generations

GOING VIRAL, GOING GLOBAL

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youth slang crosses world englishes

Last week I was interviewed by two young journalists about the pervasive slang generated by Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Interestingly both journalists are operating outside the US/UK matrix from which much of this language variety emanates. Interestingly too, both journalists asked similar questions about the latest linguistic novelties and how we might respond to them. Kanika Saxena‘s piece appeared in the Economic Times of India, and my contribution is here…

1. How do new slang words take root in a generation? Do they slowly build momentum, or does one viral moment suddenly put them everywhere?

In the past it could take some time for slang to escape from the local social group (‘in-group’ or ‘peer group’: a group of friends, a gang, fellow workers, etc.) where it originates into the outside world, then to spread by word of mouth into other parts of society, finally perhaps being picked up by the entertainment or print media. Nowadays this process has been massively speeded up by messaging and the internet, so that a novel term can go viral and reach beyond its original community almost instantaneously. New expressions can spread via social media and platforms like TikTok, Youtube, InstaGram right across the ‘anglosphere’ and go global.

2. Some words stick around for decades, while others vanish overnight. What makes certain slang words stand the test of time?

Linguists have tried to analyse why some terms become briefly fashionable and then disappear while others endure. There don’t seem to be any rules that govern why this happens. Some experts think that words which convey important social or technological innovations or that reflect current ‘moods’ or preoccupations are likely to have a longer appeal, but there’s no real proof of this. It could also be because a word relates to important social behaviour or relationships: insults, terms of endearment, ‘dating’ language, complaining, identity labels, for example, have to be reinvented for each successive generation, then persist until their users mature or grow older.

3. With social media throwing new words at us daily, are we actually creating more slang than before, or does it just feel that way because everything is amplified online?

It’s hard to say if the total ‘volume’ of slang has increased because, in the past at least, it was impossible to quantify it. What is definitely true is that slang has for some time become more accepted by mainstream media whereas it used to be censored or ignored. We also have the very new phenomenon whereby influencers, TikTok stars and content creators are using online resources to consciously, deliberately create, promote and spread new terms, so slang is no longer just coming ‘up from the streets’ (or spread via music, TV and movies) but is a commodity exchanged and pushed to gain prestige or sell oneself.

4. Older generations always seem skeptical of new slang—until, of course, they start using it too. What’s the secret to a word crossing generational lines?

Parents, teachers and ‘authority figures’ generally start by decrying younger people’s language and avoiding or ignoring it or trying to ban it. (This isn’t really justified by the way: slang may be seen as socially marginal but is not technically deficient or defective language and uses the same techniques as poetry or literature) But if a term is adopted by the media (‘woke’ is an example) they may in a few cases start to use it themselves. Technological terms (‘spam’, ‘troll’ etc.) and lifestyle jargon may be invented or used by older speakers. I always warn parents, though, not to try and imitate their kids by borrowing their slang. In the kids’ own language this is extremely ‘cringe’.

My second interview was with Austėja Zokaitė who is based in Lithuania and it appears in the online magazine Bored Panda, an arresting and anarchic daily roundup of the latest viral images, memes and commentary on internet culture. The whole report is here, with my comments interspersed with the succession of visual elements…

This IG Page Shares “Hard” Images, And Here’s 30 Of The Most Unhinged

Two weeks later I took part in a podcast on the subject of Slang, hosted by US students Sophie Xie and Andrea Lee. Our discussion is here…

Dang, What’s That Slang? by Andrea Lee

LANGUAGE AND LONGEVITY – 2

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Dictionary makers and journalists are breathlessly – if not desperately – publicising the latest online language – but do they really understand it?

One week on, I spoke to Chloe MacDowell of the UK Guardian newspaper, then to Marni McFall of the US Newsweek magazine on the topic of TikTok language and the online messaging mannerisms of Influencers and GenZ. Chloe was interested in one particular trending TikTok catchphrase, Marni in the whole panoply of 2024’s viral innovations.

