[tlhIngan Hol] Is idiom the same as slang ?

[Will Martin]

This is a great discussion with impressively clear contributions.

Meanwhile, I’d like to distinguish a difference between slang and jargon.

Both involve words that are meaningful within a limited group of people and likely misunderstood by most people outside the group. Meanwhile, if a patient learns medical jargon and uses it in a discussion with a doctor, nobody has a problem with it. If an older “uncool” person tries to use a young person’s slang in a discussion with the young person, it comes across as fake, dishonest, etc. because that older person doesn’t belong to the people who use that slang.

Basically, slang exists in order to delineate social boundaries, especially if the slang users consider themselves oppressed by outsiders. It is to language what a cigarette is to high school kids standing together, smoking outside the school building on a break. Use of it proves that you are in the group.

But jargon is typically short-hand for long, technical terms that are new enough and specific enough that they have not yet developed into reasonably brief terms. Sometimes, jargon evolves into common use words. Fewer people will recognize “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation” as a meaningful term, until you call it a “laser”. The long version was jargon to describe something that had not previously existed, and for which there was no word or phrase, so they made up the phrase, which was jargon, understood only by those who worked with it.

Later, they shortened it to an acronym, laser. Originally, it was probably LASER, but as its use became more common, it became a laser. Ditto for radar. We use linguistic jargon here frequently, and most of us are not seeking a slang-like coolness when we do it. We use the terms because they are meaningful to us and they describe things (like deixis) that otherwise require a paragraph or two to explain.

So, idioms might accidentally work like slang to help identify someone who does not speak a language that uses the idiom as a primary language, but that’s not its mission. It’s just a clever thing a person said once and someone weirdly understood it and repeated it and then EVERYBODY who uses the language uses it, for no obvious reason. Slang is an intentional language device for separating people into classes. Jargon is technical shorthand so that people who work together in a technical field have a clue what each other is talking about without having to constantly reinvent descriptions for specific things they talk about repeatedly, without concerns about whether or not the general public will understand it.

Modern communication media make jargon common use at a faster rate than it has in history. How many of us don’t know the meaning of PTSD? Most of us probably know the abbreviation for that stupid Angle-of-Attack system that’s killed over 300 people on the Boeing 737 Max 8s.

For that matter, most people know what a Boeing 737 Max 8 is, even though that was jargon until the past couple months. Technical vocabulary is exploding in English, even as certain technical benchmarks are becoming permanent.

You can thank me for deleting the rant that followed that last statement… Off topic.

See? I’m getting better. I’m really getting better.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

> On Apr 8, 2019, at 11:42 AM, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> First, {Soj} is not slang, it's idiomatic.
> 
>> On Apr 8, 2019, at 06:40, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
>>> Is there a difference between an idiomatic  use of a word and a slang
>>> word ?
> 
> Am 08.04.2019 um 14:34 schrieb Daniel Dadap:
>> While both idiom and slang may use existing words to mean things other
>> than their literal meanings, use of slang is generally restricted to a
>> particular region and/or subculture, while idiom tends to be more
>> generally used. Slang may also use newly invented words, while idiom
>> must use words that already have a non-idiomatic meaning.
> 
> Daniel has explained this very well. I wanted to say the same, but give
> some examples.
> 
> Idioms are phrases like "it's raining cats and dogs". That means, using
> existing words in a phrase that conveys a different meaning. Usually
> most people know such expressions, depending on their education (not
> everyone knows all idioms of a language, but some are just known.)
> 
> Slang on the other hand, can be used by a limited group of people who
> use incorrect words to refer to a thing, but anyone outside group will
> not understand. Such a group can be young people, doctors, scientists
> etc. (in surgery and hospitals, they use abbreviations all the time, and
> have words to refer to patients without them understanding it.)
> 
> There are also slang terms that even everybody knows, but which are just
> not the clean way to say, like in the US saying "ten bucks" instead of
> "ten dollars" or "it's all fucked-up".
> 
> --
> Lieven L. Litaer
> aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
> http://www.klingonisch.de
> http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Slang
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> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
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