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53-455: The term gobstopper derives from "gob", which is slang in the United Kingdom and Ireland for mouth . The sweet was a favourite among British schoolboys in the first half of the twentieth century; author Roald Dahl , who wrote about a jar of gobstoppers featuring in the prank he played in his local sweet shop in 1924 , also referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which

106-470: A US Army librarian. In-group and out-group In social psychology and sociology , an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify. People may for example identify with their peer group , family , community , sports team, political party, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nation. It has been found that

159-538: A broad, empirical window into the motivating forces behind slang. While many forms of lexicon may be considered low-register or "sub-standard", slang remains distinct from colloquial and jargon terms because of its specific social contexts . While viewed as inappropriate in formal usage, colloquial terms are typically considered acceptable in speech across a wide range of contexts, whereas slang tends to be perceived as inappropriate in many common communication situations. Jargon refers to language used by personnel in

212-576: A favourite among British schoolboys between the two World Wars. A jar of gobstoppers featured in the prank Dahl played on the owner of his local sweet shop in 1924 , which he recorded in his autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood . In the 1964 children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , Roald Dahl described " Everlasting Gobstoppers ," a fictional gobstopper that could never get smaller or be finished. The animated series Ed, Edd n Eddy revolves around jawbreakers. Most episodes feature

265-399: A language over time. The 1941 film, Ball of Fire , portrays a professor played by Gary Cooper who is researching and writing an encyclopedia article about slang. The 2006 film, Idiocracy , portrays a less intelligent society in the year 2505 that has people who use all various sorts of aggressive slang. These slangs sound very foreign and alienating to the protagonist of the movie,

318-445: A matter of minutes and that such groups can form even on the basis of completely arbitrary and invented discriminatory characteristics, such as preferences for certain paintings. In neurology , there is an established literature about the innate propensity of the human brain to divide the world into us and them valence categories, where the exact membership of the in-group and out-group are socially contingent (hence vulnerable to

371-465: A particular field or to language used to represent specific terms within a field to those with a particular interest. Although jargon and slang can both be used to exclude non-group members from the conversation, slang tends to emphasize social and contextual understanding whereas the main purpose of jargon is to optimize communication using terms that imply technical understanding. While colloquialisms and jargon may seem like slang because they reference

424-425: A particular group, they do not necessarily fit the same definition because they do not represent a particular effort to replace the general lexicon of a standard language . Colloquialisms are considered more acceptable and more expected in standard usage than slang is, and jargon is often created to talk about aspects of a particular field that are not accounted for in the general lexicon. However, this differentiation

477-403: A role in constructing identity. While slang outlines social space, attitudes about slang partly construct group identity and identify individuals as members of groups. Therefore, using the slang of a particular group associates an individual with that group. Michael Silverstein 's orders of indexicality can be employed to assign a slang term as a second-order index to that particular group. Using

530-477: A slang term removes its status as true slang because it is then accepted by the media and is thus no longer the special insider speech of a particular group. For example, Black American music frequently uses slang, and many of its frequently used terms have therefore become part of vernacular English. Some say that a general test for whether a word is slang or not is whether or not it would be acceptable in an academic or legal setting, but that would consider slang to be

583-566: A slang term, however, can also give an individual the qualities associated with the term's group of origin, whether or not the individual is trying to identify as a member of the group. This allocation of qualities based on abstract group association is known as third-order indexicality. As outlined in Elisa Mattiello's book "An Introduction to English Slang", a slang term can assume several levels of meaning and can be used for many reasons connected with identity. For example, male adolescents use

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636-482: A very long time in the mouth, which is a major factor in their popularity. Gobstoppers are made by slowly depositing layers onto a core, such as a pressed ball of sugar, a single seed of anise or a gumball . Gobstoppers are made in large, rotating, heated pans in a process known as " hot panning ". The sweets take several weeks to manufacture, as the process of adding liquid sugar is repeated multiple times. Natural and artificial colours and flavors are also added during

689-511: Is called in-group homogeneity. Discrimination between in-groups and out-groups is a matter of favoritism towards an in-group and the absence of equivalent favoritism towards an out-group. Out-group derogation is the phenomenon in which an out-group is perceived as being threatening to the members of an in-group. This phenomenon often accompanies in-group favoritism, as it requires one to have an affinity towards their in-group. Some research suggests that out-group derogation occurs when an out-group

742-450: Is especially awesome and "hype". Words and phrases from popular Hollywood films and television series frequently become slang. One early slang-like code, thieves' cant , was first used in England in around the year 1600 as a way of law-breakers to communicate without the authorities knowing of what they were saying. Slang is usually associated with a particular social group and plays

