Social and Language Boundaries among Adolescents

Abstract

A DOLESCENTS TODAY, AS EVER, HAVE TERMS by which they express approval (cool) or disapproval (bummer, it sucks); classify others (jocks, punks, or druggies); characterize events as enjoyable or boring, successes or failures; describe their comings or goings; and distinguish whether someone is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or both. In each school, adolescents face the same problems of self-identity; of the onset of puberty; of choosing friends to fit (and ultimately to change) values and attitudes; and of talking about everyday experiences with each other in ways that are special to them and a little cloudy to the adults surrounding them. And in each school adolescent slang appears. Two features of such slang make it a particularly useful research site. First, knowledge of a slang term shows the acquaintance of the listener with its speakers, if not participation with them in their social world. Whether members of partying, performing, achieving, or deviating groups, youth live and talk with peers who share to some extent social worlds, including language. What is the variation in use by different groups? Which groups share terms? Which groups have little overlap in slang usage? What variation in slang usage exists across social groups? Slang thus is a good indicator of the social distance between different groups of adolescents. Second, change is characteristic of slang-in fact slang seems evanescent. What trajectories do slang terms show as they become more popular, or fade away? Do they move from East to West Coast, from blacks to whites, from lower class to upper class? What variations in slang usage occur across time? More information about the use of slang terms by different social groups will allow us to trace the direction and velocity of social change, as well as its source. In this article I do three things: review definitions of slang and studies of adolescent slang lexicon, especially focusing on youth subcultures; present data reporting adolescent slang recognition; and analyze variation in use across six social groups.

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