Pod Academy

Podcast produced by Lee Millam Slang.  In this podcast Tony Thorne, former Head of the Language Centre, now Visiting Consultant, at King’s College, London and author of the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, looks at what slang is, how it's used, where it comes from and what words are being used as part of our everyday language. Slang should be easy to define, but in fact no one has ever come up with a satisfactory definition.  Slang is one of the most informal varieties of language, it is usually new, controversial, exotic, often naughty and deviant (or pretends to be). Probably all languages have had slang, but it was not recorded until the 18th century.  It was marginal and taboo, the language of criminals, beggars and tramps. It is a language that keep the outsiders out (parents, police etc) and using it makes you an insider, part of an exclusive elite.  It is often developed in closed communities (prisons, public schools), and by private groups (taxi drivers, soldiers, sailors, criminals)