I don’t know a single American, regardless of demographic, who doesn’t use the word “gonna” in everything but formal written text in which we’re expected to avoid slang. So why is such a commonly used word, spelling and pronunciation, still considered slang?
It’s not considered slang. “Gonna” just represents the way way “going to” is pronounced in rapid speech. There are many other phrases that are typically slurred or contracted in ordinary speech, some of which are sometimes written in that form informally (e.g. “why doncha”), but there are many others which are not.
…Because we avoid it in formal situations where we’re expected to avoid slang? You answered the question yourself.
Yeah, it’s not slang. Slang applies more to diction than to spelling.
It’s all gray areas in language. “Gonna” does lack a certain formality, but it’s not too far from being standard in all but the most formal contexts already. In my opinion.
Wait–you mean you know a lot of people who write gonna (in lieu of going to) in non-formal writing? Such as emails, or personal hand-written letters?
As mentioned above, “gonna” isn’t slang. It’s just an attempt to represent the common pronunciation of this periphrastic modal. I rarely see it actually written, even in non-formal writing. Are you talking about speech or written? You need to be clear because you can’t conflate the two–especially in situations like this.
This got me really curious. I don’t even realize I use it – it might as well be a written filler word – and you made me wonder.
On Google:
[ul]
[li]Current search results: 442 million Gonna, 1.5 billion “Going to” (29%)[/li][li]Search popularity trend: 32 Gonna, 53 Going to (60%)[/li][/ul]
On the SDMB:
[ul]
[li]150k Gonna, 483k Going to (31%)[/li][/ul]
I also parsed my own data. From the last 8 years of Facebook posts and messages:
[ul]
[li]On my Wall/Timeline: 13 Gonna, 41 Going To (32%)[/li][li]In private messages: 71 Gonna, 304 Going To (23%)[/li][/ul]
Not the most scientific results, but interesting nonetheless. Seems people do use it quite often in written form, at least online. Maybe 30% as often as “going to”?
Would you use it on your resume?
Why not?
And you’ve even used it a few times yourself, though in your case it seems like it’s mostly for effect, or when you’re emulating other people 
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11601176&highlight=gonna#post11601176
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6230549&highlight=gonna#post6230549
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14193947&highlight=gonna#post14193947
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13506267&highlight=gonna#post13506267
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12340918&highlight=gonna#post12340918
I wonder how much of this is due to demographics of the writer/speaker. Is this a linguistic generation gap?
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Yes, I specifically did NOT mention social networking and texting, because those are media where people deliberately emulate spoken language in the way they write, and gonna, I sense, is stylistically preferred for this.
You might want to compare it to where’re, (I don’t have the time at the moment) which is similar–but not as “popular.” How often do we write “where’re,” (As in Where’re you living now? etc.) even though that’s how we usually speak?
Well, exactly–that’s the whole point.
Because discursively it’s not part of resume language anyway, so this isn’t a good example. We need to keep in mind that gonna is realized ONLY as part of the periphrastic modal be going to–for conveying future plans. What you usually do in a resume, on the contrary, is talk about your past.
It’s dialect, not slang.
In speech, it’s standard North American English (NAE). Whether you want to call that a “dialect” is a question of one’s linguistic principles–because technically, it is a dialect, but it’s the dialect of the vast majority in speech.
I think what we’re talking about here, on the other hand, is a question of written convention and stylistics–NOT speech, because just about everyone says it in speech.
Sez you.
The N-gram viewer reports that “gonna” did not occur at all in writing until about 1918
There is also the word “gwine” which. in the Pre-PC era, was widely used by white writers from Mark Twain to Walt Kelly to represent speaking voices of African Americans, a usage that is chronicled in modern dictionaries:
gwine:
verb, Chiefly Southern U.S. Nonstandard.
- present part. of go.
Of course, anhyone who argued that that should “no longer be slang” would be required to undergo mandatory sensitivity reprogramming.
The English language, as a formal instrument, has evolved slowly and deliberately over the centuries. One should be careful to not allow upstarts to take command of it to suit their ephemeral purposes. It can be hoped (with little conviction) that dictionaries will continue to differentiate formal English from that which is not. Texting, as everything, too shall pass.
Do not burden lexicology with your every whim. Sadly, dictionaries went through a state in the colonial era when the English accepted all those words from the Raj and the Crimean war, relating to everything Asian from court titles to military uniform accouterments of the bloody heathens, which are now acceptable only in Scrabble. Once a word goes into the dictionaries, it never comes out, so be a little circumspect about what you put in there.
It’s not slang or dialect (the latter, not officially anyway). It’s just the phonetic realization of going + to in rapid or casual speech. There is probably a continuum of realization across speakers: going to —> goin’ ta —> gonna’, where another rule–drop final g on ing–contributes to the ultimate realized form.
I guess we don’t write gonna for the same reasons we don’t write readin and writin. It takes a long long time for phonetic realization to be encoded in written language nowadays–everything is pretty set. Not like earlier in the history of spoken/written English.
That doesn’t seem very fair… and almost elitist. Isn’t that like saying it’s no longer used, except for the like 80% of written communication that occurs through those media? Why exclude them?
And Google is currently preparing my ten years of Gmail history, and I’ll search through it once that’s done. I suspect if you search your own email archives you’ll find a lot of "gonna"s too, unless you work in linguistics or something (only cuz you seem like a language pedant/grammar nazi from your posting history).
Don’t see anything wrong with that either? There’re many words like that that are perfectly useful…
I think this particular spoken contraction – where’re – is most often rendered as simply where in informal (online?) writing. Where you living now? parses just fine in a text or an instant message.
Please reread my posts here, as I’ve addressed this issue solely as a descriptivist. I’m describing writing conventions, not advocating one way or the other for what is “correct.”
Look–the OP wonders why the written form “gonna” is considered “slang,” probably meaning by the tern “slang” non-standard. All I’m saying is that even in non-formal writing–which today most people do in workplace email–the standard, (the convention), is still to transcribe what we pronounce as “gonna” with going to. If I were to transcribe it as gonna it would reflect negatively on me in my job.
I’m excluding social media from this consideration because these are effectively ersatz forms of speech, where such conventions are irrelevant. Of course it’s 80% (probably more) of “print” communication, but it has totally different conventions from what the OP is referring to. In social media no one is going to remark (or otherwise perceive it as non-standard) that you transcribe it as “gonna,” and in fact that’s actually preferred in social media. I’m just describing how the convention applies. NO ONE is going to expect this convention of social media, so it isn’t relevant to the OP’s concern.
Well, that’s great, but it’s just you, and I’m really referring to conventions on a larger scale. If you’re going to use a corpus, why not use COCA (it’s free, but you need to register). I just suggest that when you do a corpus search (which I do in my job on a regular basis), it’s not simply a matter of throwing out a percentage of KWIC hits–you have to do the hard work of looking over context, and maybe even refining your search to code for that. Going is not always part of be going to, for example.
Again, reread my post more carefully. I have said NOTHING about usefulness or correctness. I’m just talking about what people tend to do when they write, in particular contexts, with regard to the particular concern of the OP.