Research on Youth-Language

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1496 VIII. Findings of Sociolinguistic Research
1. Introduction and definitory remarks
2. Some premises
3. Research traditions and methods
4. Selected findings
5. Social-psychological explanations
6. Suggestions for further research
7. Literature (selected)
1. Introduction and definitory
remarks
Distinctive speech patterns in adolescence
received scholarly attention only in the
last decades of the 20th century, although
they have been noted in the past as well (cf.
Henne 1986; Eble 1998). Since the 1980s
an increasing number of studies on an inter-
national scale have addressed a topic which
is known as langue des jeunes or parler jeune
in French, lingua dei giovani in Italian,
Jugendsprache in German, ungdomsspråk
in Swedish, teenage talk or teenage speech in
English, etc. These terms are used not only
in academic discourse, but also in popular
dictionaries and media reports, where they
tend to be biased towards vocabulary and
a criticism of ‘bad language’. Moreover,
they often refer not to the speech of the
whole age group, but rather to ways of
speaking which are judged ‘deviant’ and
‘exotic’ (Albrecht 1993).
This article adopts a broader understand-
ing of ‘youth language’ in a manner similar
to ‘child language’ or ‘media language’.
Youth language, then, is taken to refer to all
patterns of language use in the social age of
adolescence, encompassing all ranges of lin-
guistic description as well as a variety of re-
search questions and topics within sociolin-
guistics.
The research reviewed in this article
comes almost entirely from the 1980s and
1990s. It concentrates mostly on adoles-
cence in a strict sense (i.e. 13 to 19 years
of age), but some studies extend the scope
into post-adolescence, including speakers in
their early twenties (e.g. Pujolar 2001; Auer/
Dirim 2000). In what follows, the terms ado-
lescence and youth will be used interchange-
ably. Studies which compare adolescents
to other age groups are only selectively in-
cluded (cf. Art. 152). Most of the available
studies deal with a handful of languages, i.e.
German, French, Italian, British and Amer-
ican English, and Scandinavian languages.
Other languages and/or regions covered are
Spanish, Japanese, Greek, and a number of
Eastern European and African countries.
The references include collections restricted
to one language (e.g. Aitsiselmi 2000; Banfi/
Sobrero 1992; Boyer 1997; Rodriguez 1989;
Schlobinski/Heins 1998) as well as collec-
tions covering several languages (Androu-
tsopoulos/Scholz 1998; Androutsopoulos/
Georgakopoulou 2003; Kotsinas et al. 1997;
Radtke 1993) and a bibliography (Neuland
1999).
2. Some premises
Adolescence is not merely a biological age,
but a social institution, which is specific to
the modern era, and is usually conceived
of as a transition period between childhood
and adulthood. Depending on the respective
research approach (cf. section 3.), the rel-
evant social units range from small-scale
peer groups over youth-cultural scenes to
parameters such as gender and class (cf. sec-
tion 4.3.). Within adolescence, a distinction
is frequently drawn between activity spheres
controlled by adults, e.g. school, and ‘inde-
pendent’ activities based on some form of
youth (sub)culture (cf. Art. 59).
Many studies of youth language share an
interest in linguistic innovation and change
as well as in vernacular speech and in-group
interaction. Sociolinguists generally agree
that adolescence is the life stage in which lan-
guage change is most clearly visible (Kers-
will 1996). According to Eckert (1997a, 52),
“Adolescents are the linguistic movers and
shakers, at least in western industrialized
societies, and, as such, a prime source of
information about linguistic change and
the role of language in social practice.” Re-
searchers have therefore concentrated on
situations in which spontaneous vernacular
speech typically occurs, i.e. in-group com-
munication. For instance, Schlobinski et
al. (1993) consider a high intimacy in the
group, an unstructured situation, and a
lively and emotional atmosphere as the main
contextual parameters for the development
of adolescent speech styles.
