Unit 1 – The Linguistics of Slang
Lesson 5 – Classifying and Defining Slang
Class time: 57 minutes
Objective: To introduce students to ways of classifying and defining the slang terms by part of
speech and meaningful definition through the Bay Area slang examples, in preparation for
doing the same things with their own sets of data.
Materials Needed:
 PowerPoint (Interactive Slides: Creating and Defining Slang)
 Bay Area Slang Terms with Definitions (In-Class Activities: Bay Area Slang Terms –
Definitions)
 Note: They should already have a copy of this
 Answer key to 1.2 (IPA and lexical classes) (In-Class Activities: ANSWERKEY Bay Area
Slang)
 Be sure to print out copies for all SKILLS team members before class!
This should not be distributed to the students
 Handout 1.3: The International Phonetic Alphabet (In-Class Activities: IPA Chart
Handout)
 Note: They should already have a copy of this
INTRODUCTION (5 min)
For any new instructors in the classroom, do introductions and write all new
instructors’ names on the board. Have students introduce themselves as well.
Collect any remaining permission forms, as well as any recorders with student data.
Make sure to keep track of which student has which recorder, so we can properly keep track
of the data once it is transferred onto their flash drives. Bring all recorders back to the main
office to have all data copied onto the hard drive and onto students’ flash drives.
If any student has not yet received a recorder, bring recorders from UCSB that have
been cleared of previous data to the classroom to give out to these students. This is not ideal,
as all students will need their data on a flash drive in class during the next lesson; make sure
any student in this situation is clear that they cannot progress further in the activity unless
they have data in the classroom during the next day of class.
Ask if anyone has questions/concerns/problems about anything. Tell them that you
may not be able to resolve all problems immediately but after consulting the rest of the
SKILLS team, the problems will get fixed as soon as possible.
ACTIVITY: Practicing the IPA (15 min)
This continues the activity from yesterday, if necessary. Each group should have
already transcribed 10 slang terms on handout 1.2 yesterday. Everyone in each group should
transcribe one or two terms on the whiteboard (they can all go up in groups to do this, not
one at a time).
Have the whole class practice reading IPA and check each other's work; if someone says
there’s an error they should go up and fix it or rewrite it, but there’s possible variation that
you can encourage people to propose; see the answer key for some correct answers, but
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there are others too.
ACTIVITY: DEFINING AND CLASSIFYING SLANG (35 min)
Write the following terms on the board:
plastic cow
potato
call the dog
caked
like a big dog
on point
Dude!
welk


Tell student that these examples all come from UCSB student slang data collected
several years ago.
Ask the students what they think each word means, then show slide 2.
SLIDE 2: Defining Slang (informal definitions)
 Are they surprised by any of these definitions?
 Do these definitions seem like what you’d see in a dictionary? (No, they’re mostly too
informal)
 Ask the students to come up with a more formal definition where needed. Then show
slide 3.
SLIDE 3: Defining slang (formal definitions)
 Ask them if any of the meanings seem different from the usual use of the term
(potato, caked are both treated as different parts of speech from usual).
 So we need to be able to classify the part of speech since it often changes in slang.
SLIDE 4: Classifying slang

Ask them to use the slang terms on the slide in a sentence (click twice so that just the
two words show up).

Ask what part of speech the word is in each case (chill: verb/adj; hella: adj/adv)

Ask the students what part of speech each term belongs to, based on the example
sentences
Go back to SLIDE 3:

Figure out the part of speech for each of the words on the board/slide.
Go over the answers in SLIDE 5

With your group, determine the part of speech of each of your 10 terms on Handout
1.2, based on the categories that are listed in slide 5.

Team members should check in with groups and give them hints/ask leading
questions as needed.
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Tell them that next week they’re going to use what they’ve learned to analyze their own
slang.