American military slang: the influence of the First World War

The article considers the development of American military slang in the course of the First World War, being a massive armed conflict involving over thirty countries and millions of military personnel. Lexical units of American military slang of the time are examined and analyzed. The authors classify them thematically. Explanations of the means of their formation are given after each unit. It was shown that they encompass the entire range of means of formation. Loanwords are an important component of any language and, indeed, the vast majority of languages are heavily influenced by loanwords. In the context of World War I as a large-scale military conflict involving military personnel from a large number of countries it was shown that loanwords from foreign languages and other territorial dialects of the English language had a great impact on the development of American military slang during this period. The former include loanwords from French, as American forces were quartered and fought on the territory of France, leading to rich interaction with the local population, and also from German - the language of the enemy. The latter include loanwords mostly from British military slang, as Great Britain was a close ally of the United States. War and armed conflicts in general, together with military cooperation, provide ‘ideal’ conditions for the emergence of loanwords in foreign languages. A conclusion is made on the influence of massive scale armed conflicts on the development of military slang. It thus follows that linguists working in the sphere of military translation today ought to study in greater detail the changes in English military vocabulary which took place during and as a result of World War I.

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