795-581: Is not consistently applied by linguists; the terms "slang" and "jargon" are sometimes treated as synonymous, and the scope of "jargon" is at times extended to mean all forms of socially-restricted language. It is often difficult to differentiate slang from colloquialisms and even high-register lexicon because slang generally becomes accepted into common vocabulary over time. Words such as "spurious" and "strenuous" were once perceived as slang, but they are now considered general, even high-register words. Some literature on slang even says that mainstream acceptance of

848-426: Is perceived as blocking or hindering the goals of an in-group. It has also been argued that out-group derogation is a natural consequence of the categorization process. People have been shown to be differentially influenced by in-group members. That is, under conditions where group categorization is psychologically salient, people will shift their beliefs in line with in-group social norms . This generally refers to

901-529: The fusiform face area (FFA), an area of the fusiform gyrus located in the inferior temporal cortex of the brain linked to object and face recognition, when viewing same race faces compared to other race faces. Lower activity in the FFA reflects a failure to encode outgroup members at the individual level rather than the categorical level, which comes at the expense of encoding individuating information. This suggests out-group or unfamiliar faces may not be "faces" with

954-620: The neurological level, where in-group favoritism and out-group bias occurs very early in perception. This process can begin by simply viewing a person's face. Research indicates that individuals are faster and more accurate at recognizing faces of ingroup vs. outgroup members. For example, researchers in a cross-race recognition study recorded blood oxygenation level-dependent signal (BOLD) activity from black and white participants while they viewed and attempted to remember pictures of unfamiliar black faces, white faces and objects. They found that participants in this study exhibited greater activity in

1007-656: The 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception, with no single technical usage in linguistics. In its earliest attested use (1756), the word slang referred to the vocabulary of "low" or "disreputable" people. By the early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to usages below the level of standard educated speech. In Scots dialect it meant "talk, chat, gossip", as used by Aberdeen poet William Scott in 1832: "The slang gaed on aboot their war'ly care." In northern English dialect it meant "impertinence, abusive language". The origin of

1060-403: The early 2000s along with the rise in popularity of social networking services, including Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram . This has spawned new vocabularies associated with each new social media venue, such as the use of the term "friending" on Facebook, which is a verbification of "friend" used to describe the process of adding a new person to one's group of friends on the website, despite

1113-450: The existence of an analogous term "befriend". This term is much older than Facebook, but has only recently entered the popular lexicon. Other examples of slang in social media demonstrate a proclivity toward shortened words or acronyms. These are especially associated with services such as Twitter, which (as of November 2017 ) has a 280-character limit for each message and therefore requires a relatively brief mode of expression. This includes

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1166-399: The first to report on the phenomenon of slang in a systematic and linguistic way, postulated that a term would likely be in circulation for a decade before it would be written down. Nevertheless, it seems that slang generally forms via deviation from a standard form. This "spawning" of slang occurs in much the same way that any general semantic change might occur. The difference here is that

1219-422: The floor laughing"), which are widely used in instant messaging on the internet. As subcultures are often forms of counterculture, which is understood to oppose the norm, it follows that slang has come to be associated with counterculture. Slang is often adopted from social media as a sign of social awareness and shared knowledge of popular culture . This type known as internet slang has become prevalent since

1272-399: The game, their versions of what transpired were so starkly different it appeared as though they had watched two totally different games. Some may wonder why in-group favoritism takes place, even in arbitrarily assigned groups where group members have nothing in common other than the group to which they were assigned. Research points to unconscious decision-making processes that takes place at

1325-531: The hippie slang of the 1960s. The word "gig" is now a widely accepted synonym for a concert, recital, or performance of any type. Generally, slang terms undergo the same processes of semantic change that words in the regular lexicon do. Slang often forms from words with previously differing meanings, one example is the often used and popular slang word "lit", which was created by a generation labeled "Generation Z". The word itself used to be associated with something being on fire or being "lit" up until 1988 when it

1378-456: The indexicalized social identifications the former convey. In terms of first and second order indexicality, the usage of speaker-oriented terms by male adolescents indicated their membership to their age group, to reinforce connection to their peer group, and to exclude outsiders. In terms of higher order indexicality, anyone using these terms may desire to appear fresher, undoubtedly more playful, faddish, and colourful than someone who employs

1431-496: The instruments of propaganda ), and the intensity exists along a spectrum from mild to complete dehumanization of the " othered " group (such as through pseudospeciation ). The psychological categorization of people into in-group and out-group members is associated with a variety of phenomena. The following examples have all received a great deal of academic attention. This refers to the fact that under certain conditions, people will prefer and have affinity for one's in-group over