Once authentic conversations and personal interactions (previously happening in private spaces or local communities) began to feature on the internet and in messaging and on microblogging platforms,  language novelties, slang and faddish usages crossed over from a private realm into the global public domain. The latest slang and new language was visible, audible and immediately available to share. Obscure or exotic terms might quickly catch on and become viral favourites, spreading in some cases across the anglosphere more rapidly than print, broadcast or word-of-mouth transmission had ever been to achieve in the past.

Words and phrases began to function like memes, taking on sometimes a ‘multimodal’ aspect whereby sound and image could reinforce the purely verbal expressions that people chose to exchange and promote. Pre-internet there had always been catchphrases, what linguists call ‘vogue words’, slogans and soundbites, and keywords that somehow seemed to evoke or encapsulate some special aspect of the ‘zeitgeist’. What we have now is a much more knowing, deliberate intention (on the part of trend-setters, influencers, ‘thought-leaders’) to create new language to celebrate new identities and to promote new attitudes and lifestyle innovations to the widest possible audience.

Subcultures like surfers, valley girls, fanboys and girls, hip hop aficionados had always invented striking, expressive language and this is still true, but instead of niche culture we have ‘meganiches’, instead of subcultures we are dealing with globalised communities.

The fashionable language of TikTok and GenZ in particular is part of their wider obsession with vibes, aesthetics and microtrends, many of which arise and are discarded in rapid succession. The prevalent style is exhibitionist, self-promoting, allusive and often ironic, increasingly even absurdist, making it hard for outsiders to grasp the nuances in play. Older commentators and dictionary publishers struggle to keep pace, often misunderstand and record the terms in desperation (in their searches for ‘word of the year’ for example) just as they fall out of use.

The use of this language as an identity marker in an intensely competitive digital ecosystem means that the Gen Alpha cohort now ridicule GenZ usages as being out-of date, while GenZ is still deriding millennials for their old-fashioned ‘cringe’ vocabulary. At the same time would-be influencers practise bragging, ‘manifesting’ and other forms of self-congratulation in a search for clicks and clout.

One of the latest features of online wordplay is the elevating of an older concept or cliche into a teasing provocation or pretence at new insights, as we have seen with ‘delulu’, ‘demure’ and ‘mindful’, ‘rizz’ and ‘brat’. The current rash of declarations of ‘being privileged’ – a new version of ‘humblebragging’ or ‘virtue-signalling’ – is another example. In parallel is the ironic celebration of the incoherence or absurdity of much online discourse and of low-quality ‘slop’ by embracing a culture of ‘brainrot’ – nonsense memes such as ‘skibidi’ and vacuous, contagious content.

Most of the innovation in online language and image still emanates from the US and even though a global audience can access it instantly, its tropes (think ‘goblin-mode’ – ‘goblin’ doesn’t have the same associations for Brits) don’t always translate for other speakers of English. In parallel, poses, gestures and looks as well as music-related modes are increasingly generated from non-English cultural zones such as Japan and Korea. It will be interesting to see if other parts of the globe begin to play a part in the evolving online theatre of signs and behaviours, but this doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

Chloe’s piece is here…

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/02/what-a-privilege-trend-catches-on-as-gratitude-makes-social-media-comeback?CMP=share_btn_url

And the Newsweek article is here…

https://www.newsweek.com/2024-most-popular-internet-slang-words-revealed-1978732

On the first of November Collins Dictionaries, ahead of the pack, had already announced their choice of word of the year for 2024, and their candidates illustrated the same, in my opinion mistaken, concentration exclusively on terms from a very narrow range of sources. While postings on social media are performances designed to attract attention, there is an even wider domain in which discourse demands analysis: the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine and the surreal spectacle of the US presidential campaigns, for example, are also highlighting keywords and generating new formulations or reworkings of language – data that mainstream media and lexicographers seem to think unworthy of their attention…

https://twitter.com/CollinsDict/status/1852139743112208794

SLANG AT THE END OF SUMMER

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Teen talk continues to baffle older cohorts, but as autumn approaches the vibes shift – and Tiktok identities evolve…

In mid-August I talked to Mary McCarthy about the ever-changing patterns of youth language, and, with her kind permission, Mary’s article for the Irish Independent follows…

No cap, sigma and rizz? You’ll need more than Google Translate for teen talk now

Parents are supposed to be bemused by the slang words their children use, but the new summer vocab in our house has me totally flummoxed. This is particularly so with the younger two lads – eight and 11 – who walk around saying nonsense words like “sigma”, “no cap” “Skibidi Toilet” and “gyat” all the time.

