The most commonly used slang among friends– Hang out！

【摘要】俚語是一种特殊的语言形式。对于俚语的充分理解会使交流更流畅自然。本文从不同的侧面解析使用频率比较高的俚语 hang out， 来理解这一俚语的一些隐性的语言功能。

【关键词】俚语；隐性；语言功能

【作者简介】于菁华，长春工业大学。

Introduction

In daily life， we usually use normal English to communicate with each other. A fact is that native speakers also use some slangs talking. For example， “crash” means 100% falling asleep without waking up or showing to the party without permission or invitation. “Going Dutch” means to check out separately. “Down to earth” means to be practical and be real and so on.

The purpose of this paper is to paraphrase the most commonly used slang — hang out to find its full usages.

Hang out means to stay in or near a place， for no particular reason， not doing very much. Just as in New College English Integrated Course Unit 2 All the Cabbie Had Was a Letter by Foster Furcolo

“Did you two work at the same place？”

“No， but we hung out on the same corner when we are single….”

Hang out here means they stay together doing nothing， just .enjoy the time being together.

When we say to a friend “Do you want to hang out？ ” it means you want be with friends to spend time in a social manner.

As a slang hang out is not only an action people will do， it can also be used to modify the degree of relationship between persons. For instance， “she is just a person I will say hi， not a person I will hang out with.” Or “Ally is my good friend， we always hang out together.” hang out shows a kind close relationship.

Morphology

This term consists of two morphemes — hang and out.

Hang functions as a root and an action， meaning to have a causal social manner， is a verb. Out functions as an inflectional affixes which modify the action “hang”， is an adverb.

Hang out together is a verb phrase， usually used in the following pattern：

hang out + prepositions

hang out with somebody

Example： I will hang out with Amy tomorrow.

hang out in someplace

Example： Jack and Rose hang out in the basement.

However， hang out does not take any derivational affixes. For instance， hang out cant be added up the derivational affixes to create a new noun such as –er，* hang outer. You couldnt say * Jack is a hang outer. Or you cant create adjectives by attaching -able；* hang outable. * Rose is hang outable girl.

There are possible for hang out to turns to acronym， for example， sometimes friends text each other： Do u want to HO？

Syntax

As mentioned previously， hang out is a verb phrase. It is most often used with two other prepositions “with” and “in”.

Example： Rose hangs out with Jack.

The preposition phrase （PP） leads the complement for the verb phrase （VP） to indicate the person to complete the action with the main person. Furthermore， hang out also can be used in intransitive way. For example， “lets hang out.” Hang out can occur without object or complements.

Semantics/ Pragmatics

As mentioned above， hang out means casually spend time with people. So both foreign language learners and native speakers like to use this slang. Hang out is more likely to appear in the context of conversations， text content and social media information. Besides the above examples， people sometimes post their personal photos and leave one sentence， “Want to hang out？” to show they have time now.

Sociolinguistics

Nowadays， with the development of technology， social media is wild used. The speed of peoples life is much faster than before. It is common to know people and make friends online without meeting. Hang out is form for people to communicate and keep the relationship. Even though sometimes we prefer to E-mail or text， it is still necessary for us to meet and talk in person， in other words， the people who we can hang out with are the people we interested and would like to have a further relationship with. It can be common memory for persons because it is an action to be completed physically. The alternative meanings for hang out include “good friend can spend time together”， “people I interested” and “People I trust to do something together”. The alternative form is “to associate with.” For example， if you want to introduce a friend to your boss or professor in a formal way， instead of saying you hang out with him， you should say you associate with him.

References：

[1]Weimer，M.（2012，August 16）.An assignment that prevents plagiarism.

[2]Pinker，S.（2010，June 10）.Mind over mass media.The New York Times.