This article examines issues related to the functioning of non-standard vocabulary in the language system. One of the tasks of sociolinguistics is the study of the social stratification of language and its variability on the basis of languages of different structures. The article is devoted to the analysis of the most productive and effective ways of forming non-standard vocabulary in Russian and English, such as: formal modifications, abbreviations, borrowings, education without external modification, reverse and middle slang, reduplication. In the research of modern languages, scientists pay special attention to the classification of substandard vocabulary based on motivation/non-motivation. The relevance of the study of these phenomena is caused by the growing interest in the study of a new direction – sociolectology in modern linguistics, to the issues of non-standard vocabulary, the language situation. Many of the most important theoretical issues of Russian-foreign substandard lexicography, the lexicographicization of sociolects in bilingual dictionaries, their contrastive research, the development of which is an urgent need, still remain unexplored. The change in theoretical and methodological guidelines was reflected in the development of the theory and practice of bilingual lexicography.