Features of Youth Slang Functioning in German-Language Film Dialogue

The subject of the study is the functional features of youth slang from various subgroups. The object of the research consists of slang words and expressions used by German youth. The authors examine in detail the characteristics of slang functioning in the speech of two youth subgroups represented in the film. The practical material consists of film dialogues produced by representatives of different youth subgroups in the movie Fack ju Göhte ‘The Grading Teacher’ (Germany), released in 2013. Special attention is paid to the specifics of slang usage in the speech of school students and young teachers; the degree of slang use in youth subgroups; and the role of slang as a conveyor of values of youth subculture and a recreation of the actual communicative behavior of its representatives. The authors focus on the various contexts (social and cultural) in which slang is used in youth speech. The methodological framework of the study includes content analysis of communication in the film, primarily functional analysis aimed at identifying the nature of the functions performed by slang, as well as procedures for analyzing youth slang as an expression of youth subculture. The main conclusions of the conducted research include the determination of the specifics of youth slang functioning in the film's dialogues. The authors identified the social and cultural contexts of slang usage, as well as distinguished youth subgroups of high school students and young teachers, where communication occurs within a unified social context. It was established that in the speech of high school students, slang serves factual, nominative, and evaluative functions; in the speech of young teachers, it serves emotional-expressive and evaluative functions. The highest number of slang words and expressions is found in the speech of troubled adolescents and a young man posing as a teacher with a criminal past. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that this is the first analysis of the functioning of slang from various youth subgroups based on the material of the film dialogues in Fack ju Göhte.