by: Krista Pilz
The responses are due by Monday, October 18th, at class time!
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In Besse Clark's article, A teacher has created a classroom lesson that revolves around slang. The teacher asks the students about slang, asking questions like: To how many people does slang exist to express thought? The students respond with everybody. Then the teacher continues on, he/she gives the class two types of language. The first example was from The Heart of Midlothian. the excerpt was, Thief: She has got a Jark from Jim Ratcliffe... Jark being the slang word. The students starred blankly at the teacher, not understanding what the word meant. The second type of language he/she gave the class was from the American Magazine, an article written by a New York detective. He tells about what one thief may say to another, It read: Put your duke under your tog....
The teacher explains how both of these excerpts were taken from thieves. Slang was the language of thieves in Shakespearean time, and still exists to conceal thought from most people. This article expresses that thieves words are constantly creeping into our language, because slang was once the language of thieves. Therefore, any slang we use today is taken from thieves "language". For example, the word "kids" was taken from the term "kidnab", which today we know as "kidnap", and kidnapping is the action of "child stealing". The word slang comes from the old language of Scandinavians, and meant "to talk abusively".
This article continues on to express how offensive slang really is, and because of this slang terms never stay in existence very long. The students come to the conclusion, that words only last if they are not offensive. For example, calling an insane asylum a "bug house" is very offensive to anyone who may know somebody who has been defined "insane".
Besse's article truly breaks down the meaning of slang. I found it quite interesting simply because I never thought of slang as necessarily negative. We throw terms around without truly understanding the meaning of what the words actually mean, and how they could be offensive to somebody else.
