Chapter 2 - Terms

Summary

Informal borrowings are defined as expressions taken from a foreign language and used in informal American English. They conform to the traditional typology of borrowings and include such main types as loanwords and loan translations, but there are other finer distinctions, much as there are certain terms often confused with borrowings, such as code switches or nonce borrowings. Informal language, in turn, refers to a type of vocabulary which is stylistically “lower” than the standard language and “below” the formal and neutral registers on the formality scale. It includes two subsets: colloquialism, which is composed of moderately informal and casual expressions, and slang, which is composed of highly informal and unconventional expressions, strongly linked with a sociocultural context. Again, there are numerous similar terms to account for this type of lexicon, but their semantic scopes are different.