SOCIAL CONTINUUM AND ITS REFLECTION IN THE LANGUAGE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE LOCAL VARIABILITY OF STUDENT SLANG).

The paper deals with the local variation of student slang that reflects the social continuum - the blurred boundaries between social groups. Slangs serve "open" social groups because each slang speaker is inevitably included not only in one social group, which makes the social base of a certain slang, but also in other social groups. The example of studying foregrounded slang words in four Russian regions shows that some local variation in student slang is not so much reflected in difference of slang vocabulary but in difference of the frequency values of slang words: there is a significant influence of the factor "locus" on the knowledge and use of certain slang words. The nature of a slang word explains its having a number of meanings because it not only denotes and nominates but also reflects the social dimension, thereby showing a great opportunity for social variation of slang units. A variety of lexical variants in slang is directly linked with the reflection of the social continuum in the language. The continuous nature of the social base of slang defines the probabilistic nature of the slang and provides both its unity, flexibility, volatility, as well as the ability to meet the needs of slang speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]