TEEN SPEAK

http://parentinfo.org/article/online-teen-speak-updated

With "slang", we mean a playful, informal language that can go in and out of fashion. It does not necessary include swears.

Slang is technically a code, understood mainly by teenagers. I can be creative and varied depending on the region/city.

It was born on Twitter, for an online usage.

On the ParentInfo website, it is said that "Speaking in coded language has been used for years by teenagers trying to hide something or communicating in their own way".

I honestly think that teen speak is not about hiding something, like criminals, or communicating in our own way, like a different animal specie.

When teenagers live everyday with social networks, hashtags, smartphones and have a proper life online, the formation of neologisms is inevitable.

New words have been already introduced in our everyday lexicon and they don't sound as a dysphemism.

Moreover, slang is mainly used as a form of sarcasm, not for hiding something (every generation has hidden something to parents anyway).

The website is not always accurate, but it is true that every region/city has its own variants in slang, so it wouldn't be possible to write down every word commonly used.

LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL CLASS | WILLIAM LABOV

William Labov is an American socio-linguist and professor of linguistics at the Pennsylvania University.

Socio-linguistics is the study of all the social variables affecting language (gender, ethnicity, social class...).

Labov was interested in finding the links between social classes and language.

His studies are settled in USA, so they focus on the American population. This is a weakness, because it can't be generalized, but Labov's findings are thought to be similar to the ones regarding the British population.

Martha's Vineyard Study

Martha's Vineyard is an isle on the East Cost, near New York. For an half of the year, the isle is occupied only by the local population; for the other half, summer, the isle is frequented by prestigious tourists.

Those tourists are called "summer people", and they represent effectively a social class on the island. All of them come from the New York upper middle class.

The second social class is the one for the islanders, the working middle class of Martha's Vineyard, that lives on the Eastern part of the isle.

The last social class is the working class of fishmen. The majority of the islanders really respected fishmen, who were seen as a desirable social group, with old fashioned values.

Fishmen spoke with an old, non standard pronounciation, especially for vowels and diphtongs.

Labov found that the young generations were deliberately tending to speak like fishmen, using the old fashioned pronunciation.

They used divergence to distinguish themselves from the summer people and to retain a sense of identity. Even the more educated islanders started speaking like fishmen.

The Department Store Study (1966)

The study is settled in New York, Manhattan. The stereotype around the people living there is that they are all upper middle class.

Labov considered 3 stores:

Saks 5th Avenue (highest classes customers)

Macy's (upper classes customers)

Klein's (lower classes customers)

Labov used the criteria of "the social stratification of the post-vocalic r": the final r at the end of words such as guard, beer...

He tested the word "fourth"in his study. Labov asked questions to the employees that implied "fourth" in the answer. Then he pretended to not understand and asked to repeat.

The results depended on the pronunciation or not of the post-vocalic r, considered as prestigious.

Labov found that the pronunciation depended on the social class membership of the employees.

Those with higher socio-economic status pronounced /r/ more frequently than those with a lower one (62% Saks, 51% Macy's, 20% Klein's).



Labov approached language through a rigorous, scientific, empirical method, and rejected contemplation and intuition.

GEORDIE REGIONAL VARIATION | ANALISYS

Geordies, people from the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and its surrounding area, are generally thought as friendly, folks and fanatical football supporters.

The word "Geordie" has an ancient origin: it derives from the early 18th century, when Newcastle was supporting king George I and then George II, while the rest of the population of Northumberland supported the Scottish Jacobite rebellions.

The name only includes the Newcastle area, but the dialect has been influenced by the Northumbrian and Scottish dialects from the north and Durham and Yorkshire varieties from the south.

A broad accent such as Geordie is generally difficult to understand to other English-speakers. 

This obstacle is caused by variations on sounds, especially vowels, and the use of distinctive words and non-standard grammatical structures. 

Today most of the Geordies know both standard English and the regional variation and use them depending on the context.

It happened that Geordies were penalised for their use of language and accent. One episode is the layoff of a Geordie female officer cadet from the British Army's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. The Sandhurst administration denied the accuse of discrimination, but the officer cadet in question claimed that fellow cadets taunted her with shouts of “Whey aye, man!”, and she was told by her instructor that use of the word “knackered” ('exhausted') should be replaced by "pooped".

Even though that episode, there are signs of a growing pride, with Geordie dictionaries, versions of bible stories and so on.

The majority of words come from the languge of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants of the first millennium, from southern Denmark.

Some other word can be considered effectively as truly Geordie words: pet (term of address for females – e.g. “thanks, pet”), deek (see, look at), marra (friend, mate), lowp (jump), ten o’clock (morning snack), kiff (very good), get (stupid person).

