Language also informs others about your affiliations and memberships. For example, slang is language that is informal, nonstandard, and usually particular to a specific age or social group; it operates as a high-level abstraction because meanings of slang are known only by its users during a specific time in history. A rock concert might be described as “groovy,” “totally awesome,” or “off the hook”—each expression places the speaker in a particular time or place in the world. Teenagers might alert each other online that they’ve “GTG” (got to go) because of “POS” (parent over shoulder), and their parents are none the wiser. Slang is often intensified by adjectives that increase emphasis, such as absolutely, completely, extremely, totally, wickedly, or massively (Palacios Martínez & Núñez Pertejo, 2012).

Related to slang is jargon, technical language that is specific to members of a given profession or activity or hobby group. Jargon may seem abstract and vague to those outside the group but conveys clear and precise meanings to those within the group. For example, when a fan of the model game Warhammer 40K speaks of “kit bashing,” other fans understand that the speaker is taking parts from two different models and mixing them together. The rest of us, however, would probably just stare blankly.