The motive as to why people would want to use slang words could be that the words are catchy, like a new song gaining a lot of attention that everyone is listening to. Some slang words are just simply fun to use, like the word, “hella”. It’s catchy because instead of saying “a lot” or another variation of “a lot”, you could say “hella” for amusement. Playing with words can lead to a bright future in literacy, but one must remember that it is all in good fun and shouldn’t be taken seriously. One should always notice the difference between slang and formal usage of words.

Slang words are created for many reasons, to create a whole new set of vocabulary, or to be used within a specific group of people. Language is dull without the variations of words because it would sound and look bad if a word was being repeated within the same paragraph, or maybe even the same sentence. There are a handful of formal words that can represent one another, but there is a point in which there is not enough. To be able to create a word can be fun, but in order for it to be recognized by others can be frustrating. It is because for a word to be recognized, it must be used frequently.

Some slang words are used in terms of privacy and only within a group of people. Most of the time, the words used for these occasions represent illegal matter. One of the slang words that come to mind would be the word, “speakeasy”, a word used for “bar” back in the days of the American Prohibition law whereas all alcoholic beverages were banned from across America. Another word that I can think of which everyone probably knows by now would be the word, “weed” which represented the drug marijuana. These vocabulary terms were most likely created for the purpose of not letting authorities know what was really going on when people spoke of these words. 

When it comes to slang and language together, there are two views upon this topic. One could say that slang deteriorates the language itself or it can benefit the language by giving it more style. I never thought too much of it since I use both slang and proper English, and only English when needed. I can see how the fear of slang ruining a language if one assumes that slang takes over the language completely, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. However, I don’t see how slang can benefit a language except by giving it more ways of saying a word.

A world without slang can be tricky and hard to imagine. There can be many theories as to how a world without slang can exist depending on what causes slang to be nonexistent. One can assume that creativity is not abundant because slang requires creativity in order for it to exist. A world without slang is possible, but with no imagination whatsoever, it would be an extremely boring place to live. However, slang on this world without slang could be called something else. If the world strictly doesn’t have slang, then I wouldn’t know what to think of it.

When thinking of slang itself, there are many categories. Two in particular might be formal and informal. Formal slang could have been words made by building upon another word or combining like terms. Informal slang could have been words made entirely from scratch to describe anything it was created for. There is the part of whether newly created words are slang or not. I’m not quite sure how a word becomes slang or proper English. It could be that proper English words were the first terms created and slang terms were words built from these first terms, but I can’t be positive.

Choosing whether or not to use these words is a personal preference. I’m not quite sure of knowing if there was a person who wanted to use all slang terms or all proper English terms, but one thing if for certain, it’s not easy sticking to one style of vocabulary. To only speak in slang terms would cause a lot of misunderstanding because one would be speaking in some sort of code. To speak only in proper English would eventually make things dull. Both methods have flaws that can be remedied by combining the two into one. Slang is a part of our vocabulary, to know when to exercise it or not depends on the person and the situation.