I don’t mind them having in-jokes, and it’s nice to see them falling around laughing – I’ll take that over sullen moods any day. But what are they laughing about?

Are they being kind? I can see the pleasure of getting the giggles over absurd stuff. I used to have this thing with a school friend where we would say repeatedly “The dog is dead” in a Northern Ireland accent – no idea why. But there is so much coming at them now online. How can I know they won’t soak up the wrong messages? The Andrew Tate alpha-male rubbish, for example.

This week I hired my Gen Z 16-year-old to help me decode what his brothers were saying, and he pocketed his €5 before unhelpfully telling me that “it’s just little kids saying random, mental stuff”.

“It’s the internet, it’s TikTok language,” he said. But they don’t have TikTok, I reminded him. YouTube shorts are the same and they have a lot of that, he told me darkly.

So I asked the lads themselves, and they were fairly keen to enlighten me, which was reassur­ing. “No cap” means no lying, “sigma” just means cool (no Andrew Tate alpha-male link, thank goodness) and rizz is “charisma”.

My 11-year-old elaborated. “So, this would be a chat-up line like, ‘Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only ten I see’.” I’m unsure what to say. They refused to explain “gyat”, so I looked it up later.

It mostly seems fine. They’re getting it from pals and YouTube shorts, which I will limit more now. But what I’m most baffled about is the Skibidi Toilet YouTube show, and why they call everything Skibidi for no reason.

The show has amassed over 65 billion views over the last year, and I can’t see any pull factor. It’s about toilets with human heads engaged in a war with people who have CCTV cameras for heads, all set in a dystopian landscape. Apparently, there will be a TV show and a movie. I had a headache watching it after 30 seconds.

Youth slang can spread very quickly these days via online platforms and messaging

It’s everywhere. We were on holiday in Kerry a few weeks ago and had a few hours to kill in Kenmare, so we visited the Kenmare Stone Circle, which was erected some time between 2000 and 500 BC. If you clip a wish at the Hawthorn Fairy Tree, it comes true. That’s according to the man working there, who handed us a piece of paper and a pen.

Being my nosy self, I immediately started reading other people’s wishes, and among the pleas for health, happiness and planning permission there were lots of Skibidi.

“Sigma, sigma on the wall, who is the Skibiest of them all?” one card read.

“Desidere che i cani diventine Skibidy Toilet,” read another, which Google translate told me was “Wish that dogs become Skibidy toilets” in Italian. So it’s not just my children larking around. I’m sure it’s all just a silly phase, perhaps the same as my own “the dog is dead”.

Tony Thorne, director of the Slang and New Language Archive at King’s College London, said young people have always created their own language to keep outsiders like parents and teachers out. It just happens that there’s more around today.

“This language innovation, as linguists call it, used to take place in private spaces and only sometimes spread further – if, for example, the language was used in music or movies or TV comedies,” he said.

“Youth slang can spread very quickly these days via online platforms and messaging and so can become global. Terms often coined in the US rapidly move into the Anglosphere. We see that in the huge network of English speakers who converse excitedly in ‘mid-Atlantic’ accents.”

Thorne recommends the guide to teenage slang on the Gabb.com website. I soon discovered that “gyat” is a way to express admiration, usually for a woman’s backside. So I nipped that one in the bud.

It is a habit for parents and the older generation to laugh at teenagers for speaking in a frivolous way

Once you start researching the origins of these words, it gets interesting. According to a recent Forbes article on how Gen Z language is changing the workplace, to “slay” – which is something my 13-year-old daughter says, as in “You slayed that lasagne, Mammy” – means “high praise” and originated in black and LGBTQ+ communities before gaining popularity on TikTok.

I can’t remember using much slang as a teen, apart from the many violent descriptions we had for being drunk, among them flutered, slaughtered, battered and trollied.

