Common slang in daily conversation in the american tv series “Glee”
COMMON SLANG IN DAILY CONVERSATION IN THE
AMERICAN TV SERIES “GLEE”
Vo Thi Hong Linh, Le Huynh My Uyen, Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh,
Nguyen Minh Nhut, Tran Le Minh
Faculty of English, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH)
Supervisor: Ngo Binh Anh Khoa (MA)
ABSTRACT
Slang is a part of language that can be of great significance to native speakers and language
learners alike, for it is heavily present in daily interactions. Hence, it is important that the commonly-
used slang in daily conversations should be identified so that foreign learners can remember and
use it in real situations. For this paper, the common slang was determined and collected from the
American TV show ‚Glee,‛. This show was selected because of its popularity and reflection of
American culture and daily life.
Keywords: Daily conversations, Glee, slang.
1 INTRODUCTION
Language is, as commonly believed, one of the most prominent factors which separate humans
from other species, and it is as diverse as the people all across the globe. Hence, how people use
language for communication is different from one another. In every language in general, and
English in specific, in addition to the standard language which appears in dictionary and which is
taught at school, there also exists a variation known as slang, coined because of the need to adapt
to new or different aspects of society as well as social prestige. Despite being an important part of
our daily interactions, slang does not receive the amount of attention it deserves in the standard
curriculum, but that does not compromise its significance in communication. Hence, the study of
slang is one of great importance to language learners and teachers alike.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Slang, according to the Oxford, is defined as a type of language consisting of words and phrases
that are considered to be informal, which more commonly appear in speech rather than in
writing, and which are generally exclusive to a specific context or people (Hornby & Palmer, 2010).
Likewise, Finegan (2008) proposes that, in general, slang has a particular popularity among
teenagers and college students. In addition, according to Akmajian et al. (1998), who opine that
slang includes certain features, including (1) the informality of the language in use, (2) the rapid
changes, and (3) its association to a particular social group of people (e.g. teenagers, students, or
even criminals and more).
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In society, slang, as stated by Adams (2009), is used to establish social dynamics with others, which
also outlines social spaces as well as social identity (p. 57). It means that when slang is used, the
user projects an image of himself or herself onto others, which he or she would, at the same time,
like others to recognize. Thus, Adams (ibid.) opines that slang can be playful, or be a humorous
form of rebellion against the standard language. Furthermore, a slang must be recognized as such
in communication in order for it to be considered a slang (Adams, 2009, p. 62).
Slang is present in multiple languages across the globe, and English is no exception, for social
media, the Internet, movies, video games, and even daily interactions are filled with slang in
contexts which is ever-changing and ever-evolving just like the people who coin and use it. As a
result, the English language is continuously updated with slang, marking its importance to linguists
and language learners as well. Therefore, it is undeniable that in order for one to be able to
develop competency in English, one must be able to recognize slang in communications of all
manners and forms.
3 METHODOLOGY
This paper focuses on American-English slang expressions. The authors are interested in commonly
used American-English slang in the American TV series ‚Glee‛ because it is one of the famous serial
drama comedies in the U.S which won 4 Emmy awards, 5 Satellite awards, 4 Golden Globes, 3
Teen Choice Awards and many other awards. Furthermore, ‚Glee‛ is a collection of episodic stories
about the daily life of the teenage cast in different situations at school, home and in various types of
culture, gender, sexuality, and relationships ranging from platonic to romantic, which is appropriate
for the scope of this research.
In other words, this TV series can be considered as an example of American society. Thus, the
authors believe that the slang used would be authentic and reflect the common usage of such
slang in real daily conversations in the United States.
By following the definitions of slang that were proposed by Adams (2009), the researchers manually
and meticulously examined the available scripts of all of the episodes aired in 6 seasons of the TV
series ‚Glee‛ (all of which were retrieved from:
https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/episode_scripts.php?tv-show=glee for authenticity), and
later listed the slang appearing the most frequently throughout the twenty-one episodes, whose
frequencies would be calculated in percentage. For simplicity, only the top ten slang would be
chosen for inclusion in this paper. After that, discussion and conclusions would be drawn from the
statistics obtained.
4 RESULTS AND FINDINGS
The findings regarding the frequencies of the most commonly slang used in ‚Glee‛ are summarized
in the Table 1 on the following page.
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Table 1: Most commonly used slang and frequency of usage in ‚Glee‛
Stt
1
Slang
Gonna
Guys
Definition
Going to
number of times used
Percentage
42.20%
22.24%
8.25%
2,486
1,310
486
366
308
291
2
A group of people
Want to
3
Wanna
Cool
4
Awesome, great
A man
6.21%
5
Dude
5.23%
6
Gotta
Got to
4.94%
7
Sweet
Ain’t
Attractive, good or nice
Am not/is not/are not/do not/does not
Exhausted
276
4.69%
8
189
3.21%
9
Beat
150
2.55%
10
Hang out
To spend a lot of time in a place
Total
29
0.49%
5,891
100%
5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Our findings reveal that, according to statistics, among the top 10 of the slang commonly appearing
in the episodes of ‚Glee‛, the five which are ‚gonna,‛ ‚guys,‛ ‚wanna,‛ ‚cool,‛ and ‚dude‛ are the
most commonly used slang. In particular, the word "Gonna" appears 2,486 times, accounting for
42.20% in total. Furthermore, in each of Glee’s episodes, ‚gonna‛ appears approximately 25 times
on average. "Guys" is at the second place in terms of frequency with 1,310 occurrences, accounting
for 22.24%. "Wanna" appears 486 times, accounting for 8.25% while "Cool" occurs 366 times in the
episodes, accounting for 6.21%. The last position is "Dude" which appears 308 times and accounts
for 5.23% in general. For illustration, here are some examples taken from the scripts:
I'm gonna start story-boarding our choreography tonight.
Who's gonna be the judge?
Hope you guys are up for this competition.
Hey, guys, how's it going?
I wanna pit these kids against one another.
For the first time. Which is why I wanna celebrate with a cocktail.
The Panther isn't cool with anything except doing exactly what she says without question.
Which makes me very cool. And we'd like to talk to you about Glee Club
What's up, dude?
Dude, you're totally
Following the findings, it can be seen that the use of slang is common in ‚Glee‛, and by extension,
in the daily conversations in the United States reflected through the episodes of the TV series,
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especially the top five which have been previously mentioned. Therefore, in order to understand
‚Glee‛ in specific and in conversations in the US in general, it is recommended that learners of
English should familiarize themselves with the slang listed in Table 1 so that they can, as proposed
by Adams (2009), obtain a social identity and attempt to fit in with the native speakers. Moreover,
for teachers of English, it is also recommended that more attention should be paid to the teaching
of such slang at school so that their students can develop a familiarity and recognition of the
common slang, which, as mentioned previously, would help them tremendously when
communicating with the native English speakers. Last but certainly not least, since slang is
commonly available in ‚Glee‛, it can be said that the series itself, along with other series with similar
formats which reflect American society, could serve as the medium through which the teachers and
learners of English can build up their knowledge and recognition of the common slang used by
American people within the United States.
REFERENCES
[1]
Adams, M. (2009). Slang: The people’s poetry. Indiana: Oxford Press.
[2]
Akmajian, A., Demers, R. A., Farmer, A. K.., & Harnish, R. M. (1998). Linguistics: An introduction
to language and communication. 4th Ed. London: The MIT Press.
[3]
[4]
Finegan, E. (2008). Language: Its structure and use. 5th Ed. USA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Horny, A. S., & Palmer, H. E. (2010). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
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