За жаргона интердисиплинарно
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Slang

Summary/Abstract: Various aspects of slang are placed in the focus of the numerous existing definitions of the phenomenon in Western and Bulgarian sources. Some of the mentioned characteristics, however, seem to be incompatible with each other. The article points to such inconsistencies and offers as a solution to associate the conflicting features to two different phenomena, or stages, in the life of slang vocabulary: a) the formation of slang, which belongs strictly to speech and is a type of language behaviour, and b) the use of slang as just one of the possible registers available in language. A crucial fact supporting the distinction is that less than mere 10 percent of the slang vocabulary in speech penetrates the colloquial style of language. The speakers of b) are by default different from the speakers of a), and greatly outnumber them.

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