Age

• Anna Britain stenstorm: Teen talk features

  • Irregular turn-taking
  • Overlaps
  • Indistinct articulation
  • Word shortening
  • Teasing/name calling
  • Verbal duelling
  • Slang
  • Taboo language
  • Language mixing (from other cultures)
• Christopher odato (2013)

  Discourse marker 'like' in children's speech
• Stages in the use of 'like' as a discourse marker - Odato

  1. Stage 1 - children use 'like' infrequently and in 'only a few syntactic positions' - mainly at the beginning of a clause: 'Like you won easily'

  2. Stage 2 – children use 'like more often and in 'a greater number of positions'. Girls tended to move to this stage aged 5, boys when they were 7

  3. Stage 3 - children now use it more frequently in other positions, such as before a prepositional phrase: 'Look at how yours landed like right on the target.' Again, girls moved to this stage at an earlier age than boys
• Children probably wait to hear enough evidence that like can be used in a certain syntactic position before they start to use it that way themselves, and obviously this will take longer for the less frequent positions - Odato
• There is an element of younger children copying the language of those older than them - Odato
• Young people seek to - de clerk (2005)


  • Create identities
  • Have the freedom to 'challenge linguistic norms'
  • Look 'modern' and 'cool'
  • Look different
  • Belong to a distinctive group
  • Not all teenagers are alike- they are not a homogeneous group
• Cheshire:

  Adult language, as well as child language, develops in response to important life events that affect the social relations and social attitudes of individuals
• Bigham:

  Important life-changing events are more likely to occur post-18 at an age of 'emerging adulthood