A great deal of research has concentrated
on linguistic items or variants, which are
considered to be specific to (or typical for)
146. Research on Youth-Language/Jugendsprach-Forschung

146. Research on Youth-Language 1497
the youth groups under investigation. This
holds true for both variationist and vocabu-
lary studies (cf. sections 3.1. and 3.2.). In
parts of the (continental European) litera-
ture, youth language is conceptualized as
a language variety, especially as a sociolect
(cf. Art. 21), and is empirically contrasted to
an abstract standard language rather than to
other local vernaculars (cf. Kotsinas 1994;
Androutsopoulos 1998a,). By contrast, in-
teractional approaches (cf. section 3.3.) di-
rect the attention to speech styles of specific
peer groups, and attempt at a richer contex-
tualization of particular linguistic features
(Schlobinski 1995). However, most empiri-
cal studies restrict their scope on one range
of description, be it phonology, vocabulary
or conversational conduct, while complex
co-occurrences of linguistic features are
seldom demonstrated in practice (cf. Schwi-
talla 1994).
Certain aspects of youth language, es-
pecially slang innovations, are frequently
attributed to mass-media influences; on the
other hand, the appearance of youth slang
in media discourse is often noted. However,
this article restricts the notion of youth lan-
guage to spoken language and face-to-face
interaction, also including individual me-
diated interactions such as telephone con-
versations or personal e-mails. By contrast,
interrelations between youth language and
mass media would require a closer exami-
nation of media contexts (cf. also Art. 157).
3. Research traditions and methods
3.1. Variationist studies
Variationist research on youth language
includes both studies that explore sociolin-
guistic stratification within adolescence
(e.g. Eckert 2000; Laks 1983; Lee 1995; Sten-
ström et al. 2002), and studies that compare
adolescents with other age groups (e.g. Du-
bois 1992; Kerswill 1996; Rickford et al.
1991). Many studies of the second type are
concerned with the distinction between age-
grading and language change in progress,
which will not be discussed in this article
(cf. Art. 152; Chambers 1995; Eckert 1997a;
Romaine 1984).
The number of investigated speakers is
often restricted to small groups (as in Laks
1983) or even to one speaker (as in Cutler
1999; Rickford/McNair-Knox 1994). Some
studies follow classic elicitation procedures
with interviews and word lists (e.g. Lee 1995;
Pooley 2000; Scholten 1988), others use self-
conducted recordings (e.g. Stenström et al.
2002). Still others frame data collection and
variation analysis by extensive ethnography
(e.g. Eckert 2000; Laks 1983). In addition to
widely used social variables (cf. section 4.3.),
some studies use school type instead of socio-
economic class (e.g. Lee 1995; Stenström
1997), and others introduce factors related
to adolescent culture, e.g. loyalty to ver-
nacular culture (Cheshire 1982) or school-
based social categories (Eckert 1988; 2000).
The linguistic features investigated are
either only phonological (Eckert 2000; Lee
1995; Pooley 2000; Kerswill 1996; Kotsinas
1997) or both phonological and grammatical
(e.g. Laks 1983; Scholten 1988; Stenström
1997; Cheshire 1982). Discourse markers are
studied by Dailey-O’Cain (2000), Ferrara/
Bell (1995), Stenström et al. (2002), Taglia-
monte/Hudson (1999). Stenström et al.
(2002) compare their data to those of Ches-
hire (1982), Cutler (1999) to those of Labov
(1972).
3.2. Vocabulary studies
Vernacular vocabulary that is habitually
used by (groups of) young people (also
termed ‘youth slang’ thereafter), is generally
investigated along the lines of slang/argot
studies (cf. Art. 28). Research in this area
can be divided in questionnaire and lexical
studies. Most questionnaire studies elicit
lexical items from specific semantic areas,
sometimes also including questions on lan-
guage use and language attitudes (e.g. de
Klerk 1997; T. Labov 1992; Walter 1993);
other studies elicit the knowledge and use of
given lexical items (e.g. Banfi/Sobrero 1992;
Neuland/Heinemann 1997).
Lexical analyses are based both on ques-
tionnaire data and on otherwise collected
material. A first major area is the semantic
classification of lexical items. Areas known
for their abundance in youth slang are social
categorizations, mental and emotional states,
sexuality, states of intoxication, evaluative
and intensifying vocabulary. A second area
concerns processes of slang creation, such
as word-formation, semantic shift, and bor-
rowing. Some studies also include discourse
items, e.g. greetings, terms of address, re-
sponse cries, interjections and conversa-
tional routines. However, the use of these
items (and, in fact, of slang items in general)
in conversational interaction is rarely exam-

1498 VIII. Findings of Sociolinguistic Research
ined. With regard to analytic typologies, Ver-
delhan-Bourgade’s (1991) classification for
French includes semantic change (metaphor,
metonymy, etc.), vocabulary structures
(composition, clipping etc.) and borrowing.
