Youth Slang

Now let’s turn our attention to lexicon, the vocabulary of LoL gamers’ special register. As

Table 3 shows, I have organized the specialized or slang lexical items found in my data by

categorizing them into subsets of the language’s lexicon, which are stereotypically associated

with different social groups.⁴⁴

To begin with, the LoL gamers under my investigation use youth slang items to communicate with each other. These lexemes are colloquial words and phrases that are closely tied with the linguistic creativity and virtuosity characteristic of young people (Tobin, 1972). They are mostly used to reinforce a feeling of connection with a fashionable trend in the society at the time (Eble, 1996).⁴⁵ Within the 400 LoL gamers⁴⁶ I played with for this study, there are totally 50 (12.5%) who use one or more than one youth slang term during game chat. See below for the most frequently used youth slang in my data. Note that, for you to easily follow the discussion, in the following excerpts arrows “” will be used to indicate the lines where the target instances of language use are present; if the language use in question is lexical, then the terms themselves will be further framed by borders to be distinguished from other components of the sentences.

44 Such categorization will not be clear-cut because a lexical item might fit the criteria of more than one category, ideologically associated with more than one social identity. For example, while feiwu is normally seen as offensive language and associated with gangsters and males in general, it, in the meanwhile, serves well for jokingly name-calling someone really close in the recent generation of youngsters. In line with this, feiwu could also be an instance of youth slang.

45 As the trend that the youth slang reflects is essentially a gradual change or development along the time axis, the exemplary slang terms listed here are ephemeral in nature. Some may become obsolete or be replaced by newly invented words in coming years.

46 The number “400” (players) is the result of multiplying 100 (matches of game) and 4 (teammates I played with per game). The reason why I take the number of players who use a lexical item as the statistical unit, instead of the number of times it is used overall the 100 games, is that I want to avoid the influence of personal

(3) Game No. 96 (recorded on November 8, 2015) 1 李星 (Jungle)： 玩刀妹真丟他ㄉ臉

wan daomei zhen diu ta de lian

‘This is a shame to the champion that you play her this bad.’⁴⁷

 2 伊瑞莉雅 (Top)： 吵屁 chao pi

‘Shut up.’

(4) Game No. 55 (recorded on September 20, 2015)

 1 凱特琳 (AD Carry)： 部打了啦 JG 根本神不會玩

bu da le la JG genben shen bu hui wan

‘I don’t want to play anymore. Our jungler is a very bad player.’

In Excerpts 3 and 4, the youth slang terms in question are pi and shen. They are syntactically dependent in that they need to go with their modifiees to be able to take on their slang meanings. Pi is close to “my ass” in English, which is an interjection expressing disapproval or disbelief toward an action denoted by a preceding verb. In Excerpt 3, 李星 accuses 伊瑞 莉雅 of not knowing how to play the champion. 伊瑞莉雅 then disagrees with him by judging his words as annoying (chao). With chao “suffixed” with pi, 伊瑞莉雅 is able to show her disdain for 李星’s accusation to a greater extent. On the other hand, shen as a slang term is more like a modifier that necessarily precedes a modifiee, usually a noun-use of gerund. In Excerpt 4, 凱特琳 one-sidedly complains about her team’s jungler (JG) by questioning his ability to play the game. Her employment of shen helps exaggerate what she

47 For readers to obtain more contextual meaning of the original Mandarin Chinese utterances, the English translations provided in my excerpts focus more on the originals’ communicative purposes instead of the literal

says because it transfers the unimaginability and powerfulness from people’s impression of

“God” (shen) to the particular concept or thinking. The syntactic pattern of shen can also be

found in the cases of gezhong and zhuanye. Now consider zuipao:

(5) Game No. 18 (recorded on August 23, 2015) 1 達瑞文 (AD Carry)： 你不幫我也 510

ni bu bang wo ye 510

‘Even though you did not help me, I could still get 5 kills.’

 2 古拉格斯 (Jungle)： 高中還可以那麼嘴砲

gaozhong hai keyi namo zuipao

‘High school students nowadays could be so good at trolling.’

Zuipao, different from pi and shen, can be self-sufficiently meaningful. It is used as a stative

verb or an adjective phrase to describe someone who is all mouth and no trousers or deliberately flames⁴⁸ other participants to spoil their positive feelings. In Excerpt 5, after 達 瑞文 ticks 古拉格斯 off for not helping him lane against the enemy AD Carry, 古拉格斯 retorts with a complaint about what a flamer 達瑞文 is. In Table 3, one may also notice that there are youth slang terms formed as if they were well-formed sentences. Take woyeshizuile for example:

48

(6) Game No.92 (recorded on November 8, 2015) 1 布朗姆 (Support)： 5 龍加巴龍

wulong jia balong

‘The enemies have five-dragon plus Baron buffs.’

2 你們確定可以打？

nimen queding keyi da

‘Are you sure we are able to fight against them?’

3 死不投降

si bu touxiang

‘Why don’t you surrender?’

 4 我也是醉了

wo ye shi zui le

‘I have had enough of this.’

Even though woyeshizuile has the whole package of a complete sentence and even acts as an independent clause here, standing alone in a line of utterance, it should be saved in brain as a formulaic chunk and used as if it cannot be analyzed into smaller linguistic components. In youth communities, woyeshizuile is used to deliver a sense of helplessness toward what has been discussed or done by others. In Excerpt 6, 布朗姆 incessantly complaints about his teammates’ refusing to surrender at the team’s major disadvantage. His additional remark

woyeshizuile shows that he has lost his senses because of the insensible decision made by his

teammates; in this use, zui is close in meaning to another youth slang term yun (暈). Although the lexical items introduced so far are later generally realized as youth slang, their terminological origins could be traced back to more specific categories of the popular or youth culture. For instance, the phrase structure shen___ is probably affiliated with the

services to describe comments that are intellectually stimulating or interesting . Woyeshizuile may derive from Jin Yong’s (金庸) wuxia (武俠, ‘martial arts chivalry’) novels where Linghu Chong (令狐沖) despises flatterers by ironically saying that he would get drunk and pass out (zuidao) if someone fawns on others to get what he/she wants.