1484-432: The lack of a clear definition, however, Bethany K. Dumas and Jonathan Lighter argue that an expression should be considered "true slang" if it meets at least two of the following criteria: Michael Adams remarks that "[Slang] is liminal language... it is often impossible to tell, even in context, which interests and motives it serves... slang is on the edge." Slang dictionaries, collecting thousands of slang entries, offer

1537-544: The main characters accidentally killing their friend after gagging her with a jawbreaker. In 2003, Taquandra Diggs, a nine-year-old girl in Starke , Florida, US suffered severe burns , allegedly from biting on an exploding Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper that had been refrigerated, left out in the sun, then refrigerated again. Diggs and several other alleged victims' families filed lawsuits against Nestlé for medical bills resulting from plastic surgery as well as pain and suffering;

1590-451: The matters were later settled outside of court for an undisclosed amount. Slang A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases , and linguistic usages ) of an informal register , common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity , exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in

1643-565: The out-group, or anyone viewed as outside the in-group. This can be expressed in one's evaluation of others, linking, allocation of resources, and many other ways. How we perceive the actions of others are also affected by in-group favoritism. People may perceive the same action very differently depending on whether the action was executed by a member of the same group or a member of a different group. In fact, people tend to evaluate actions of their own group or team members much more favorably than those of outgroup members. An illustrative example of

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1696-527: The panning process. The Everlasting Gobstoppers , sold under Nestlé's Willy Wonka Candy Company brand, were first introduced in 1976 by Breaker Confections, and are named after the Everlasting Gobstoppers in Roald Dahl 's children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . In Dahl's story, Everlasting Gobstoppers are purported to last forever. Dahl named the sweet after gobstoppers, which were

1749-519: The perception that group members are similar to one another. An outcome of this is the out-group homogeneity effect. This refers to the perception of members of an out-group as being homogenous, while members of one's in-group are perceived as being diverse, e.g. "they are alike; we are diverse". This is especially likely to occur in regard to negative characteristics. Under certain conditions, in-group members can be perceived as being similar to one another in regard to positive characteristics. This effect

1802-517: The possibility of a Scandinavian origin, suggesting the same root as that of sling , which means "to throw", and noting that slang is thrown language – a quick and honest way to make your point. Linguists have no simple and clear definition of slang but agree that it is a constantly changing linguistic phenomenon present in every subculture worldwide. Some argue that slang exists because we must come up with ways to define new experiences that have surfaced with time and modernity. Attempting to remedy

1855-465: The psychological membership of social groups and categories is associated with a wide variety of phenomena. The terminology was made popular by Henri Tajfel and colleagues beginning in the 1970s during his work in formulating social identity theory . The significance of in-group and out-group categorization was identified using a method called the minimal group paradigm . Tajfel and colleagues found that people can form self-preferencing in-groups within

1908-507: The same as normal, everyday, informal language. Others say that a general test is whether the word has been entered in the Oxford English Dictionary, which some scholars claim changes its status as slang. It is often difficult to collect etymologies for slang terms, largely because slang is a phenomenon of speech, rather than written language and etymologies which are typically traced via corpus . Eric Partridge , cited as

1961-497: The same intensity as in-group faces. Prior research has also shown that the devaluation and dehumanization of outgroup members is exacerbated when the initial encoding and configural processing of an outgroup face is impeded. So not only does this initial encoding process dehumanize outgroup members, it also contributes to a homogeneity effect, whereby outgroup members are perceived as more similar to each other than ingroup members. Categorization of people into social groups increases

2014-588: The semantic point of view, slangy foxy is more loaded than neutral sexy in terms of information provided. That is, for young people foxy means having the quality of: (1) attracting interest, attention, affection, (2) causing desire, (3) excellent or admirable in appearance, and (4) sexually provocative, exciting, etc., whereas sexy only refers to the quality indicated in point (4). Matiello stresses that those agents who identify themselves as "young men" have "genuinely coined" these terms and choose to use them over "canonical" terms —like beautiful or sexy—because of

2067-458: The slang term's new meaning takes on a specific social significance having to do with the group the term indexes. Coleman also suggests that slang is differentiated within more general semantic change in that it typically has to do with a certain degree of "playfulness". The development of slang is considered to be a largely "spontaneous, lively, and creative" speech process. Still, while a great deal of slang takes off, even becoming accepted into

2120-492: The socially preferable or "correct" ways to speak, according to a language's normative grammar and syntactical words, descriptivists focus on studying language to further understand the subconscious rules of how individuals speak, which makes slang important in understanding such rules. Noam Chomsky , a founder of anthropological linguistic thought, challenged structural and prescriptive grammar and began to study sounds and morphemes functionally, as well as their changes within

