Chapter 3. Investigation

My research consists of 3 parts. In the first part I have looked through modern dictionaries to find out the percent of slang words in them. In the second part I have examined the book “Dandelion wine”, which was written by Ray Bradbury. I had made a statistics of using slang in literature. Finally, students of the 10 form were asked according to their knowledge of English slang and I have made tables and diagrams, which illustrate the results.

1. Dictionaries

For my research “The etymological dictionary of the English language” (down dictionary) was used first. I found 3500 words with the connection to slang in this dictionary. It should also be said that all dictionary has 12750 words.It is nearly 28% from all the words.

The diagram includes information about the contain of dictionary. Slang words must be sorted into several groups:

“Talking” group. Here are words that can be used in the common language every day.

“Rarely used” group. Here are words that can be used not so often than others. They are used by people of some parts of the country and some of the professional slang words.

“Teenage” group includes words that are used by teens.

Diagram below illustrates the percent of slang words in the dictionary.

Diag.1

According to the facts we can sum up that slang becomes more useful in the language, because of its importance in the life of teenagers. In 2015 6 new dictionaries of slang words, grammar rules and using standards were printed. Furthermore, I should mention that slang is not just the abbreviations, which are used in e-mails, but also it has the metaphorical meaning and can be used every day. According to statistics that we can be found in the “Online journal of Oxford” more than 67% of people try to explain one idiom by using other one.

To sum up, slang is being explored in science nowadays. A lot of new articles talking about the slang, definition of it, translation, explaining of its importance etc., can be easily found.

The basic of the research below was based on the article of L.N. Parkhomenko. In his work it was said that the whole language has approximately 1,240,000 words. To the “Oxford dictionary of English” there are 3600 slang words, 8600 profession slang words and 1900 unused words.

According to the information above, it can be said that the whole language has nearly 14 100 slang words. It is nearly 1% from the all language.

2. Usage of slang in the novel “Dandelion Wine” by Ray Bradbury

In modern books slang words and metaphors appear more regularly than in the literature of 13 or 15 century. The cause of it is the development and dissemination of modern words into the people’s lives. To show you this appearance I have chosen the book “Dandelion Wine” written by Ray Bradbury. I would like to give you bright examples of some interesting slang and colloquialisms that I have found in this book with translation into the Russian language:

Every trump and trill – Каждое движение

You can say that again – Конечно!

Everybody who was anybody – Все кто имел вес

What’s got into her? – Что на нее нашло?

We’re ever Stephen – Мы квиты

Windows gaping – Окна нараспашку

Scare heck out – Испугать до смерти

Spit it out – Выкладывай

Get dander up – Заводиться

Tie smt in a neat packet – Разжевывать информацию

Beat smt – Убежать, смыться

To the tongue – К слову

Secours – Спасите

After reading the book the table has been made. It illustrates the percent of usage slang words in the book.

Words in the book	Pages in the book	Slang words	Words on the page	% of slang in the book	Slang words on the page
76055	264	1144	288	1,5%	4,3≈ 4

Firstly, I have counted how much words there are on each line in the different pages, so I have being able to calculate the average of this three figures (9+10+10/3=9,7). I have counted how much lines on the page are, also three times, and took average again (32+29+28/3=29,7).

Secondly, I have read the book and put a mark in my notepad each time when I have found some slang words. The data about their amount could be found in the table above.

Thirdly, I multiplied the number of lines with the number of words, to know how much words are there on each page (9,7*29,7=288). Furthermore I have tallied up how much words are in the whole book. To count how much word are in the book I multiplied the number of words on the page with the number of pages (264*288=76055).

Finally, I have casted up the ratio of quantity of all the slang words to the number of the word in the whole book and multiplied them on 100% to find how much slang takes from all book (1144/76055*100=1,5). Also I have counted the ratio of slang words to the number of pages in the book to understand how much slang words, on the average, are on each page (1144/264=4).