Teenagers are creating their own vocabulary in order to prevent their parents from understanding them.
Such linguistic innovations are not a sign of illiteracy, according to researcher Lisa Whittaker, but of creativity.
Whittaker, a doctoral student at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, studied 16- to 18-year-olds on social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook in order to find out about their language – and decode their secret vocabulary.
She found that users had invented new words and acronyms to describe activities they wanted hidden from adult users. MWI, for example, stood for "mad with it," a slang term for "drunk."
"Ownageeee" and "taken" were code for being in a relationship. "Legal" implied that users were above the age of consent and able legally to have sex.
The psychologist said that the language went "beyond abbreviations that are commonly used in text messaging, such as removing all the vowels." It may be a "deliberate attempt to keep adults from understanding what is written on the page."
Whittaker dismissed concerns for teenagers' command of Standard English, telling Webuser.co.uk that social networking sites play a "very important role" in constructing young people's identity, and gave them the chance "to gain both positive and negative recognition."
Linguistic trends on social networking sites are a burgeoning area of study. In January this year, the media leaped upon claims that the average teenager uses only 800 words a day.
Linguists were quick to brush aside reports as a distortion of the research, however. British linguist David Crystal castigated the press for hysteria over "one silly claim."
14 June 2010
Go back to June 2010
