Elaboration of an empirical basis for the web-based mapping of French common youth slang

Abstract

This article aims to bring on some enlightenment on the specifics of an experimental base formation for the creation of web maps dedicated to the French common youth slang. The relevance of the article is due to the pervasive nature of the French youth's “argotization” over the past two decades. The proposed study is devoted to the specifics of the formation of an experimental base for the creation of French common youth slang web maps, which will allow an illustration of the territorial localization of the slang (argotic) vocabulary. In this context, the authors elaborate preparatory procedures to form the basis for web mapping, namely the multistage processing of “argotographic data”, the inventory of core and peripheral “argotisms” and the verification of the identified linguistic facts under anti-epidemic restrictions on the mobility of scientists. The stages of the youth speech survey, which can be conducted remotely, are described. A review of lexicographic sources for the collection of argotic units is carried out. At the same time, the latest linguistic phenomenon of the French youth common slang (argot commun des jeunes) is briefly examined, and its relationship to the French common slang (argot commun) is described. The material of the study is youth argot lexemes collected from four traditional dictionaries and vocabulary lists of French and Russian eminent slang specialists (“argotologists”), four collaborative digital dictionaries, and two oral linguistic corpora. Youth argotisms are studied from the aspect of frequency parameters and the number of fixations in the argotographic sources. At the stage of collecting and identifying the elements of the common French youth slang vocabulary, several methods were applied: the method of sampling, the continuous sampling method, and the corpus linguistics method, including automated information extraction and the textual searches in large-scale corpora (concordances). At the stage of verification of the collected lexemes for their attribution to the French common youth slang, multiple crossed procedures were used: questionnaires, interviews, introspection, and “the initiated to the initiated” one. The present study was carried out in an experimental way, which, in turn, is applied in the research field on an actively developing social dialect.