The article is a study of phonetic-morphological and semantic-stylistic features of argotic vocabulary in contemporary French language. The work is devoted to questions of structural-semantic and phonetic-morphological peculiarities of the argotic vocabulary in printed mass media. The conducted research has shown that the argotic vocabulary can be considered as a special lexical subsystem of spoken language, which is characterized by a steady tendency to penetrate into higher linguistic levels due to its phonetic-morphological and semantic features. The systematization of phonetic and semantic processes in the argotic dictionary is carried out. We have noticed that argot from a linguistic point of view is an expressive lexical subsystem of spoken language, which is characterized by a large expressive potential and rapid changes in vocabulary and penetrates into higher levels of the French language. From the point of view of modern linguistics, the French language can be viewed in vertical and horizontal sections. Horizontal division is caused by the existence of the dialectal partition of the French language. The vertical division is explained by the existence of social groups that use one or another sociolect. Analyzing the evolution of the definition of argot, we can assume that in its development argot passed the long way from the language taboo to the special lexical subsystem of the literary-spoken language. We have noticed that it is important to distinguish argot and spoken language. In spite of the both scientific and practical interest in the spoken language problem and the emergence of numerous studies that led to the creation of colloquialism as a special section of linguistics, a number of aspects of spoken language (approaches to its identification, differentiation of spoken language and related phenomena) remain insufficiently highlighted. The spoken language (vernacular), according to modern linguistic assertions, occupies an intermediate position between the spoken-literary language, dialects and sociolects. We have noticed that the democratization of the norms of the literary language led to the emergence of a literary-colloquial form of spoken language. Such a combination of literary and spoken language is caused by the nature of social development. Key words: argot; slang; French language; dialect; argotheistic vocabulary; non-normative variant elements; semantics; phonetics; morphology; mass media.