Information Technology,
> Wayne State University
>
> Frank
>
> Frank Abate
> Dictionaries International
> Consulting & Editorial Services for Reference Publications
> 860-349-5400  [USA access code: 1]
> abatefr at earthlink.net
>