Geordie accent has a particular sound: the"burr", similar to the French pronunciation of "r".

The u vowels tend to be short, so that the vowel sounds in the words "foot" and "bus" are the same.

Geordie grammar is, for a native English-speaker, a mess, especially with pronouns. The term “us” is used to indicate "me", while the plural form for "us" is “wu”, or“wuz”. So “give us it” means “give me it” and “give wu it” means “give us it”. "Our" is pronounced “wor”.

In many cases, what is the simple past form in standard English is also used as a participle in the Geordie variety.

Another grammatical feature is a combination of modal verbs, as "might" and "could", which are not used together. E.g. "He might could arrive before tea."

Another difference from standard English is that “but” can be said at the end of the sentence. E.g. “You’ll be late, but”.

The object pronoun can be put at the end for emphasis: “I love skiing, me”.

COMMON PHRASES!

Hoo ye gannin?  'How are you?'
Hoo's ya fettle?  'How are you?'
Y'areet, hinny? 'Are you all right, kid?'
Champion. 'Very good, very well'
Bonny day the day.  'It's nice weather'
Cowld the day, mar.  'It's cold today.'
Whey aye, man.  'that's right'
Give ower, y'a kiddin.  'Come on, you're joking'
Hadaway man.  'I'm still not convinced'
Ya taakin shite.  'I really disagree with that'
Ootside!  'Let's settle this outside'
Hoo's the Toon gannin?  'How is the Newcastle United match progressing?'
Tara now, pet.  'Goodbye (to female)'
Wee's yon slapper?  'Who's the young lady?' (derogatory)

CONVERGENCE - DIVERGENCE IN LANGUAGE: ANALYSIS OF A LETTER

The first comparison between the two letters, one written using divergence and the other one written using convergence is the length: the convergent letter is longer than the divergence one. I did it on purpose, because if I imagine to need to create a distance between myself and my interlocutor, I would probably write only the main informations, avoiding details, to make it shorter. That's because I don't want to have a conversation with the other person, even though I have to give him some informations.

In the convergent letter, I'm trying to cooperate with the parents of a child who is not doing good at school. As a consequence, I chose to explain what's happening to the child at school, presenting that as my concern. "I'm afraid to inform you that Harry is risking to not pass the year because of his grades (...) I'm worried because he seems struggling a lot with studying at home and complete the homework (...) but we need to help him to achieve good results in order to pass the year".

As I'm trying to help, not just to inform, I chose to write the parents about what Harry is doing good, to ensure his parents that, even though their son has difficoulties at school, he is still a nice guy: "Harry is a really nice lad and he seems to have great social skills that helps him to make really good friendships".

The letter goes on suggesting what to do: "As a school, we suggest you a DAST, a test for dislexia that can help us to know how to help him. We also recommend you to test him for the attention deficit disorder and the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder". I chose to explain the acronyms, in order to let the parents to be fully aware of the situation, and to use too many of them. This is important if we use convergence, because it will lead the interlocutors to participate actively to the conversation.

As conclusion, I tried again to be as cooperative as possible: "If you need to ask me some question, or if you prefer to ask them to anyone else of the teacher team, please don't hesitate to contact us by email".

The divergent letter has a completely different purpose: just to inform briefly that Harry is not doing good at school and what to do. For this reason I've chosen to start in this way: "I must inform you that your son, Harry, is not reaching the sufficient grades to pass the year". I wrote that using two direct addresses because I wanted to create a distance: he is your son and what he does is your problem.

"The teacher staff has noticed that Harry is very often not concentrated in class and he doesn't complete his homework as required. It's obvious that he won't pass his future assestments". I've chosen to not try to seem worried about the situation, because it's not my purpose, I just wanted to inform.

I didn't neither give a concrete solution to the parents, because they won't have enough information to decide. "In the light of these considerations, we strongly recommend you to subject Harry to the following tests: DAST, ADD, ADHAD".

As a conclusion, I wrote: "If you need to ask us any clarification, contact us by email during school time". In this way I stated that I can give them explanations, but I've also implicitly discouraged them to do it, making them understand that I'm not going to considerate their doubts after office hours.

THE DEFICIT MODEL | ROBIN LAKOFF

In 1975 Robin Lakoff published 'Language on women's place', a study of the female language.
Her work is based on data recorded in a white - middle class context: she recorded some conversations between students of a university and the she analyzed them.

Lakoff's work has some issues: women's speeches might have changed because of the time passing for instance. 
Moreover, Robin has considered just a small sample of the American population, it might be not representative of all the women in the US and in the world.
Because of that her theory can be challenged.

The Deficit Model conclusions are:

• Women use hedging (sort of, kind of, it seems like...)

• Women use (super)polite forms (would you mind, if you don't mind...)

• Women use tag questions (isn't it?...)

