Age

• Parrott

  teenage identity is characterised by:

  • rebellion
  • forbidden behaviour
  • exclusion
  • idolisation
• Stenstrom (2002)

  teenspeak contains:

  • slang
  • expletives
  • contractions
  • name calling
  • insult battles
• Eckert

  teenspeak distances teenagers from adults
• Zimmerman (2009)

  teenspeak is influenced by:

  • media
  • music
  • internet
• DeKlerk (2005)

  teenagers have the ability and freedom to challenge and adapt linguistic norms
• Tagliamonte

  • when communicating online, teenagers use more intensifiers
  • there is no evidence to suggest a decline in grammar
• Eckert

  Reading Study:

  • looked at children using 9 different non-standard forms including multiple negation and ‘ain’t’
  • she linked this to whether they thought criminal activity was acceptable

  Found that:

  • boys were more likely to approve of criminal activity
  • those children who approved of standards forms were more likely to use non-standard forms
  • there is a link between the covert prestige of using non-standard forms and standard forms
• Eckert (1998)

  3 forms of age:

  1. chronological, how long someone had been alive
  2. social, how someone interacts socially, for example, like marriage and the birth of a first child
  3. biological, physical maturity
• Eckert

  Detroit Study: Jocks and Burnouts

  • studied two types of students
  • Jocks - highly engaged in school
  • Burnouts - less interested by school and often engaged in immoral behaviour, eg. smoking and drinking
  • she studied non-standard forms and negative concord (multiple negation)

  She found that:

  • jocks used almost all standard forms
  • burnouts used predominantly non-standard forms
  • those in the same social group spoke similarly
• Labov

  Martha‘s Vineyard -

  • looked at inhabitants of the island
  • noted that the younger members (who worked or studied there for some of the year) converged to the vowel pronunciation of the older members of the island when tourists arrived to distance themselves