• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.23
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• pp.321-349
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to examine slangs used in contemporary Russian. In any kind of social group, there are special jargons used to satisfy special needs of verbal communication and express individual affiliation compared with neighboring parties, apart from standard languages popularized in each society. Some of these jargons belong to a category of common usual language, while others are temporarily popularized but disappear. It is undeniable that these languages are a product of our social language phenomena in addition to the presence of standard language. Thus, it is very essential to investigate and understand these linguistic phenomena as well as standard languages. In this study, Chapter 1 examines the definition of slang as one of most important topic with a view to achieve desired goals hereof. Next, Chapter 2 sets the scope of subjects for this study. Chapter 3 subdivides subjects into each group by topic for analysis within the scope as set in the previous chapter. This analysis gives a basis on which we can understand linguistic phenomena and identify any psychological conditions of people who use languages. This study comes to its conclusions with summary of findings from data collection and analysis.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.31
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• pp.241-262
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• 2013

In this study, we select and analyze the slang that is represented in Elistratov's "Dictionary of Russian slang". Through the above analysis, some conclusions were drawn as follows: First, as a social and psychological phenomenon appears universal in all languages, the study of slang generates strict criteria for the analysis. Unlike literary language, listed in the dictionary slang expressions can become obsolete for their short period of usage by native speakers. Therefore, in the following research of the actual data, we have to validate words targeted for analysis. Second, as the result of the analysis it is metaphor for the most part studied rather than metonymy. The semantic derivations as a result of metonymy are used very frequently in real life. But in this study we mainly analyze words, therefore the number of words was less in metonymy than was expected. Third, the basic types of metaphor are appeared as similarity by form, function, and location, and there are varieties of intervening of subjectivity in similarity of emotional impression. Fourth, the metonymy is divided into three cases: the part meaning the whole, the whole meaning the part, and some thing meaning the reality of where it exists. Fifth, not only literary language, but also slang as the 'transitional process' is the most active way of development of new meanings, and there are two methods to transfer main meaning to second meaning.