My cousin would visit from Canada, and she loved hearing those terms. Today, though, there’s no difference between what a 15-year-old in Dublin and a 15-year-old in Toronto is exposed to, and they’re the more creative for this. After all, the way we learn to speak is from listening to other people, so we probably don’t really need to worry much about the slang.

Kevin Barry, former professor of English at the University of Galway, said that while adults can see it as foolish, there’s a wisdom to the newly minted words and phrases.

“It is a habit for parents and the older generation to laugh at teenagers for speaking in a frivolous way – to the adults it makes no sense. What they are seeing is the frontier of language change, which is a creative Wild West,” he said.

There’s no point trying to keep up. New slang will be coined as fast as I learn. We can’t police it. The only thing to do is role-model IRL (in real life) what it is to be a nice person. To not shout, to be kind, to make time for the children. To let them know you have high expectations for their behaviour by having high expectations for your own – no cap.

The dominance of memes and viral posts from the USA celebrating a brat summer was challenged in late August by a TikTok injunction to ‘be demure and mindful‘ in all one’s actions and representations. Alternative and mainstream media jumped quickly aboard the accelerating bandwagon – and Ellie Bramley of the Guardian asked me to comment…

‘Demure‘ is a seemingly prim and dated adjective, used recently only by rueful babyboomers and tabloid journalists, for whom it is code for ‘not completely undressed’ when describing female celebrities attending film festivals, tottering along red carpets and catwalks. In drag queen and ‘ballroom LGBT‘ circles, though, it has long featured as a self-mocking keyword when urging the outrageous, usually ironically and teasingly, to behave with modesty and decorum. It is in this spirit that ‘fierce divas’ and other influencers have relaunched the term, along with ‘mindful‘ in its older sense (before the advent of self-seeking ‘mindfulness’) of considerate, respectful and cautious. The Guardian piece is here…

It’s very easy to dismiss GenZ and TikTok fads as shallow, ephemeral provocations, unworthy of the attention of rational adults. Easy, too, to deride aged babyboomers like me who record them and attempt to analyse the thinking behind them. But as Ellie herself remarked, a keyword like ‘demure’, inasfar as it isn’t just an absurdist gesture, can not only signify a genuine shift in self-awareness on the part of a few influential online individuals, but can prompt reflection and even changes in behaviour among a much larger segment of the population.

With that in mind, from Laura Pitcher, here’s Dazed‘s perceptive take on the word of the moment…

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/64378/1/demure-mindful-tiktok-owns-an-internet-buzzword

In September I was interviewed by Mary Ugbodaga about a slang acronym in use in Nigeria…

WSG meaning: what does the acronym mean and how to respond – Legit.ng



SLANGS IN CONTENTION

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Chronocentric confusion as youth cohorts clash

It’s my responsibility, despite my very advanced age and despite the linguistic distractions from war crimes abroad and political meltdown at home, to try to keep track of the latest slang. For some time Gen Z, the population group born between 1997 and 2010, has been torchbearer for the zeitgeist, via TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, promoting such novelties as influencer-talk and its accelerated succession of fads and looks known as aesthetics or vibes (search this site with those keywords for more on all of these).

Now, in early May, help arrives in the form of a diatribe by 21 year-old LA-based singer-songwriter Allegra Miles, calling out aging millennials for their use of dated terminology and urging them to update themselves with Gen Z’s newest catchphrases and slogans. Allegra’s translations attracted the attention of the mainstream media in Australia and the UK and you can read them here…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/real-life/article-13386193/Gen-Z-woman-tells-millennials-stop-saying-old-phrases-slang-vibe-game-slay-YOLO.html

But Allegra’s generation are no longer the youngest on the block, and I’m curious as to how Gen Alpha – those born between 2010 and 2024 – will modify existing language and generate their own novelties. Tiktok influencer Nicole Pellegrino comments here…

@nicolepellegrin0

Why did noone tell me slay is out #genalpha #genalphatok #genalphaslang

♬ original sound – Nicole Pellegrino

Unfortunately, attempts by parents and teachers to get to grips with their students’ new ways of expressing themselves are embarrassingly inept, if well-meaning. Witness this glossary of terms, one of several ‘guides’ published this year, that is actually a ragbag of well-worn language items favoured by younger millennials and Gen Z…

https://www.classpoint.io/blog/gen-alpha-slang-for-teachers

I’ll continue, from my distant vantage point, to investigate, but my post is, then, an appeal, to any members of Gen Alpha (or their siblings, classmates, neighbours) who bother with online blogs or antique social media platforms, to send me samples of their favourite expressions. I’ll add these to my databases and write about them in due course.