Eble (1996) organizes her description of col-
lege slang according to form, meaning, bor-
rowing and use. Androutsopoulos (1998a)
proposes a youth slang analysis in terms of
four main categories: productive structures
in word and idiom formation, lexical sem-
antic fields and functional categories (e.g.,
intensification), processes of formal vari-
ation and synonym creation, and discourse
functions of slang items.
In addition, there is a tradition of (partly
non-academic) youth slang dictionaries, such
as Heinemann (1990) and Ehmann (1996)
for German, Goudaillier (1997) and Eliane/
Kernel (1996) for French and Liceo di Men-
drisio (1998) for Italian (see also reviews and
discussion in Eble 1998; Radtke 1998).
3.3. Ethnographic and interactional studies
A third stream of research is rooted in
the ethnography of communication, conver-
sation analysis, and interactional sociolin-
guistics (cf. Art. 121, 122, 137). Here, a rich
ethnography is seen as a precondition for the
understanding of adolescent speech styles,
and analysis pays close attention to discur-
sive contexts of linguistic variation in young
people’s speech (cf. Deppermann in print;
Eckert 1997a; Folb 1980; Januschek/Schlo-
binski 1989; Pujolar 2001; Rampton 1995;
Schlobinski et al. 1993).
A central concern in this research is the
use of various codes, registers and social
voices in everyday interactions. Neuland
(1987) extended the concept of bricolage
from anthropology and cultural studies to
the analysis of speech styles in adolescent
groups. Schlobinski et al. (1993) describe
bricolage as the playful combination of vari-
ous ways of speaking and cultural resources
(i.e. fragments of popular culture), and
point out its conversation structuring func-
tion. The interest in adolescent interaction
as a polyphonic discourse is also prominent
in work by Pujolar (1997; 2001) on working-
class youngsters in Barcelona, and Georga-
kopoulou (1999) on a female peer group in
Greece. Schwitalla (1994) investigates pros-
odic patterns used by speakers to concep-
tualize alien social worlds.
Further related research topics include
code-switching and style-shifting (cf. sec-
tion 4.4.), the role of sound-words, interjec-
tions, and quotations in interaction (Nord-
berg 1987; Schlobinski et al. 1993), narrative
performance (Georgakopoulou 1999), ver-
bal practices such as teasing and dissing
(Deppermann/Schmidt 2001; Eder 1993;
Schwitalla 1994), ascription of group mem-
bership terms (Widdicombe/Wooffitt 1995),
and intergenerational communication (Au-
genstein 1998).
3.4. Joining approaches
The three approaches outlined so far are
largely pursued independently from one an-
other, and integrating studies are hard to
find. Folb (1980) is a rare case of ethno-
graphically founded vocabulary analysis.
In research by Kotsinas (1994; 1997) and
Stenström et al. (2002) variationist, struc-
tural and conversation-analytic methods are
applied. Eckert (1995) uses a version of con-
versation analysis in order to explore the
contexts of new variants. Eble (1996) and
Androutsopoulos (1998a) combine vocabu-
lary analysis with an examination of the
contexts of slang use.
Several studies provide evidence for the
fact that youth language features of different
kinds co-occur and are interrelated in vari-
ous ways. A connection between slang items,
especially verbs, and non-standard morpho-
logical phenomena is observed by Cheshire
(1982) and Rampton (1995, 128) for British
English and by Conein/Gadet (1998) for
French. Relations between slang items and
grammaticalization processes are discussed
by Androutsopoulos (2000) for German and
Stenström et al. (2002) for London English.
Relations between innovative phonological
variants, slang items and discourse condi-
tions, especially emphatic language use and
key cultural topics, are observed by Eckert
(1995) for American English and Kotsinas
(1997) for Swedish.
4. Selected findings
4.1. Vernacular use
Virtually all studies on youth language dem-
onstrate adolescence as a phase of heavy
vernacular use, whereby the term ‘vernacu-
lar’ refers to phenomena on all ranges of lin-
guistic description.