• Women speak in italics (giving emphasis on adverbs like 'very')

• Women use empty adjectives (divine, adorable, lovely...)

• Women use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation

• Women use direct quotations (she was like: "...")

• Women have a special lexicon (more wide vocabulary)

• Women use question intonation in declarative sentences, expressing uncertainty

• Women use 'wh' imperatives (why don't you open the door?...)

• Women speak less frequently

• Women overuse qualifiers (I think that...)

• Women apologize more (I'm sorry, but I think that...)

• Women use modal constructions (can, would, should...)

• Women avoid coarse language

• Women use indirect commands

• Women use more intensifier (I'm so glad...)

• Women have a lack of a sense of humor

Some observations:
Lakoff says that women use super-polite forms. It could be right in 1975, but now it happens less frequently.
Nowadays women tend to choose some language features that are more likely to by used by men. It is possibly due to the females' genuine need to be equal in power and in consideration as males.

Because of that women use more frequently a more direct language, that can include swears, shouting etc. This goes against another Principles of the deficit Model.

 

Let's consider an example: the actress Jennifer Lawrence posted an observation on Facebook (13 October). In her text, she swears, she uses empty adjectives as a parody of what a woman should act like, showing a great use of sarcasm and sense of humor.
It's evident from there that the Lakoff's model is weak today.

LANGUAGE AND GENDER: ANALYSIS OF JENNIFER LAWRENCE'S POST ON FACEBOOK

Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars?

Complete post: https://www.facebook.com/JenniferLawrence/post/10153012783811793:0

On the 13th October, Jennifer Lawrence posted on her Facebook page a text with the purpose of inform the aspiring female stars that the show-business is men-dominated.

She poured out her emotions, criticizing the currently jet set and the Sony company.

Her post is full of linguistic features typically used by women, but she actually uses even male ones.

The actress uses words like 'adorable', or 'likable', that immediately make us think that who is speaking is a female.

'I'm over trying to find the "adorable" way to state my opinion and still be likable'.

In this sentence, it's evident the use of sarcasm: the word adorable, written with the inverted commas, make the audience think that she is criticizing the way that her collaborators are considering her opinion (and the other female-stars ones).

Jennifer states her point of view using linguistic features with the purpose of make her seem really direct and honest and confident with the audience. These are mainly used by males.

'I'm even the asshole who didn't do anything about the ice-bucket challenge', 'I should have written a check, but I fucking forgot, okay?', 'I want to be honest and open and, fingers crossed, not piss anyone off'', 'A few weeks ago at work, I spoke my mind and gave my opinion in a clear and no-bullshit way', 'When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks', 'Fuck that!'.

All these phrases make the reader focus on what Jennifer is saying, because she express herself using dysphemisms, blunt and socially unacceptable words or sentences. As a consequence, the audience is more likely to remember the concepts expressed very directly and with swears.

Generally speaking, men tend to use a language enriched with dysphemisms, because they are usually more direct, avoiding details, and get the point immediately.

On the other hand,one of the stereotypes linked to the female gender is that women are generally rambling, because they take care a lot about details and secondary information.

LANGUAGE AND POWER

There is no actual 'Language and power' question on paper 2.
However, this terminology/theory is useful for analysing a text considering gender, occupation and social class. It is also potentially useful for paper 1.

 

What is power?
We agree that it is authority over someone, depending on context. Power is also a dynamic factor.
It can derive from education, beliefs, politics, social class, faith, popularity, aesthetic and personality.
Power can also be written. We can find some form of control even online.

Why is an individual allowed power in that context?
The physical environment is really important and useful here.
A teacher, for instance, have the power over his students due to the school setting. Outside the school his role doesn't include any form of control over the student.

Basic terms:

• Power in discourse - the ways in which power is manifested through language.
• Power behind discourse - the contextual reasons for the power happening (mainly in discourse). E.g. a teacher has the power on the class because he has more knowledge, the physical environment as said, he is an authority, he is older, he has control due to his profession, his linguistic register, the tone of his voice, he usually asks questions, he uses the subject specific lexis, he uses re-casting.
• Instrumental power - power used to mantain and enforce authority (media, police-army, teachers, queen, parents).
• Influential power - power used to persuade or influence others (media, politicians, church-religion in general, teachers, queen, brands and companies, parents, doctors).

According to Wareing (1999), there are three different types of power:

• Political power - power held by politicians, law and police.
• Social grup power - power held by people as result of social variables such as social class, age, ethnicity.
• Personal power - power held by people as a result of their profession (e.g. teachers).

Language strategies used to assert power:

• Oppressive discourse strategy (shouting, swearing...)
• Repressive discourse strategy, a subtle way of asserting power (questions, specific lexis...)