Storia della Lingua Inglese g g Lecture 8 Modulo 2
Transcript
Storia della Lingua Inglese g g Lecture 8 Modulo 2
Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Storia della Lingua g Inglese g Lecture 8 Modulo 2 DOTT.SSA MARIA IVANA LORENZETTI Favourite Themes in Slang Sexuality Bodily functions Intoxication by alcohol or drugs Violent actions of various kinds Money Death Deception Criminal activity Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 Weakness of mind or character Positive or negative evaluation of people of different classes and groups Racial Ethnic Sexual Regional Socioeconomic occupational 1 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 The Polyfunctionality of the Domain of Food in slang The 5 senses are very important as vehicles of metaphors in the creation of new meanings and expressions i Food is a very productive field, in that it appeals to taste, smell, sight and touch Food terms are used to indicate Money: cabbage, lettuce, kale Parts of the body: cabbage head; nuts; cauliflower ear People: cold fish, fish frog, frog honey, honey sweety pie General situations and attitudes: to receive a chewing out; to be unable to swallow another’s story; to ask what’s cooking, or it boils down to what? Drunkness: boiled, fried, pickled The Domain of Sexuality Slang words for sex carry little emotional connotation and express naked desire or connotation, mechanical acts. They are often cynical anc ‘tough’ Sex and food: subconscious relation between sex and food Sexual parts:Banana; cherry; Attractive people: honey, peach, cookie Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 2 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 The Domain of Sexuality (2) Sex is also frequently associated to deception betrayal and cheating deception, I got fucked Fuck you; screw you Confucion, screwed up, snafu (situation normal all fucked up) FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition Success and sexual energy are related in slang, in that thwarted sexual energy will result in personal disaster Influences on Slang Military sources: U.S. participation in World War I and II expanded the armed forces to nearly 5 million men and forced the formation of countless networks of individuals from different regions and social classes. The spread of military jargon was amplified by mass media Snafu (situation normal – all fucked up) ‘a positive situation suddenly turning to negative’ negative Blitz; sweat it out; chew out; pissed off Nam ‘Vietnam’ from the Vietnam War Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 3 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Influences on Slang (2) Cowboy slang: in the 19th century Cowpunch Bronco-buster B b t Dogey ‘a runted or motherless calf’ Jazz Jam-session Jive Killer-diller Black English Funky Dig Man “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger The novel was published in 1951 and tells the story of hiss you o young gp protagonist, otago st, Holden o de Cau Caulfield, e d, a sixteen-year-old boy. Holden narrates his story in the first-person and using a very colloquial style. The story takes place in December 1949, just before Christmas holidays. He’s a student at Pencey Prep High School in Pennsylvania, y and after changing g g three different schools for his poor performance, he plans to secretly leave school. His decision is induced by his awareness to be surrounded by phonies, hypocrite roommates, professors and adults in general. Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 4 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger (2) He escapes school and spends 3 days of g in New York,, meeting g several wandering peculiar characters and escaping from all of them in the end. He’s emotionally divided between the duty of attending school and his apathy and complete absence of any aspiration. His only wish would be to be a catcher in the rye, an imaginary guardian of numerous children running and playing in a rye field on the edge of a cliff. Metaphorically his only aspiration is to become an heroic character, whose mere task is just to save children from falling into the abyss of adulthood “The Catcher in the Rye”: the Language The language in the novel mirrors the dichotomy the protagonist feels, feels i.e. i e a contrast between teenagehood and maturity and slang offers the chance to create a secret code, where rules and conventions are just shared by the young people His language is the language of 1950s alienated teens full of vernacular, vernacular scholastic jargon and slang terms employed to describe the protagonist’s actions and thoughts, using stream of consciousness Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 5 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 “The Catcher in the Rye”: the Language Salinger’s peculiar language, rich in slangy constructions repetitions and vulgarisms constructions, vulgarisms, deliberately breaks any constituted rule of “good writing prose” It surprisingly imitates oral youngsters’ speech and so it includes all young 1950s American speakers’ expressions which find no description speakers within grammatical English Standards Extragrammatical Expressions Extra-grammatical slangy formations are ccharacterized a acte ed by tthe e co contemporary te po a y presence p ese ce o of existent and nonexistent English terms I’m the one that’s flunking out of the goddam place and you’re asking me to write you your goddam composition − I said Very common vulgar interjection originated from the union of God and damned/damn, producing a popular curse that can be viewed as example of partial blend. The first base god is unvaried, but the second base damn undergoes a final clipping (damned/damn > dam) Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 6 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Extragrammatical Expressions (2) Yeah, I know. The thing is though. I’ll be up the creek if I don’t get it in. Be a buddy. Be a buddyroo. Okay? The colloquial Th ll i l noun buddy b dd is i lilinked k d tto th the extra-grammatical t ti l suffix –roo. Buddy derives from the noun bud, and has maintained its nominal status, despite the addition of the suffix -y. Buddy could be viewed as a diminutive and hypocoristic version of the slang noun bud, probably originated in Black English as a way to address a friend of either sex or “a stranger whose name is not known” (Lighter, 1994: 287) a buddy is a friend, an associate and so is a buddyroo, which could be interpreted as its variant typically used in the Navy j jargon (Li (Lighter, ht 1994) 1994). The suffix -roo, typical of American slang formations, is commonly used to create jocular and “non-serious connoted variants” of existing words Extragrammatical Expressions (3) “I went