Social Groups

• Who spoke about different ways of measuring age?

  Penelope Eckert (1998)
• Penelope Eckert’s ways of defining age

  • chronological age
  • biological age
  • social age
• Jenny Cheshire (1987)


  “It is becoming recognised that adult language, as well as child language, develops in response to important life events that affect social relations and social attitudes of individuals.”
• Anna-Brita Stendtrőm’s features of teenager talk

  • irregular turn-taking
  • overlaps
  • indistinct articulation
  • word shortenings
  • teasing and name calling
  • verbal dwelling
  • slang
  • taboo
  • language mixing
• Anna-Britta Stenstrőm


  Teenager talk is used to “establish a connection to youth culture and to set themselves off from the older generation… to signal coolness, toughness, or attitude”
• Penelope Eckert‘s features of teenage talk

  • use of “like” and “okay”
  • rising intonation
  • multiple negation
• Polari


  Emerged in the mid 20th century as a way for gay people to discreetly communicate with each other when it was illegal during those times to be gay
• Hayes


  “Secret code and code enabling give homosexuals protection and opportunity to perform roles”
• Drouin and Davis


  “Text speak hinders college students to remember standard forms”
• Lavender linguistics


  The study of queer speech and language