Tropes of Slang

This article describes a class of speech varieties whose members have traditionally been called “slang” or “argot” in a large and long-standing literature. Despite the size of this literature, the characteristics of these speech varieties have remained obscure to those who purport to study them. The thing called “slang” has traditionally been reduced to the repertoires that count as samples of the thing without attention to either ( a ) the reflexive processes through which samples of the thing come to be differentiated from other discursive behaviors or ( b ) the social-interpersonal processes through which slang expressions undergo change in form and significance for different members of a language community. This article examines these reflexive social processes by considering examples from a large number of languages and historical periods. It offers a comparative framework for studying the forms of social life that such discursive behaviors enable or displace.