![]() ![]() I like how they call the parents 'the rents', because the parents do pay the bills. ![]() Some are more understandable, 'whatevs' is just a shortened form of 'whatever', so I think we can understand the context of that. But it is a contrived word that they have come up with. If you think about it, it almost does sound like a chant of joy. So another one that in fact made it into the Oxford English Dictionary this year is the youth term 'woot' (often the 'oo' is '00', just to add complexity to it), but that is an expression of joy, and it is onomatopoeic. Mark McCrindle: No, it means 'keep it on the quiet' it means don't tell others, and that is, again, where-until we learn the code we just don't understand it. 'DL' for 'down low' doesn't mean what I thought it might! So we have got a change there that now the spoken acronym form, originally used in the written form to shorten a word to make it easier to text or instant message, has now become the default spoken form as well. So people will say 'OMG' or 'LOL' or 'hey, you're my BFF' or even, they'll say, 'it's all G' for 'it's all good'. But now these written forms, 'LOL' being a classic example for 'laugh out loud', they are now being spoken. And this is another shift in language, Maria, that I think is fascinating, that originally we had spoken language and then emerged acronyms, which were more for written form. Mark McCrindle: Well, 'BFF', another one of those, which more would recognise perhaps as 'best friends forever'. There are also acronyms like 'BTW', (by the way), or 'BMW'. So they are certainly changing the language in their own way and there are patterns to it. Mark McCrindle: Yeah, 'I'm busy as', or 'you're crazy as', for example. And there's a-I don't know how to describe it-a kind of an emptied preposition for 'as', you know, something is like something else… In the book you list some of those abbreviations, like 'ab' for 'abnormal', or 'indie' for 'independent', like anti-commercial. And so that language knows no geographical bounds, and yet certainly the technology is shaping not just the words that they use but the form of the words, the shortening of words, the use of acronyms, the use of emoticons when they communicate smiley faces in all manner, the technology really has helped shape and shift the English language for young people today. Even the very people…the friends that they have on their social networking sites and the technological influences, the latest must-see YouTube video-you know-they are globally connected. Mark McCrindle: Exactly, it really is a global generation of young people, more than we've ever had before. Its spread is so instant, so global, so fast moving. What's different nowadays though is the reach of the technology (that's something you point out very clearly in your book) that is used to express ourselves. And slang, there's a verbal repertoire that is different from the norm and it's typically developed and used by every new cohort of youth. So language is a key aspect of social research and it is obviously key to generational research because the language really does map the times that shaped us, the events and the experiences that were formative for us, and so studying language is key really to our social and generational analysis. Maria Zijlstra: And you're adding, what-you have become a linguist, you're adding a string to your bow? Mark McCrindle: I guess it is more that the key code that we have, as a society, is the language that we share and, in many cases, the language that separates us from other subgroups. Maria Zijlstra: There's a focus today on 'slanguage', a really neat term for the slang of our language, talking about the just-published book called Word Up to its author, the social researcher who's made a speciality of trends in generational change as the founder and principal of McCrindle Research.
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