In fairness, I should also list one of several similar articles published recently, again by the Daily Mail in this case, but whose source (the Curry’s electronic retail group) is perhaps not exactly representative of the age-group it describes…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13341497/slang-makes-old.html

*For help in understanding the language and online mannerisms of TikTok and GenZ and Gen Alpha, I’m especially grateful to my daughter, Daisy Thorne Mrak*

Long January

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First language updates from 2024

I have written several times on this site about new language and novel forms of expression generated by Generation Z and about how evolving attitudes, fashions and social behaviour among younger cohorts translate into a multimodal mix of verbal and visual on platforms such as TikTok. I have argued that older generations should not ignore or deride the unfamiliar and often baffling messaging practised by ‘the youth’, but try to understand and engage with it. During the slow, fraught, trying first weeks of 2024 the UK’s mainstream media has for the first time begun to pay some attention to the new language appearing online and on the street.

Earlier in the month my friend, Financial Times journalist Emma Jacobs, wrote about intergenerational language differences and resulting misunderstandings in the workplace. Her article, which quotes me, is here…

https://www.ft.com/content/b73d81c0-b4b8-40f9-b0e4-8f97a1701d0b

More recently the BBC focused on the changes in accents and vocal affectations associated with online influencers and new media platforms…

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240123-what-tiktok-voice-sounds-like-internet-influencer

Dr Christian Ilbury, quoted in that article, added this caveat subsequently: “it’s just HRTs + memetic discourse styles which keep the audience engaged (linked to platform capitalism) not a *new accent*”. Christian had previously helped to explain the latest incarnations of the once taboo c-word…

We Asked A Linguist To Explain What Is Going On With Those ‘Slay The Cuntocracy’ Tweets

For Dazed magazine Jess Bacon looked back at the many successive incarnations of the ‘girl’ featuring on media platforms during 2023…

2023: The year of the girl | Dazed

The Guardian meanwhile valiantly attempted to help its readers interpret the latest catchphrases and slang…

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/24/so-babygirl-its-the-new-gen-z-term-of-endearment-but-what-does-it-mean?CMP=share_btn_tw

While the Daily Mail sent its reporters on to the streets to discover whether well-established slang terms were understood by members of the public…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12994057/So-Gen-Z-slang-know-MailOnline-visits-streets-London-Solihull-Sunderland-ask-millennials-boomers-know-real-meaning-terms-like-peng-bare-beef.html

In distressing contrast, the news cycle has been dominated throughout the month of January, in fact since October last year, by far less frivolous concerns. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a very different way has generated language (‘administrative detention’, ‘the other team’, ‘educide’, ‘nakba 2’) – or recycled older terminology (‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘demilitarization’, ‘collateral’) – which is controversial and which demands analysis. While recording the language of Donald Trump, of Brexit and of the Covid pandemic, and once again, while tracking the atrocities taking place today, I have been conscious of distortion, untruths, avoidance and manipulations practised both by the participants in the conflict, by their allies or sponsors, and by those who should be reporting on it objectively and, where possible, impartially. It is by scrutinising their language and treating public and media discourse critically, by exposing bad faith and countering falsehood that linguists can make some small contribution to the global conversation taking place.

Linguists have begun to discuss the ways in which facts and opinions are being presented to the public and to unpack the assumptions and covert intentions of those controlling, or attempting to control the narratives in question…

https://newlinesmag.com/argument/language-is-a-powerful-weapon-in-the-israel-palestine-conflict/

For my part I am collecting new examples of contentious language relating to the middle eastern crises and adding them to my existing glossary of weaponised words and toxic terminology on this website. I would be very grateful for contributions from readers and will acknowledge these in upcoming posts.

After language?

