The somatic vocabulary in Bulgarian slang and colloquial language

The article analyses the Bulgarian slang vocabulary relating to parts of the human body by comparing it to standard language and colloquial speech and outlining its historical development and current state. Two parallel processes are interpreted in the study: the use of names and expressions of everyday objects to denote parts of the human body and, at the same time, the use of standard, dialectal or colloquial somatic terms to designate physical characteristics or typical personality traits of people. The main semantic processes for creating slang terms, such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, enantiosemy, and semantic derivation, are also discussed. Particular attention is paid to the process of progressive lexical “transfusion” over the last decades of elements of young people corporate slang to colloquial speech and to new urbanolects, as well as to their increasingly larger use in the field literature and the arts, in media and political discourse. The examples used are taken from the Bulgarian press, radio and television broadcasts, internet forums and casual everyday conversations.

Keywords: standard language; colloquial speech; vernacular; sociolects; slang