Slang is a particular language that is used in a professional setting or in another specific context.
Argot is a French term, accepted by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), which refers to jargon : a particular type of language used by the members of a group. Slang is shared by those who are dedicated to certain tasks or tasks, sometimes with the intention of making it difficult for people outside the group to understand communications.
For example: "I did not understand exactly what the surgical intervention would be like since the surgeon used medical slang that was too specific for me" , "By working for years as a street vendor, I learned the street slang of the neighborhood" , "In Mexican slang it is "He says chela to beer."
Slang is used by a group of individuals who have certain characteristics in common : it may be their job, their place of origin, their hobbies or their social class, to name a few possibilities. Terms usually arise when there is no specific translation of a concept and, over the years, can be incorporated into general language .
Examples of use of slang
Criminals often use slang as coded language , although many of the terms later become common use throughout society . An Argentine thief can point out: "When the yuta fell, I grabbed the prickly pear, started pulling and went down to a cobani." The expression refers to the fact that, when the police ( yuta ) arrived at a place, the criminal took the revolver ( chumbo ), started shooting and killed an agent ( cobani ).
In journalistic slang , a reporter can comment to a colleague: "For the live one, I prepared a rehash." In this case, you are mentioning that, for the broadcast that will be carried out live, you plan to refer again to a topic that has been previously discussed.
Taking into account the examples presented so far, we can clearly distinguish two uses of slang: protecting certain information from inappropriate disclosure ; streamline communication in a specialized professional field. In the first group we find cases that range from delinquency to the phenomenon that occurs in certain age groups, especially in adolescence, when human beings usually access a language that is difficult for adults to understand.
Criminals often use slang to hide the content of their messages.
Its usefulness in the professional field
As long as the intention is not to harm anyone, using slang to prevent people outside our group from understanding our conversations does not seem to have anything wrong; In fact, if we are working on a project for a competition, for example, it is more than adequate to reduce the chances of plagiarism .
Within the professional world, slang inevitably appears, both throughout the initial training stage and during different experiences in the workplace. This set of words and expressions that may come from a foreign language, or be deformations of local terms, usually make no sense to people outside the field.
Slang in programming
In the world of computer programming, for example, we speak of " source " to refer to the source code , and it is usually pronounced surs , without any respect for the English phonetics of the original term . The verb " code " is also often used as a synonym for programming , typing or switching to the computer , although the dictionary defines it as "slamming your elbows."
For newcomers to a given field , the slang can be overwhelming; In fact, this can be accentuated if veterans use it with the intention of marking territory. In any case, if someone feels a genuine passion for their profession, sooner or later they will learn the necessary terms to communicate with their colleagues and will leave behind the fears of the first day, when they felt that they would never be able to understand them.