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The latest multimodalities examined

During October I relished the chance to talk to the editors of DazedDigital, Serena Smith and Gunseli Yalcinkaya, and they told me about the most recent developments in online and digital communication and the new language varieties trending on social media. I have tried to make sense of a much younger generation’s performances and interactions and the notes I made follow here…

 Language and the way we use it is now for the first time truly globalised. This means for example that new accents and intonations and vocal affectations take place across several cultures almost simultaneously. This gives us pronunciation and intonation novelties like Youtuber or Influencer accent, TikTok voice, etc. These are fluid, evolving and can blend more than one traditional source (UK and US linguistic styles and usages for example). The phenomenon is not new – the mid-Atlantic accent dates back many decades and both Valley Girls and users of Multiethnic London English – MLE – have played with new ways of pronouncing, but the platforms and apps of the 2020s – TikTok in particular – highlight these…

Obviously the way we consume and exploit media has changed radically with the internet and mobile technology and determines the kinds of messages we exchange and the words, sounds and visuals we actually use. Short attention-spans mean that messages need to be accelerated, brief and telling: the constraints of apps and platforms make for compressed and dense information packages.  At the same time the imperative for innovation​ (something that has always been part of language evolution, but used to happen very gradually) – novelty, neologisms, new and more liberated attitudes to formality and informality and style in general – is integral to changing fashions, aesthetics, vibes. Even such basics as whether messages have to make sense have been destabilised by Gen Z‘s playful surrealism and absurdism and TikTok’s creative conventions.

One major change is the way that the distinction between written and spoken language has broken down since people began to type conversations and exchange rapid interactions electronically. Also Pre-existing words and expressions are hijacked, reversed, toxified, appropriated and modified as never before. And we all​ now have the power to do this via electronic media – we don’t need permission to publish and exchange our ideas and indulge our playful, mischievous or creative new usages.

Gunceli asked, There are so many memes joking about how we’ve ‘progressed past the need for language’. Obviously worth taking with a pinch of salt, but do you think there’s any truth to this? 

We won’t evolve ‘beyond language’ since language is simply a label for human interaction and communicative practices, but the specifics of that language will continue to adapt and mutate along with our social needs and our technologies. Linguists do talk increasingly in terms of multimodality whereby both online and offline communication involves much more than speech or writing – ‘language’ as we have known it. The buzzword multimodality can refer to how IRL we blend all sorts of semiotics often simultaneously: stance and posture, facial expression, gesture, writing, speaking and using a communication device, but also refers to how online and app messages employ abbreviations, acronyms, audio, video, symbols, memes as well as or instead of words (…soon probably touch and smell as well!)

The NPC streamers phenomenon highlighted by Dazed is another example of what I described as GenZ and TikTokers’ minimalist, surrealist or absurdist treatment of language. NPC stands for ‘non-playable character(s)’, the digital background entities with a limited repertoire of utterances and repetitive actions encountered in video games, and the streaming is an online activity, primarily on the TikTok platform, whereby creators imitate these characters by livestreaming themselves, and viewers reward them with in-app gifts for doing it.

The new primacy of image (and audio) over simply text and conversation has resulted in a human imitation of cartoon sounds and seemingly meaningless bits of language that only followers and enthusiasts will recognise and be positively triggered by. Playing with identities by way of words, slogans, soundbites and catchphrases is as much influenced by the poses of cosplayers or Furries and the behaviour of video-gamers as it is by ‘traditional’ ways of using verbal and visual language.

How do you think the mainstreaming of emerging tech like AI is changing the way we communicate verbally with one another?

Algorithms being used for automated reasoning and the generating of persuasive messaging or content are already operating at sophisticated levels, but the linguistic aspect is just as much prey to error and detectable failures as, for example, deepfake images and impersonations of artistic productions. If we are digitally literate and managing to keep up, we can often see through the deception, and this is probably reassuring. AI has some interesting potential: for example, to allow us to communicate with people whose language we don’t share. But I think the limitations of AI(-its difficulties in interpreting or reproducing human nuance, implication, indirectness, etc) will lead to – is already leading to – new forms of incoherence and misunderstanding. I suspect we will soon be able to recognise a particular ‘AI style’ so that artificially generated messages can be recognised as such in some cases – at least I hope so! Translators and teachers are already grappling with potential of AI to assist, supplement or replace their work – and its limitations in doing so. More alarmingly AI is already inventing and using languages that we humans can’t understand: https://www.fastcompany.com/90132632/ai-is-inventing-its-own-perfect-languages-should-we-let-it

