Sociolinguistics of Slang or Youth Language (スラングや若者言葉の社会言語学)
社会言語学者や人類言語学者は、さまざまなコミュニティで言語がどのように使われているかを研究しています。前の記事で述べたように、話し言葉は書き言葉は異なることが多いです。言語研究の分野の一つに、若者の言語コミュニティと若者言葉やスラングなどがあります。若者が使う単語や語句は、時間とともに変化していきます。今皆さんが普通に使っている言葉の中には過去にはスラングと考えられていたものがあります。ということは、今スラングだと思われているものも、いずれは標準語になる日が来るかもしれませんね。
Sociolinguists often study how people use language to show relationships among members of society. Youth language is used with friends, to make friends, to show you are a friendly nice person, to show a personal bond or solidarity, in casual contexts. It is not used in most formal or academic contexts or in formal academic writing.
Japanese is interesting because young people are often creating new forms of words. One way this is done is by shortening longer words or phrases. So, for example, はずい (hazui, shy or embarrassed) is shortened from 恥ずかしい (hazukashii), with the same meaning. むずい (muzui, difficult) is shortened from 難しい (muzukashii). きもい (kimoi, unpleasant, disagreeable, creepy) from 気持ちが悪い (kimochi ga warui). マジ (maji, really or honestly) is shorted from 真面目 (majime, serious). めんどい (mendoi, troublesome, tedious) from 面倒くさい (mendokusai).
Some slang comes from social media or other online writing. In Japanese, for example, 888 signals approval because it is pronounced as ぱちぱちぱち, which means “clap clap clap”. Another example from Japanese is wwww to mean laughter, or in shorter form ww, (warawara) which means something similar to the English version of lol (laugh out loud) or rofl (rolling on floor laughing). We can also use numbers with English, so b4 means before, gr8 means great, l8 means late. We can also combine letters and numbers, so, CUL8R means see you later.
Many words you see in online writing are from the first letters of words. For example, TLDR is short for too long, didn't read, in response to being sent a large block of text. YOLO means, you only live once, about something especially daring. AFAIK means, as far as I know, for situations where you give information that is to the best of your knowledge. ELI5 stands for, explain like I'm 5 years old, when you are asking for information that is very easy to understand.
