Adams's book is the first comprehensive engagement with American slang in nearly a decade. Organized into four chapters representing a diverse yet complementary set of issues in the study of slang, the book considers the subject in its social, aesthetic, and cognitive contexts, proposing what Adams calls a theory of slang (6). The book is useful both for reference and teaching. Its theoretical contribution is strong enough to make it valuable in graduate courses on lexicography, English language, and sociolinguistics, but the style of writing—sharp, witty, and with interesting and at times humorous examples—makes Slang accessible to undergraduate students as well.
Drawing on numerous contemporary and historical examples, Ch. 1, “What is it?: The essentials of slang,” grapples mainly with definitions. It differentiates slang (language of “being”) from jargon (language of “purpose”), enumerates slang's social purposes (e.g. identify group membership, oppose authority, draw social limits), and sets forth a practice-based framework in which slang draws on culturally embedded aesthetic, linguistic, and social forms of knowledge. Ch. 2, “Fitting in: Social dynamics of slang,” focuses on the use of slang in the promotion of “social and personal identity” (59). The chapter attends to the appropriation of African-American slang by mainstream American culture, the use of slang by men and women, and the use of slang in youth cultures. Slang is considered in light of lexical processes such as clipping and borrowing and in the context of familiar sociolinguistic constructs such as the speech community and communities of practice.
Ch. 3, “Standing out: Aesthetic dimensions of slang,” considers slang as a poetic form, detailing poetic dimensions such as rhyme, metaphor, and alliteration, which, according to Adams, challenge the social and structural norms of language. Much of the chapter is devoted to infixing, which, for the most part, is slang in English. Infixing can be aesthetically pleasing and socially functional at the same time: “ma” in edumacation, for example, produces a subtle form of mockery. A consideration of two popular slang aesthetics, “the raunch” and “the hip,” concludes the chapter. In the final chapter, “It's all in your head: The cognitive aspects of slang,” Adams presses the reader to look beyond the superficial view of slang articulated in much of contemporary linguistics and to instead consider the role of slang in human cognition, language acquisition, and, more generally, the human condition. The chapter usefully folds linguistic practices such as gossip, speech acts, and language play, all of which may recruit slang terms, into a loose social-cognitive/evolutionary framework, anchoring slang alongside other, already-established forms of human linguistic behavior. The chapter ends by reading slang, and, more generally, poetic language, into both Chomskyan and Jakobsonian frameworks, a discussion that will be of great use to any reader interested in linguistic theory, cognitive linguistics, and linguistic historiography.
In every chapter, Slang is rich with examples, etymologies, and folk etymologies taken from a varied archive ranging from contemporary popular culture (e.g. The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Colbert Report) to literature and reference texts. The depth of the argumentation and the richness of the writing and the archive make Slang a text that is at once highly readable and theoretically productive.