According to Labov (1972), adolescent
speech represents the most stable vernacular
system. In subsequent research, adolescents

146. Research on Youth-Language 1499
are repeatedly found to use a higher propor-
tion of vernacular variants in phonology
and/or grammar than adult speakers from
the same socio-economic background
(see Art. 152 and reviews in Romaine 1984;
Chambers 1995). Some researchers empha-
size adolescents’ preference for local va-
rieties and variants (Eckert 1995; 2000;
Kerswill 1996). Radtke (1990) suggests that
in regions with vital dialects, adolescents
might turn to dialectal speech in contrast to
parents’ standard-oriented (or leveled) var-
ieties (cf. also Schwitalla 1994). Also, a high
frequency of colloquial phonological pro-
cesses such as vowel reductions, assimi-
lations etc. is sometimes regarded as typical
for adolescent speech (cf. Stenström 1996;
Androutsopoulos 1998b).
On the lexical level, “young people’s
fondness for slang” has already been noted
by Leonard Bloomfield (1984, 49) and
repeatedly stated ever since. Lodge (1992)
found that younger speakers report the use
of non-standard vocabulary in a conver-
sation with a stranger from the same age
group more frequently than older speakers.
With regard to borrowing, Androutso-
poulos (1998a) suggests that young people
borrow a great deal of vernacular English
words and expressions. Several researchers
endorse the view that the heavy use of taboo
words (vulgarisms, expletives) is a charac-
teristic of adolescence (Androutsopoulos
1998a, 416–7; Cheshire 1982; de Klerk 1997;
Radtke 1990; Stenström et al. 2002). Several
vocabulary studies have demonstrated the
productivity of certain non-standard word-
formation types and procedures of formal
modification (such as clipping, redundant
suffixes etc.) among (groups of) young
people (Androutsopoulos 1998a; Boyer
1997; Demisse/Bender 1983; Eble 1996;
François-Geiger/Goudaillier 1991; Henne
1986; Walter 1993). A well-known pattern is
French verlan, which is a systematic trans-
position of phonemes or syllables, as in
femme > meuf (Méla 1997).
Besides content words, the frequent use
of certain discourse markers is often re-
garded as typical for adolescent speech;
evidence includes the items et tout ça in
Montreal French, innit,yeah and like in
English, and ey in German (Andersen 1997;
Dailey-O’Cain 2000; Dubois 1992; Ferrara/
Bell 1995; Schlobinski et al. 1993; Sten-
ström et al. 2002; Tagliamonte/Hudson
1999).
4.2. Linguistic innovation and change
Adolescence is generally seen as a social locus
for various types of linguistic innovation
and change from below. Kotsinas (1997)
divides linguistic innovations in adolescence
in four types: new phonological variants,
slang, grammaticalization processes, and
emergence of new language varieties in con-
texts of language contact (cf. section 4.4.).
Variationist research has stressed that (some
groups of) adolescents lead the entire age
spectrum in sound change (Eckert 1988;
Eckert 1997a; Kerswill 1996). However,
awareness of the influence of adolescent
speech on the entire speech community is
highest with regard to the lexicon. Media re-
ports, popular dictionaries, and professional
lexicographers aid this awareness. Neuland
(1994) found an increase in the amount of
entries marked as ‘Jugendsprache’ in Ger-
man dictionaries.
In addition, there is evidence for a num-
ber of new discourse items and construc-
tions, which are often connected to pro-
cesses of grammaticalization. Examples
include the novel conjunction comme quoi
(que) in suburban Paris French (Conein/
Gadet 1998); the intensifying definite article
in Greek (Apostolou-Panara 1994); the par-
ticle ba in Swedish (Kotsinas 1994; 1997);
the invariant tag question innit, the tag yeah
and the pragmatic particle cos in London
English (Stenström et al. 2002); the quo-
tation marker be + like in several varieties
of English (Ferrara/Bell 1995; Tagliamonte/
Hudson 1999; Macaulay 2001); the negative
null and a new position of intensifiers in
German (Androutsopoulos 2000); evalu-
ative denominal conversions in German and
English (Androutsopoulos 2000; Stenström
et al. 2002).
Some studies suggest that innovations of
various kinds in young people’s speech pri-
marily serve expressive and interactive pur-
poses. Kotsinas (1997, 125) suggests that in-
novative variants “primarily have been used
to express some kind of an emotion or atti-
tude, for instance irony, distance, etc., i.e. to
attract the attention of the hearer”. She also
proposes a six-step model that describes the
diffusion of linguistic innovations from their
original peer-group contexts up to an even-
tual introduction in adult speech and stan-
dard language.

