Lexical Molding and Metaphoric Mapping of Some Human Body Parts in American Slang Expression

Abstract

The present paper seeks to shed some light on the lexical and metaphoric use of slang expressions in the American society. Slang is very informal and sometimes offensive, and employed in verbal speech. Slang expressions are regarded culture-specific because they are coined according to cultural concepts. As it is used by blacks, street talkers, criminals and drug dealers in the USA. Lexically, parts of the human body which basically include eyes, face, feet and hands have slangy polysemous senses which are metaphorically conceptualized according to the concepts or norms of that society or group that invents the given slang expression. So, they are a culture-mirror of society's customs. For example, the word 'police' can have some polysemous expressions including 'pig' and 'cop' where the word „pig‟ is coined by the New Yorkers as a reaction to the bad behavior shown by them; therefore, they call the police as pigs. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the synonyms of some human body parts incorporated in the American slang. The analyzed data is taken from Spear's book of American Slang (2000).