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 used for amusement, like the slang word, “hella”. It’s catchy because instead of saying the phrase “a lot” or another variation of “a lot”, you could say “hella” for fun. 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. Everyone should always take notice of the difference between the use of slang and the proper usage of words.

Slang words are created for many occasions, one reason I can think of would be to create a whole new set of vocabulary that can be used by everyone. Language is dull without the variations of words because it would sound and look awkward if a word was being repeated within the same paragraph, or maybe even the same sentence. There are a handful of proper English terms that can represent one another, but eventually there will be a point in which there is not enough to satisfy a phrase. 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.

Another reason for creating slang words could be for the exclusive usage for a specific group of people in terms of privacy. 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. I’d imagine there to be a handful of slang words just like this to represent forms of shady business with unwanted attention. These vocabulary terms were created with the intention of leaving authorities clueless.

When it comes to using 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 choices and style. I never thought too much of it since I use both slang and proper English, and only English when needed. I don’t see any fault in my language skills by using slang, but I can see how the fear of slang is able to ruin a language if one assumes that slang takes over the language completely, although I doubt that will happen anytime soon. However, I don’t see how slang can benefit a language except by giving it more options and shortcuts of saying a word or phrase.

If we were to stop using slang, it would be tricky and hard to imagine a world without it. 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. If the world in its current state were to exist, but strictly excludes slang, I wouldn’t know what to think of it. We would probably be using the standardized form of English every single day, and that would be “hella” boring.

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 slang 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 language, knowing when to exercise it or not depends solely on the person.