[Corpora-List] Corpora containing common English words including slang.

[amsler at cs.utexas.edu]

In these days of internet text it would be hard to define slang. I'd  
assume in simpler times slang would have been defined as language used  
in speech that is not used (or acceptable) in published non-fiction  
writing. Certainly the vocabulary of various sublanguages (especially  
socially less desirable sublanguages such as that of drug slang,  
prison slang, soldier slang, etc. would still be in 'slang' in  
general; but today we have things like computer slang, restaurant  
slang, fashion-industry slang, television and film slang, etc. The  
distinction between slang and the specialized vocabulary of an  
occupation probably can't be made?

The Wikipedia entry referenced makes the distinction between slang and  
jargon. I am not as certain that holds up since some sublanguages have  
acceptable and unacceptable language terms they use. We would thus  
have to have both computer jargon and computer slang and distiniguish  
between them on the basis of their acceptability within the computer  
field. For example, is 'snail mail' jargon or slang? Did its status  
change when it became generally known outside the computer field.  
Wikipedia's entry for the 'jargon file'  
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon_File) begins with the sentence,  
"The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang"





Quoting Mike Maxwell <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu>:

> Joe Moore wrote:
>> I'm looking for a list of commonly used words and slang by native   
>> English speakers.
>
> Commonly used words should be easy to find, but what is slang?
>
> Has anyone ever annotated a corpus for "slang"?  If so, what
> instructions were the annotators given?  There is an attempt at a
> rather vague linguistic definition of slang here:
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slang
> ...and a slang dictionary here, which might be usable for tagging:
>    http://onlineslangdictionary.com/
> Of course, whether a word goes into this dictionary is very subjective.
>
> Is there a cross-language notion of slang?  There's a wikipedia page
> here which is supposed to point to slang in various languages:
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Slang_by_language
> At a quick glance, it seems to be a hodge-podge of articles on
> non-standard dialects, profanity, anti-euphemisms, and usage by "lower
> classes."  It is not an article that inspires confidence...
> -- 
>    Mike Maxwell
>    What good is a universe without somebody around to look at it?
>    --Robert Dicke, Princeton physicist
>
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