Gunceli’s fascinating review of all these themes and more is here…

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/61151/1/blessed-and-emoji-pilled-why-language-online-is-so-absurd?utm_term=blessed-and-emoji-pilled-why-language-online-is-so-absurd&utm_content=buffer26db7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=dazedtw

Serena Smith spoke to me about the latest version of familect, the intimate, informal, often comical language invented in private domestic spaces, about which I’ve written before on this site. Her excellent account of TikTok’s #MarriageLanguage is here…

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/61152/1/marriage-language-why-do-couples-talk-like-that-familect-tiktok?utm_term=marriage-language-why-couples-develop-their-own-dialects&utm_content=bufferb39d1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=dazedtw

NAMED AND SHAMED

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When proper names become slurs – and Karen, Ben and Chad can rest assured, it’s nothing new

I spoke last week to Ellie Muir of the Independent about the way in which certain given names have recently been appropriated in popular culture and the media for use as labels, catch-all stereotypes – or slurs. One focus of Ellie’s piece is the use of the name Karen on social media and as a meme to evoke an over-assertive, unreasonably demanding or hypercritical white woman (memorably epitomised as ‘an antivaxxer soccer mom with speak-to-the-manager hair’). Karen is a Danish version of Katherine dating from the Middle Ages and adopted by English speakers from the 1940s. Originally a Black US nickname for a stereotypical white woman perceived as overbearing and entitled, Karen was most popular as a baby name in 1965 in the US, so would typically denote a Generation X female, it went viral in 2017.

Ellie’s article is here…

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/ben-stage-karen-meme-b2284528.html

In the USA in the early 80s Valley Girls and college students used to refer to their sporty, macho ‘jock’ contemporaries as biftads, inspired by the fact that many of them were nicknamed ‘Biff’ or ‘Tad’. Much more recently the online incel community of frustrated, embittered, uncharismatic males has used Chad to denote a successful alpha male who is popular with women (his black counterpart would be Tyrone).

In the UK names like Sharon, Tracy and Mandy were earlier employed to evoke stereotypical working class, vulgar females or chavs (notably in the sitcom Birds of a Feather and in Viz comic), while from the 70s through to the early 90s, Rupert, Tarquin and Nigel were used to mock supposed toffs or ‘posho’ males and are sometimes still heard today. Kevins or Kevs were uncouth, uncultured young British males from the end of the 70s until the end of the 90s, causing much amusement when the same name became cool and fashionable in the US and France in the 80s. Wayne was used in the same way. Around the same time London youths looking for dates referred to girls as Becks (this was pre ‘Posh and Becks’ as nicknames of a Spice Girl and her footballer escort by the way) because so many North London Jewish girls were called Rebecca or Becky. In the mid-2000s teenage girls thought to be too earnest, awkward or just unpopular were dismissed as Megs, the name possibly inspired by the daughter of the same name in the TV animated comedy Family Guy. Some older London males nicknamed middle-aged females, especially if deemed to be frumpish or charmless, Noras or Dorises.

A footnote: in June 2025 a UK judge confirmed what we all knew. ‘Karen’ can be pejorative…

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/28/calling-someone-a-karen-is-borderline-racist-sexist-and-ageist-tribunal-says

LANGUAGE, ‘AESTHETICS’ AND INNOVATION IN 2022 – THE ROLE OF GEN Z

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Fads, Fashions, Lifestyles and Vibes – thirty years on

During 2022 I wrote several times about the new terminology that has been generated by younger generations’ (younger Millennials and so-called Gen Z or Zoomers) online celebration of an accelerated series of Fads, Fashions and Cults (the title of my book on the same topic published back in 1993). I was bemused, but not surprised that my articles and posts received little attention. Those over 40, even if active online or otherwise in touch with the wider culture, seem to pay no attention to what their children and grandchildren are saying, or perhaps just view their activities on social media as trivial, frivolous and ephemeral*. It’s slightly absurd that someone of my advanced age should be trying to record and comment on youth-based popular culture, but, just as back in the nineties, only a few fashionistas and influencers and a handful of style journalists manage to achieve any sort of critical perspective on the high-speed succession of poses, performances and pastiches that plays out on 21st century cyberspaces (and incidentally in teenagers’ bedrooms and college dorms too).