2173-407: The speed of the hand movements. On average participants judged members of their own teams to be faster, although the hand movements were the exact same speed across the board. Similarly, Hastorf and Cantril conducted a pioneering study in 1954, where students of both Princeton and Dartmouth viewed a contentious football game between their two teams. Although they had watched the same motion picture of

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2226-436: The standard English term "beautiful". This appearance relies heavily on the hearer's third-order understanding of the term's associated social nuances and presupposed use-cases. Often, distinct subcultures will create slang that members will use in order to associate themselves with the group, or to delineate outsiders. Slang terms are often known only within a clique or ingroup . For example, Leet ("Leetspeak" or "1337")

2279-401: The standard lexicon, much slang dies out, sometimes only referencing a group. An example of this is the term "groovy" which is a relic of 1960s and 70s American hippie slang. Nevertheless, for a slang term to become a slang term, people must use it, at some point in time, as a way to flout standard language. Additionally, slang terms may be borrowed between groups, such as the term "gig" which

2332-588: The tendency of groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members, although polarization toward the most central beliefs has also been observed. It has been shown that this effect is related to a psychologically salient in-group and outgroup categorization. In evolutionary psychology , in-group favoritism is seen as an evolved mechanism selected for the advantages of coalition affiliation. It has been argued that characteristics such as gender and ethnicity are inflexible or even essential features of such systems. However, there

2385-412: The terms "foxy" and "shagadelic" to "show their belonging to a band, to stress their virility or their age, to reinforce connection with their peer group and to exclude outsiders, to show off, etc." These two examples use both traditional and nontraditional methods of word formation to create words with more meaning and expressiveness than the more direct and traditional words "sexy" and "beautiful": From

2438-504: The title characters running a variety of scams to earn money to buy the confections. The jawbreakers in the show are depicted as comically oversized, often with a circumference larger than that of the heads of the characters; characters' cheeks would balloon to the same size when these jawbreakers were placed in their mouths. Jawbreakers are also the main subject of one of the show's tie-in video games, Ed, Edd n Eddy: Jawbreakers! The 1999 American teen comedy Jawbreaker centres around

2491-450: The use of hashtags which explicitly state the main content of a message or image, such as #food or #photography. Some critics believe that when slang becomes more commonplace it effectively eradicates the "proper" use of a certain language. However, academic (descriptive) linguists believe that language is not static but ever-changing and that slang terms are valid words within a language's lexicon. While prescriptivists study and promote

2544-605: The way this phenomenon takes place can be demonstrated just by arbitrarily assigning a person to a distinct and objectively meaningless novel group; this alone is sufficient to create intergroup biases in which members of the perceiver's own group are preferentially favored. This phenomenon was demonstrated in an empirical study conducted by Molenberghs and colleagues in 2013. In the study, participants were arbitrarily divided into two teams where they watched videos of individuals of competing teams and individuals from their own team perform hand actions. Participants were then asked to judge

2597-553: The word "slang" is unclear. It was first used in print around 1800 to refer to the language of the disreputable and criminal classes in London, though its usage likely dates back further. A Scandinavian origin has been proposed (compare, for example, Norwegian slengenavn , which means "nickname"), but based on "date and early associations" is discounted by the Oxford English Dictionary . Jonathon Green , however, agrees with

2650-454: Was featured in his 1964 children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . A gobstopper usually consists of a number of layers, each dissolving to reveal a different colour, and sometimes flavour. A gobstopper is too hard to bite without risking dental damage (hence the name "jawbreaker"). Gobstoppers have been sold in traditional sweet shops for at least a century, often by weight from jars. As gobstoppers dissolve very slowly, they last

2703-410: Was first used in writing to indicate a person who was drunk in the book "Warbirds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator". Since this time "lit" has gained popularity through Rap songs such as ASAP Rocky's "Get Lit" in 2011. As the popularity of the word has increased so too has the number of different meanings associated with the word. Now "lit" describes a person who is drunk and/or high, as well as an event that

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2756-445: Was originally coined by jazz musicians in the 1930s and then borrowed into the same hippie slang of the 1960s. 'The word "groovy" has remained a part of subculture lexicon since its popularization. It is still in common use today by a significant population. The word "gig" to refer to a performance very likely originated well before the 1930s, and remained a common term throughout the 1940s and 1950s before becoming vaguely associated with

2809-494: Was originally popular only among certain internet subcultures such as software crackers and online video gamers. During the 1990s, and into the early 21st century, however, Leet became increasingly commonplace on the internet, and it has spread outside internet-based communication and into spoken languages. Other types of slang include SMS language used on mobile phones, and "chatspeak", (e.g., " LOL ", an acronym meaning "laughing out loud" or "laugh out loud" or ROFL , "rolling on

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