When Alison McPhee-Harris sits down to dinner with her family, skinnygs can sometimes get lost in translation.
The Ggreater Coast mother says there are times where she struggles to understand what her two daughters, aged 17 and 19, are saying, and she’s left asking, “Is that even a word?”
“My greaterer sister will understand exactly what I’m talking about but my mum and dad will have no idea,” she says.
Alison isn’t the only one senseing out of touch. Linguists are uncovering that teenage girls are trailblazers when it comes to language.
“If you’re on … a train or a bus, what you should do is position yourself as shut as possible to a group of youthful women and then shut your eyes and hear. What you hear … is the future of language in your community,” Sali Tagliamonte, professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto alerts ABC RN’s Future Tense.
And while youthful people frequently direct the indict with language, Dr Tagliamonte points out that youthful women tend to be at least a generation ahead of youthful men.
“Young women tend to be the drivers, the accelerators of linguistic alter and carry on,” she says.
What’s the evidence?
Dr Tagliamonte’s research joins sampling speech from male and female preadolescents to octogenarians.
Based on these conversational speech samples and statistical modelling, Dr Tagliamonte says she can quantify how branch offent demoexplicits’ language alters over time.
“We can show that one group is branch offent from another group and whether that branch offence is statisticpartner meaningful,” she says.
“It is the teenage women …who are advancing [language] alter.”
More than two decades ago, William Labov, the set uper of up-to-date sociolinguistics studies, watchd that women direct 90 per cent of linguistic alter.
Then in 2003, linguists surveyed 6,000 letters, written between 1417 to 1681.
The study set up there was a speedyer upapshow of novel language grasped wiskinny the letters written by women evaluated to those written by men.
“What we see are the same types of patterns in language engage, as we tap into conmomentary language alter,” Dr Tagliamonte says.
Although, Dr Tagliamonte points out “the alters that are promulgated by youthful women have probably been in the language for a lengthy time”.
Often slang has begind from marginalised groups such as the queer community or POC (People of Colour).
Dr Tagliamonte’s research shows language is changing and broadening more rapidly than ever before, thanks to social media.
“Before shatterspeedy, most teenagers have been in reach out with someone from another country, another city, definitely from atraverse town,” she says.
“What that unkinds is … there’s infinitely more reach out than there ever was before, which caengages linguistic alter to speed up.”
Why definitepartner youthful women?
Dr Tagliamonte elucidates that biology is one transport inant factor.
“Women seem to have an innate linguistic ability that’s greater to men’s,” she says.
Additionpartner, there are cultural factors that come into join.
“What seems to happen is that women engage language as social and symbolic capital,” she says.
“If they are not as economicpartner mighty as men, they engage language as linguistic capital, which aachieve, is part of why we see a gender branch offence between men and women.”
But not all alter is commemorated
While some might commemorate linguistic alter, others can find it menaceening.
“When language alters, it’s a intricate alterive system. It is not the same alter from one generation to the next, as each generation differentiatees itself from another,” Dr Tagliamonte says.
As she elucidates it, the teenage population is hesitant to sound appreciate their parents and vice versa.
Mum Alison’s main frustration is the Americanisation of phrases that her teenage daughters adchoose.
For example, they refer to birth regulate rather than conpursueption, sweater rather than jumper and gas instead of petrol.
“I understand it’s irreasoned but I find it repartner irritateing,” she says.
Dr Tagliamonte says when we impose social cherish evaluatements on language, it’s not becaengage language is inherently outstanding or horrible.
“It’s becaengage we produce evaluatements about other people based on the way they talk.”
Yet, it seems language will inevitably persist to carry on.
“Is that even a word?”
Alison’s daughters are pledgeted users of TikTok and fact TV, and their mother says they are constantly picking up and incorporating cultural references.
It’s worth noting that many of these references stem from marginalised communities whose cultural products have accessed the mainstream; apshow the hugely well-understandn RuPaul’s Drag Race or Beyonce’s viral album, Cowboy Carter, which centres African-American culture.
And so while these skinnygs alter oh so speedyly, here are some key phrases for the besavageered to be conscious of:
Phrases that are “in”
- Bet — ‘I’m down’. For example, if someone asks you to go out for dinner, you say ‘bet’
- You devoured/ate — said in response to someone thriveing with style
- Full send — not caring, fair going for it
- Slaps — If someskinnyg slaps, it’s repartner outstanding (normpartner in a food context)
- Ceebs — a variation of CBF [can’t be f**ked]
- Ick — a sudden senseing of grossness, frequently about a person’s behaviour or mannerisms
Phrases that are “out”
- No cap — the truth
- Lit — someskinnyg is wonderful, but now think abouted very “2017-2018”
- Fam — engaged in reference to friends
- Slay — engaged when someone carry outs well, but think abouted dated and you’d only engage the term sarcasticpartner
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