Thai political slang: formation and attitudes towards usage

Abstract

This study has two main objectives: to determine the formation of slang as used in political news and columns in Thai daily newspapers, and to investigate the participants' attitudes towards slang usage. The data for the analysis of slang formation were collected from two newspapers, namely Thai Rath , and Ma-ti Chon , published from January 2004 to April 2006. The other type of data were the answers to a questionnaire administered to 100 participants grouped according to gender, age, and educational level in order to determine their understanding of the tested slang, and their attitudes towards the usage. The findings indicated that most of the slang words and expressions were formed by the process of compounding, followed respectively by single-word forms, and loan blending. Most words functioned as verbs and verb phrases in the sentences, whereas nouns and noun phrases came second. The metaphorical conceptual meanings of slang largely signified war and the related concepts of fighting, killing, weapons, and arguments. Regarding their understanding, it was found that 70.15 percent of the respondents were able to correctly identify the meaning of slang. In terms of appropriateness, the tested slang was moderately rated as appropriate ( = 2:91) in the given contexts. Generally, the majority of the respondents (71.0%) agreed with political slang usage in newspapers.