and got her dress for her. She put it on and all, and then she picked up her polo coat off the bed. – So long, crumb bum – she said crumb-bum, Example of back-formation. A slang noun crumb has been back-formed from an adjective crumby. Compound noun formed by the term crumb, which is back-formed from the adjective crumby, and the word bum, an Americanism used to describe “a tramp, a homeless person.”, preserving and reinforcing the original adjectival meaning of something of “very very poor quality.” quality. Crumb has acquired the meanings of “a filthy [...] useless or despicable person”, but it is also a term for indicating the head and the male genitalia In Italian it was rendered as “mezza calzetta” Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 7 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Extragrammatical Expressions (4) “I don’t smoke, – [Sunny] said. She had a tiny wheeny-whiny ee y y voice. o ce You ou cou could d hardly a d y hear ea her” e Ablaut reduplicative, formation produced by the alternation of the same vowels, thus creating an echo-word with an “apophonic” effect, similar to that produced by a rhyme It’s formed by a right-hand base (“whiny”) and a nonexistent word (“wheeny”) ( wheeny ) which provides a reduplicative effect, alternating its vocalic sounds. The result of this combination of sounds is an accentuation of something as particularly tiny and also whiny like a child Fanciful Expressions They are the best manifestation of native speakers’ linguistic creativity, not following any standard grammatical i l pattern neither ih b belonging l i to any determined conceptual path She sings it very Dixieland and whore-house, and it doesn’t sound at all mushy Dixie’s land is the title of a song written by a minstrel, Ohioan Daniel D. Emmett (1859). It became very popular and started to be used to indicate the typical musical culture of the southern states of the United States This slang term, implies a reference to the characteristic manner of singing of black singers Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 8 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Fanciful Expressions (2) The show wasn’t as bad as some I’ve seen. [ ] The husband goes to war [..] war, and the wife has this brother that’s a drunkard” A common English term indicating a drunk person or a person who regularly drinks alcohol, as a consequence of an addiction. It probably derives from the union of the past participle drunk with the adverb hard Expletives Expletives, i.e. swear words represent some of the most important stylistic features of the novel. Their frequency of occurrence essentially contributes a rather slangy informal register which characterizes the protagonist’s way of speaking and opens the world of American 1950s teen slang It was icy as hell and I damn near fell I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age Besides, I know [that stuff] annoyed the hell out of old Ackley What the hellya reading? You may be getting the hell out of here, but I have to stick around long enough to graduate Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 9 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Expletives (2) What the heck did you tell that crazy Maurice you wanted a girl for, then? If you just had a goddam operation on your goddam wuddayacallit. wuddayacallit Huh? Huh?” Expletives like goddam, damn/darn and heck alternate themselves in almost each sentence in the novel The protagonist’s same critical behaviour is reflected by Salinger’s continuous usage of idiomatic slangy expressions formed by goddam/damn/darn (not to give a goddam/damn/darn) and hell + a wide range of different syntactical y structures ((to g get the hell out of/ to g give someone the hell/just for the hell of something/to figure the hell with/adjective + as hell/the hell/helluva/hellya) Bad Words And you hair’s so lovely. – Lovely my ass It ends up with everybody at this long dinner table laughing their asses off because the great Dane comes in with a bunch of puppies The only way she could go around with a basket collecting dough would be if everybody kissed her ass for her You g give me a royal y p pain in the ass,, if you y want to know the truth. – Boy, did she hit the ceiling when I said that Boy, I can’t stand that sonuvabitch. He’s one sonuvabitch I really can’t stand Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 10 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Metaphorical Slangy Expressions In the novel, numerous slangy and colloquial expressions are used in order to establish a direct cultural link between the protagonist and the audience The locution to hit the ceiling, literally meaning “to strike the ceiling of a room or of a means of transport p with yyour head,, as a consequence of a hard push”, has a figurative metaphorical meaning: to “get very angry and fly into a rage Metaphorical Slang My bother D.B.’s a writer and all, and my bother Allie, the one that died, that I told you about, was a wizard. i d I’m I’ the h only l really ll d dumb b one Exaggeration Then he smacked me. I didn’t even try to get out of the way or duck or anything. All I felt was this terrific punch in my stomach Metaphorical connection between a typical behaviour of ducks ducks, ii.e.to e to dive downwards into water for catching fish or other food, and a human movement: that of “avoiding [a blow] by moving your head or body quickly downwards. Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 11 Storia della Lingua Inglese - Dott.ssa Maria Ivana Lorenzetti AA 20012/13 Metaphorical Slang (2) Maybe I don’t! Maybe you don’t, either, – old Sally said. We both hated each other’s guts by that time It evokes k th the metaphorical t h i l iimage off h hating ti someone’s ’ intestines, i.e. hating someone very deeply, a hatred that graphically involves even someone’s body. In the novel, the implications of this slangy expression are deliberately exaggerated in order to achieve an ironical and funny effect I certainly started to feel like a prize horse’s ass, though, sitting there all by myself. There wasn’t anything to do except p smoke and drink It vividly depicts a negative feeling: that of being “extremely tired, [..] sick, worn out (un emerito cretino) Compound-Adjectives and Nouns Pimpy-looking/Whory-looking/ vomitylooking/scraggy looking/ dumpy looking/scraggy-looking/ dumpy-looking/ looking/ show-off looking Fat-assed/ half-assed Show-off bastard Madman stuff Whore house Lecture 08 – 20/05/2013 12
Documenti analoghi
Storia della Lingua Inglese g g Lecture 2
attachments home to their own country; and to
inspire them with the pride of national character”
“It is not only important, but in a degree necessary,
that the people of this country should have an...