Youth Culture & Slang
Youth culture is a subculture overwhelmingly responsible for the introduction, use, and spread of new words or informal language commonly known as slang. Aitchison generally describes how she sees slang entering public discourse and then standard English by way of subculture and pop culture:
If the subculture is felt to be interesting, fashionable or newsworthy, especially if it is linked to perceived trendsetters, such as pop singers or sports stars, the “with it” expressions are picked up by others, and spread outside the group. At first, the new usage is considered casual and non-standard. Then one of two things happens. Either the novel usage fades…Or it gradually gets taken up by a wider set of users, and becomes an established part of the language (Aitchison 19).
Based on this criteria, teens are the ideal subculture for originating and spreading new slang. Particularly attune to popular culture, students consume language utilized in movies, television shows, music, magazines, and other media sources and incorporate choice words and phrases into their daily speech. English teacher Erin Gruwell notes that teen students are “a walking encyclopedia when it comes to pop culture, quoting the lines from their favorites movies verbatim or reciting every lyric from the latest rap CD” (Gruwell 31). A specific example of a slang phrase taken directly from pop culture is “to get jiggy with it,” a phrase derived from a popular Will Smith song in the late nineties (Smith, “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”). Linguist Luntz even goes so far as to identify youth as the primary source of new language, writing:
What’s particularly striking about the new language is that it is coming not from older elites of society who live in wealthy suburban neighborhoods but from the hip-hop youth culture found in America’s urban areas…Spread by television, music, and now the Internet, the youth culture in America has created a lexicon all its own. (Luntz 55).
Surprisingly, youth have the real power in affecting the change of language. As primarily social beings, students consciously and unconsciously adopt the language their friends use, in turn passing it on to others. The ability to be social has also been enhanced by the Internet, thanks to e-mail, instant messaging, and most recently, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Constant access to a wide variety of media and popular culture sources, as well as constant contact with peers, means that words are spread, popularized, and laid aside quickly. Furthermore, teens even have the power to, and are known to, re-appropriate already existing language of standard English and use it in a new way for their particular informal use. The question becomes, what are the qualifications for a word to be incorporated into standard English? The phrase, “to get jiggy with it” is now cited in the Oxford English Dictionary. One begins to wonder, where is the divide between formal and informal language?
If the subculture is felt to be interesting, fashionable or newsworthy, especially if it is linked to perceived trendsetters, such as pop singers or sports stars, the “with it” expressions are picked up by others, and spread outside the group. At first, the new usage is considered casual and non-standard. Then one of two things happens. Either the novel usage fades…Or it gradually gets taken up by a wider set of users, and becomes an established part of the language (Aitchison 19).
Based on this criteria, teens are the ideal subculture for originating and spreading new slang. Particularly attune to popular culture, students consume language utilized in movies, television shows, music, magazines, and other media sources and incorporate choice words and phrases into their daily speech. English teacher Erin Gruwell notes that teen students are “a walking encyclopedia when it comes to pop culture, quoting the lines from their favorites movies verbatim or reciting every lyric from the latest rap CD” (Gruwell 31). A specific example of a slang phrase taken directly from pop culture is “to get jiggy with it,” a phrase derived from a popular Will Smith song in the late nineties (Smith, “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”). Linguist Luntz even goes so far as to identify youth as the primary source of new language, writing:
What’s particularly striking about the new language is that it is coming not from older elites of society who live in wealthy suburban neighborhoods but from the hip-hop youth culture found in America’s urban areas…Spread by television, music, and now the Internet, the youth culture in America has created a lexicon all its own. (Luntz 55).
Surprisingly, youth have the real power in affecting the change of language. As primarily social beings, students consciously and unconsciously adopt the language their friends use, in turn passing it on to others. The ability to be social has also been enhanced by the Internet, thanks to e-mail, instant messaging, and most recently, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Constant access to a wide variety of media and popular culture sources, as well as constant contact with peers, means that words are spread, popularized, and laid aside quickly. Furthermore, teens even have the power to, and are known to, re-appropriate already existing language of standard English and use it in a new way for their particular informal use. The question becomes, what are the qualifications for a word to be incorporated into standard English? The phrase, “to get jiggy with it” is now cited in the Oxford English Dictionary. One begins to wonder, where is the divide between formal and informal language?
