Abstract
Slang, as the most mentioned representative word form of the informal vocabulary, occupies a prominent role in contemporary society. It has become the second language of any democratic country. Everybody uses it even if one pretends that he has never used it. It is a veritable issue and it will appear more actual if we take a look at its depth – at its origin, its roots and see how slang achievedstep by step its actual status.
Now we will go through its history beginning with its origonal usage and will pay attention to the details while talking about slang's appearance in European countries and the USA. The picture that we will get will help us to realize slang's complexity and what is really important – its omnipresence.
The earliest example of the word hitherto ‘discovered' occurs in Toldervy's ‘History of Two Orphans', published in 1756. One of the characters in this story is a man who, “in return for the numerous lies' which he told, was called: the cannon-traveler ; and it is said of him that “he had been upon the town, and knew the slang well.” It is not clear whether “slang” here has its modern sense, or whether it means the ways of fast life in London. A more unequivocal instance, two years later in date, is quoted in J. C. Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1864) from a book entitled Jonathan Wild's ‘Advice to his Successor', apparently one of the many catch penny publications that were called forth by the popularity of Fielding's burlesque romances.
No copy of this book is in the British Museum or the Bodleian Library, and inquiries have failed to discover any trace of its existence; but there is no reason to doubt that Hotten had seen it. The passage, as quoted by him, is as follows: Let proper Nurses be assigned to take care of these Babes of Grace (i.e. young thieves). The Master who teaches them should be a man. Well versed in the Cant Language, commonly called the Slang Patter, in which they should by all means excel.”
Four years later, in 1762, the word is found with a different and now obsolete meaning, in Foote's play ‘The Orators'. A fast young Oxford man, invited to attend a lecture on oratory, is asked, “Have you not seen the bills?” He replies, “What, about the lectures? Aye, but that's all slang, I suppose.” Here the word seems, to be equivalent to “humbug.” In the 1st edition of Hugh Kelly's comedy ‘The School for Wives', there is a passage (omitted in some of the later reprints) in which one of a company of shapers, who pretend to be foreigners and speak broken English, says: There's a language called slang, that we sometimes talk in. . . . It's a little rum tongue, that we understand among von another.
Francis Grose's ‘Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' (1785) has the entry “Slang, the cant language”; and after this, instances of the word are abundant. In the early part of the 19th century, it appears in literature chiefly as a general term of condemnation, for “low-lived” and undignified modes of expression.