1500 VIII. Findings of Sociolinguistic Research
4.3. Effects of social variables
Adolescent speech varies according to a
range of social variables, in ways that partly
confirm and partly transcend sociolinguistic
tenets. Relevant evidence comes both from
variationist research and from questionnaire
studies on vocabulary.
As for age differences, the dominant as-
sumption is an increase in vernacular vari-
ants from (late) childhood to early adoles-
cence, followed by a decrease towards late
adolescence and early adulthood. This trend
is evidenced by e.g. Scholten (1988) and
Armstrong (1998). Within adolescence, Ro-
maine (1984, 106) posits that ‘the younger
the speaker, the greater the use of the more
stigmatised feature’. This holds true for the
female speaker studied by Rickford and
McNair-Knox (1994), and the male speaker
studied by Cutler (1999). In Henne’s ques-
tionnaire study (1986), the trend was con-
firmed in the domain of school vocabulary
(i.e. older pupils reported less lexical vari-
ants than younger ones), but reversed in the
case of sound-words and verb stems. In a
similar vein, de Klerk (1997) found an in-
crease in the reported use of expletives from
the 12–14 to the 15–17 year old group, es-
pecially among boys. These findings suggest
that the frequency of vernacular features in
late adolescence varies in relation to particu-
lar areas of vocabulary.
With respect to class (or school type),
classic sociolinguistic patterns are con-
firmed by a number of studies. For instance,
Stenström (1997) finds that several gram-
matical variables in British English as well
as the tag innit are much more frequent
among adolescents that are classified as
lower working class. However, other studies
stress the sociolinguistic significance of cat-
egories rooted in youth culture rather than
in parents’ status. Labov (1972) and Ches-
hire (1982) were among the first to state a
connection between vernacular use and par-
ticipation in a vernacular culture. An im-
pressive example is provided by Cutler’s
(1999) case study of ‘Mike’, a middle-class
white teenager who identified with hip-hop
culture, and whose speech “was strongly in-
fluenced by [African American] phonology,
prosody and hip-hop slang” (Cutler 1999,
429). German data from subcultural groups
such as punks and skaters (Androutsopou-
los 1998a, Deppermann in press) contains
more non-standard patterns and slang items
than data obtained in a church-related youth
center (Schlobinski et al. 1993). Eckert (1988;
2000) has repeatedly shown phonological
variation to correlate with two opposed
social categories, i.e. the school-oriented
‘jocks’ and the school-rejecting ‘burnouts’,
with the latter leading in the use of vernacu-
lar and/or innovative variants. Laks (1983)
used ethnographic evidence in order to spe-
cify status differences within a peer group,
which appeared as highly homogeneous
with respect to traditional factors, and dem-
onstrated linguistic correlations of these dif-
ferences. Scholten (1988) found a corre-
lation between frequency of non-standard
features and popularity in the peer group.
As for gender, several studies reproduce
the classic pattern, in which boys use ver-
nacular variants more than girls (e.g. Arm-
strong 1998; Lee 1995; Pooley 2000; Sten-
ström et al. 2002). At the same time, a
number of pattern reversals and challenging
findings are reported. In Pooley’s (2000)
study, non-French girls that are accepted by
their native peers are much closer to these,
and score much higher than non-French
boys, in the frequency of a regional phono-
logical variant. Eckert (1988; 1995; 2000)
found girls leading in the use of vernacular
variants. In lexicon, a number of researchers
stress the frequent use of vernacular and/or
taboo vocabulary among female youths (Folb
1980; de Klerk 1992; Stenström 1995). Ac-
cording to Dailey-O’Cain’s (2000) matched-
guise study, young women are perceived
as using like more often than young men.
Woolard (1997) argues that gender differ-
ences in adolescent language depend on dif-
ferences in peer group structure, with boys’
networks typically being more loosely knit
than girls’. Verbal practices such as dueling
and teasing reveal differences in the nar-
rative and interactional construction of
masculinity and femininity in adolescence
(Deppermann/Schmidt 2001; Eder 1993;
Georgakopoulou 1999; Pujolar 2001).
Regional differences in adolescent lan-
guage are reported in questionnaire studies
such as Neuland/Heinemann (1997) for East
and West Germany, and T. Labov (1992) for
East and West Coast in the USA. Urban vs.
rural differences are discussed by Folb
(1980) and different articles in Januschek/
Schlobinski (1989). Pooley (2000) showed
an interplay of ethnic origin and regional
loyalty, in which native French youth had a
significantly greater awareness and use of

146. Research on Youth-Language 1501
Picard regional French than their classmates
from a migrant background.
