Testing who belongs

The common denominator of all slang, whether it be the speech of adolescents or the jive talk of musicians, is that it tests who belongs to the group and who is an intruder. That is because slang is fully intelligible only to the initiated.

Peter Farb, Word Play

Most slang starts with the young, who normally have two contradictory impulses going on at the same time. On the one hand, they want to be accepted as adults doing adult things — driving, drinking, smoking, having sex, enjoying independence, having secrets, whatever — while at the same time they want all the benefits of youth and being with each other, distant from their parents and other adults.

Youth slang helps them with the latter. They invent terms that become significant only to themselves. The fact that their parents don't know what they are saying is part of the fun. When adults begin to understand youth slang, and worse begin to use it themselves, the young must invent new slang. Thus virtually every generation of young people comes up with new slang terms that they enjoy repeating over and over again.

Some slang terms eventually become part of the language — the word cool, for example — but when this happens they cease to be slang. As Peter Farb says, the purpose of slang is to designate who belongs to the group and who doesn't. Once it enters the dictionary, the word belongs to everyone.

As Farb suggests, older groups such as musicians can also develop slang terms, although when older people do it it usually becomes jargon, rather than true slang. Most businesses, most hobbyists, most adult groups of any kind develop jargon of some kind. Jargon makes the activity easier, whatever that activity may be. Those on the outside have no use for these terms and may not even be curious about them.

Yet as with slang, jargon also tests who belongs to the group and who doesn't.