Language Investigation Articles

A2 English language Summer Project 2015

Initial Ideas -I would like to base my investigation on the language of the teenage generation. I will be focusing on the concept that language develops from the teenager years to adult years. I would like to investigate the development of how this language changes.

I have looked up some articles surrounding the idea of the language teenager’s use. 

Article 1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11426737

I found my first article on the BBC website. It was written in 2010 by Denise Winterman. The title of this article is ‘Teen Slag-What’s, so wrong with like?’ This article focuses on their language and the repetition of some of the words they use such as ‘like’.  It has a slight investigation into why teenagers may use language features such as fillers in their everyday language. It also has quotes and responses from people which may be affected by this language. I found this interesting because it is something that has developed.

Article 2

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/6960745/Teenagers-only-use-800-different-words-a-day.html

I found this article on the telegraph website which was published in 2010 by Aislinn Laing. This articles is called ‘Teenagers ‘Only use 800 different words a day’’. This article focuses on how teenagers repeat themselves and how this is noticed by members of the public in everyday lives.

Article 3

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242056/Teenspeak-youngsters-unemployable-limited-vocabulary.html

This article is from the Mail Online and was published in 2010 by Luke Salkeld. It questions whether teenager’s language can have an important effect on their future and their employability skills they may need to use. This article also gives statistics to make you see how bad the problem may be and suggests not only the point of the article – teenagers do not have a wide range of vocabulary but also the impacts this could have.

Article 4

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1316062/Yes-teen-speak-drives-mad-adult-jargon-FAR-worse--innit.html

This article I also found on the Daily Mail website and was published in 2010 by John Humphrys.

 This article questions the previous one I found as it suggests that although teenagers may only use around 800 words, they will grow out of this but instead grow into jargon. This is what I am interested to investigate in my investigation. This article suggests that it is almost worse what adult language is used compared to teenager’s language.

Article 5

http://articles.familylobby.com/133-your-teens-bad-language-what-can-you-do3f.htm

This article was published by Penny Harmon. I found this article interesting because it suggests why the teenage language is the way it is and what can influence this. As the language teenagers use is perceived as particularly bad in this article it suggest ways this can be changed which suggests teenagers learn the language they use as they’re growing up. This article also suggests the teenage years are the years for ‘exploring language’ yet other articles suggested many only use 800 words a day.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-188713/Too-bad-language-TV.html

Another one of my ideas is to look at the language on several TV programmes. This article I found on The Mail Online. This article looks at the taboo language specifically that is said on several TV programmes and what example this is giving to the people watching the programme. It also has statistics which makes the article even more shocking and backs up the point of the article.