This article is set against the background of linguistic Globalisation and its diffusion
through the media. The mass media allow for linguistic shifts taking place in American
English to spread to other World Englishes, as a result of an increasing trend towards
colloquialisation, Americanisation and a more democratic model of (power)
relationships. The present paper focuses on a corpus-based study that analyses the
frequency of use of a series of American slang expressions. The study takes as a basis
chiefly audiovisual corpora in parallel to which real linguistic data (drawn from a survey
on slang) are examined. Results provide evidence of the so called Americanisation of
other World Englishes, among them, British English, and that this influence can be
observed in both written and audiovisual corpora