4.4. Language contact
Recent research on language contact in
adolescence is concerned with cases of
migration-induced contact in Europe (cf.
Art. 144). ‘London Jamaican’ is a Creole-
based variety, which youths of Afro-Carib-
bean origin start using in their adolescent
years (Sebba 1993). ‘Rinkeby Swedish’ is
used by youth from various ethnic back-
grounds in multiethnic suburbs of Stock-
holm, and is characterized by phonological,
prosodic and grammatical simplifications
as well as vocabulary from various migrant
languages (Kotsinas 1992). Hinnenkamp
(2000) and Keim (2001) discuss code-mixing
among youths of Turkish descent in Ger-
many, Bierbach/Birken-Silverman (2002)
among German-Italian youth.
Other studies are concerned with the im-
pact of immigrant languages on the speech
of native youth (cf. Seux 1997 with regard
to Arabic loan-words in France), and with
multilingual practices in multi-ethnic peer
groups. Hewitt (1982) first reported the use
of Creole by white adolescents in the UK,
and Rampton (1995) expanded this line of
research, showing how adolescents engage
in ‘language crossing’, i.e. use bits and pieces
of languages that ‘belong’ to peers of a dif-
ferent ethnic origin (Creole, Panjabi and
stylized Asian English). Similarly, Cutler
(1999) describes the use of Afro-American
English among white youth. Auer/Dirim
(2001) describe the use of Turkish conversa-
tional routines by youths from various ethnic
backgrounds (including native Germans) in
multi-ethnic neighborhoods of Hamburg.
Pujolar (2001) and Woolard (1997) describe
interactional uses of (varieties of) Spanish
and Catalan in Barcelona. Further regions
covered in the literature include Alsace
(Bister-Broosen 1998), French-speaking Af-
rican countries (cf. papers in Boyer 1997 and
Françoise-Geiger/Goudaillier 1991), and
the U.S./Mexican border (Donahue 1995).
4.5. Language attitudes and stereotypes
Youth language is often commented upon by
adults, and is a frequent topic in the media.
Parents and teachers often have a critical and
negative attitude towards adolescent lan-
guage, judging it as “sloppy” and attempting
to correct vernacular features such as local
accents, slang words, discourse particles, or
code mixing. Adolescents themselves are
quite conscious of these attitudes as well as of
generational differences in their speech (Ja-
nuschek/Schlobinski 1989; Kerswill/Williams
1997; Kotsinas 1992; Kotsinas 1997; Ramp-
ton 1995, 129–30; Schlobinski/Heins 1998).
According to Schlobinski et al. (1993, 169–
203) adolescents evaluate their speech posi-
tively, but at the same time hold it to be inap-
propriate for group-external purposes, e.g.
for a job interview. Many media reports on
youth language are ambivalent, oscillating
between stigmatization and acceptance;
moreover, they tend to exaggerate its differ-
ences from adult speech. It seems that media
attitudes towards youth language have a simi-
lar profile in several European countries
(Iordanidou/Androutsopoulos 1998).
4.6. Interlinguistic comparisons
A number of studies discuss similarities
between youth slang in Indo-European lan-
guages (German, French, Italian, Spanish,
Greek, Swedish), and point out common
tendencies such as fertility of specific lexical
fields, abundance of expressive speech, use
of non-standard word-formation types, and
identical borrowings from English, which
are attributed to the homogenizing influence
of global youth cultures (Albrecht 1993; An-
droutsopoulos 1997; Radtke 1992; Zimmer-
mann 1993). Andersen (1997) compares dis-
course markers in London teenage speech
(i.e. like, yeah and innit) and in three Scan-
dinavian languages. His findings suggest
“a certain marker equivalence across lan-
guages” and “parallel routinisation tenden-
cies” (Andersen 1997, 84–5). The same
holds true for new quotation markers such
as English be + like (Ferrara/Bell 1995),
Swedish ba (Kotsinas 1997) and German so
(Androutsopoulos 1998a). Although com-
parative studies of interactional phenomena
do not yet exist, Georgakopoulou’s (1999)
findings on bricolage practices in Greek
peer-group narratives are quite similar to
findings by Schwitalla (1994) and Schlo-
binski et al. (1993) for German. Depper-
mann/Schmidt (2001) point out that verbal
dueling is highly typical for male adoles-
cents in various speech communities.
