LOCAL VARIABILITY OF SLANG WORDS

The article considers the problem of local variability of slang words basing on research into student slang. Along with other aspects of slang local variation, special attention is given to semantic variants of slang words in different regions with an emphasis not only on the development of slang units in a particular region but also on their local lexical-semantic variation. The authors arrive at a conclusion that there is a developed lexical-semantic variation of slang words, which manifests itself in the actualization of local variants of slang words in the minds of students from different regions. Such semantic variants can either be close to each other in their meaning or have no common semantic component. The variability under research is manifested in the fact that some lexical variants of slang words are peculiar to one or several regions, while other variants of the same word may be used throughout the country, reflecting the unity of the slang