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Manhattan In The Mirror Of Slang Analysis

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Manhattan in the Mirror of Slang/ New York City Life and Popular Speech New York City Life and Popular Speech The hundreds, even thousands, of words and phrases of slang and other popular speech about life in New York, especially Manhattan, are a treasure trove of social and cultural history. A distinctive word culture of social life in the city flowed from the modern cycle of urban growth that started significantly in the 1840s. These words about the city, individually and taken together, retell in a new voice the story of metropolitan life down to the 1950s, when so much national attention began to turn away from the culture of the old metropolitan core and towards the suburbs. Many of these word images of the city are still in …show more content…

Slang shares indistinct boundaries with other informal levels of vocabulary, such as colloquial usages, subgroup argots and regional, class, and ethnic dialects. Slang is such a slippery concept that the idea of “popular speech” a broader concept that includes slang, is not preferred by many writers on language. Popular speech, most simply put, may be said to be those words and phrases that are not standard, formal or academic, or at least were not in their bloom. The related idea of “street speech” lays stress on the urban side of popular …show more content…

The subgroup or subcultural origins of general slang include social classes, genders, sexual interests, all majority and minority ethnic groups, regional groups, age groups, many occupational specialties, a host of life-style and consumer cultures, and all the so-called deviant subcultures. Everyone, especially city people, belongs to a variety of these overlapping subgroups. Some of the most intense subcultures have their own dialects or varieties of English that exist in degrees of distinction from standard speech. Each variety, and most are merely emerging, may include distinctive pronunciations, special words or special meanings of ordinary words, or even grammatical differences. There is no single New York dialect or accent of English, but there are as many varieties of speech as there are major social

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Describe the current event(s) that it is linked to. The author, Willy Staley, seems to have derived inspiration from an article he read about the gentrification of a food called chopped cheese. In his article Staley mentions many phenomenons that have been present in popular culture recently. These are tiny houses, “raw water,” “van life,” and the idea of being a good gentrifier.

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Erik Larson uses this simile and strong words that place a vivid image to further emphasize how the city continues to get dirtier as time goes by and more people move to Chicago. Larson wrote how as the city grew in population and in size the more dangerous and filthy the city became. The simile “like pus from a wound” paints a vivid image in the reader 's mind on how dirty the streets of Chicago are by using a simile that the readers would understand. Furthermore, Larson also uses strong words such as “oozed,” “muck,” and “swelled” to further paint an imagery of the contaminated streets and to show the continued growth of the filth in Chicago. This simile further helps Larson create a better image of how the city of Chicago has become contaminated.

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New York, Scribner, 2006, page 245. Like Jeannette Walls, my first glimpse of the city sent a rush of adrenaline through my body. The idea of living in New York City was nerve wracking since city life was so different compared to living in a sheltered town like White Rock. When I was 11, my family and I moved to the city due to my father receiving a job offer there as a professor. Several weeks passed before I got somewhat used to living there, and I occasionally hoped people didn’t judge me for being

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(Walser, 157). The issue with this one is that the artists would use the slang in their music, but the fact that it was used a lot in the black population and the fact that they used to replace words made it frowned upon.

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Slang remains a bright part of language in any era, including the

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To begin with, this actually happens to us but we just do not see it that manner. If your group of friends starts saying a new slang, you will most likely start using the new slang too, even if you think it is the dumbest word to ever be created. Groupthink, a term first

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Language, though primarily used as a means of communication, can be used to form community-like bonds with additions to and evolutions of different regional, cultural, racial, etc., vernaculars. What is one community’s “how are you?” is another’s “what’s good?” or “‘sup?” Those terms are understood and accepted almost unilaterally in their respective communities, but beyond those borders, they may or may not be. The push to broaden mandating “proper English pronunciation” is a direct attack on those communities that do not fall in the narrow definition of those whose community is deemed “correct” by mainstream society. When this is enforced, its roots are usually found in racism/white supremacy.

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Finally, for mainly historical reasons, certain English dialects or varieties have been viewed more positively than others. Thus, Standard English, because of its association with being the national English language, has been perceived as the most prestigious of English varieties. However, the fact that some dialects and accents are seen to be more prestigious than others is more a reflection of judgements based on social, rather than linguistic, criteria. As society changes, so too do attitudes towards dialect, accent and variational use of English generally.

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In the use of colloquial language, writers will try to connect with their readers. However, the latter does not end in narrowing the gap between conversation and academic

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