USE OF AMERICAN SLANG IN TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE WITH SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

Abstract. This article is devoted to understanding of American slang and its dependence on pragmatic aspects of the language in a socio- cultural oriented society. The aim of this paper is to study slang in the modern communicative reality considering social factors of language communities with sociolinguistic approach. Thus, it is analyzed the theoretical understanding of slang, as well as its pragmatic aspect, by considering its cultural social context. It highlights the relevance of this topic for learning English as a foreign language and its accurate translation into Russian.

The study defines such a phenomenon as slang and considers it as a product of a society, in this case, American society. It is argued that slang is an integral part of American English of any age, gender and social status, and its manifestations are quite often found in everyday life and daily communication. American slang is widely used in a daily discourse (oral or written), movies, TV shows, news, social media, and newspaper. Sociolinguistic approach helps to study how people use language in their communication or interaction, language ‘in society’ or language ‘in a situational context’.

This study applies a descriptive qualitative research method. The research is closely related to understanding of slang in various social realities, therefore, for successful translation of slang into Russian, it is important to understand contextual situations that have additional information about the realities. In other words, by translating American slang into the target language, one should focus on the cultural social context and extralinguistic features. It is discussed that translation of slang should begin with the selection of an exact well- established analog in foreign language. Examples of comprehension of American slang and its accurate translation into Russian language are provided through the animated American movie “The Incredibles”.

The findings of the study showed that Russian students avoid to use American slang in a discourse of a target language due to its pragmatic peculiarities. As a result of the study, it was concluded that slang is quite controversial, since it does not have a clear framework, but at the same time, it is limited to a certain social language environment.

Keywords: American slang, social context, sociolinguistic approach, pragmatics, Russian translation