5. Social-psychological explanations
Virtually all studies of youth language draw
on the notion of identity (cf. Art. 154) in
order to explain sociolinguistic differenti-

1502 VIII. Findings of Sociolinguistic Research
ation in adolescence. This holds true for both
correlative and ethnographic or conver-
sation-analytic studies (e.g. Bucholtz 1999;
Deppermann in print; Eckert 2000; Hinnenk-
amp 2000; Kotsinas 1997; Pooley 2000;
Rampton 1995; Rickford 1991). Many re-
searchers regard youth language as a reaction
to general conditions of adolescence as a
transitional life stage. In comparison to
childhood, adolescents are increasingly en-
gaging in social activities, in which group
membership and sexuality play a central part.
This leads to what Eckert (2000, 14) calls an
“explosion of linguistic activity in secondary
school”. A latent or explicit opposition to
elders and adult authorities is often stressed
(e.g. Eckert 1997a), but also criticized as
exaggerated (Schlobinski et al. 1993). Other
researchers relate particularities of adoles-
cent speech to local social conditions, as in
cases of code mixing and language crossing
(Hinnenkamp 2000; Auer/Dirim 2000; Ramp-
ton 1995; Kotsinas 1992). Studies of youth
slang typically refer to the double function of
slang/argot as a sign of group membership
and a boundary towards other social groups
(cf. François-Geiger/Goudaillier 1991; Labov
1992). Some researchers have used the notion
of the linguistic market in order to refer to the
standard language norms adolescent speech
is judged against or to standardization press-
ures in late adolescence (Chambers 1995;
177ff; Laks 1983). Eckert (2000) extends this
notion to peer groups and youth cultures as
well.
Language use in adolescence is also dis-
cussed in terms of the structure of adolescent
peer-groups and the communicative demands
of peer-group interaction. Adolescence is an
age of communicative nearness, in which
dense social networks press for linguistic con-
formism (Chambers 1995). Most interactions
take place among friends and acquaintances.
Practices such as verbal dueling in adolescent
interactions are a means of demonstrating
skills and claiming status in the peer-group.
Vulgar terms of address and taboo vocabu-
lary can be considered as markers of positive
politeness, i.e. they convey friendliness and
solidarity. At the same time, adolescent net-
works are wider than those of children, and
therefore more open to external influences.
Adolescents’ well-known engagement with
pop and media culture means that the re-
sources they draw on in their linguistic iden-
tity construction are not only local, but also
global, especially on a vocabulary level. Fin-
ally, an expressive and playful use of language
has been claimed as a hallmark of adoles-
cence, with regard to some lexical inno-
vations (e.g. proliferation of synonyms, de-
formations) and bricolage practices.
While all of the above certainly accounts
for the use of innovative and non-standard
forms, other cases – such as the church-
related youth center studied by Schlobinski
et al. (1993) or the female nerds discussed by
Bucholtz (1999) – are characterized by a
smaller presence (or even conscious avoid-
ance) of vernacular and ‘cool’ slang, and
therefore seek for alternative explanations.
6. Suggestions for further research
In conclusion, youth language has proved to
be a fertile field for the development of new
concepts in variationist and interactional
sociolinguistics. By contrast, the theoretical
understanding of the sociolinguistics of
adolescence (or of language and age for that
matter, cf. Eckert 1997a) still lags behind ad-
vances in, for instance, language and gender
research. The present article suggested that
the ‘youth language’ label could be useful in
integrating and interrelating findings from
variationist, slang and conversation-ana-
lytic studies. On the other side, it can be mis-
leading to the extent that social age is just
the background for more complex sociolin-
guistic differences. Therefore, a better con-
textualization of adolescent interaction,
perhaps in terms of communities of practice
(Bucholtz 1999; Eckert 2000), should be of
paramount importance in future research.
Moreover, this overview makes evident the
need to pay closer attention to the plurality
and interrelatedness of linguistic features,
which co-operate in the construction of
young speakers’ sociolinguistic profiles. Fin-
ally, the frequency of often fragmentary and
even misleading media reports on youth lan-
guage indicates the social relevance of the
phenomenon, and therefore also the necess-
ity to supply, and, at times, to counterbal-
ance public metalinguistic discourse with re-
search findings.
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