At the end of the year, however, I was asked to contribute to a major press review of these same phenomena, and discussed them with the MailOnline’s science reporter, Fiona Jackson. Fiona had picked up on recent mutations in slang and online jargon, in the novel use of emoji and punctuation, and changes, too, in the accents and intonations used on platforms such as TikTok – in particular the voice affectation known as ‘vocal fry.’

It’s interesting that Gen Z is seen as having a particularly exotic or impenetrable vocabulary, baffling and irritating parents, teachers, journalists and anyone too old to keep up. Inventing new words and changing the meanings of old ones, though, is something that each generation does (see UK millennials with their MLE – Multiethnic London English) and is a natural part of language. Accent is another essential component in curating and projecting one’s identity. ‘Vocal fry’ or ‘creaky voice’ first got noticed and was fiercely debated in the USA in 2015. The low, raspy growling voice tone favoured by female US celebrities has since been imitated by some younger people in the UK, and by British ‘influencers’ online, but not to the same extent. What I have noticed is not specifically vocal fry but something newer and more complex: a UK accent favoured by fashionable younger females which mixes a sort of high-pitched, lisping breathless ‘girly’ delivery with a lower-pitched drawl that can slide in and out of American intonations. Something like this is now prevalent, particularly on TikTok which is where Gen Z goes to influence and be influenced.

In the US now 63% of people aged 13 to 17 use TikTok weekly, a rate that now tops both Snapchat and Instagram. TikTok is also the go-to environment for the celebration of youth fads, fashions and lifestyle trends, not to mention the parodies, mash-ups, spoofs and in-jokes which are central to its video performances. Older people trying to keep up or simply to comprehend what is happening on TikTok or understand what Gen Z is saying and messaging should however beware: I have a suspicion, shared by a few other commentators, that many of the fads, fashions and trends they celebrate (they call them ‘vibes’ or ‘aesthetics’) are not really taken seriously at all by most of them, are passing fancies or simply spoofs perhaps designed to mock the tedious concerns of outdated millennials. Fashionable new ‘looks’ like so-called ‘goblin-mode’ which has, unusually, been noticed and publicised in the mainstream, have been appearing and disappearing on Gen Z platforms with a bewildering speed (see ‘cottagecore’, ‘blokecore’, ‘hag chic’, ‘frazzled English woman’, etc.).

The MailOnline article is here…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11541685/How-Generation-Z-changed-communicate.html

…and my articles from 2022 are here…

Tick Tock, TikTok

DO TRY TO KEEP UP

Gen Z, as they come of age and begin to access power and influence in mainstream society, will inevitably affect the way we collectively behave and of course communicate. But there is an interesting phenomenon that those like me who try to track slang and new language have to face up to. That is that it’s quite impossible to predict exactly how language is going change. No so-called linguistic authorities have ever been able to guess how technology and society is going to mutate, or how fast, or which aspects of human behaviour will come to predominate in the future – even in the near-future. Gen Z may settle down into family life and work and become distracted by adult responsibilities, just as we once-radical Boomers, muted, tortured Gen X and much misunderstood millennials have done before them. Or perhaps they will not, and will manage to realise the boomers’ dream of staying radical, innovative and young forever? How their destiny plays out will dictate what they say and how they say it (and they will have to find ways to negotiate their obsessions and describe their changing environments), but I, for one, don’t dare to hazard any more than that.

*She’s much younger than 40, but journalist Marie le Conte struck a contrarian note in the New Statesman, suggesting that we shouldn’t be interested in Gen Z’s predilections…

Its finger still on the pulse of the zeitgeist, the Mail followed up with a warning to older generations that Gen Z disapprove not only of their language and their emoji use, but of their gesturing too (unsurprisingly the hand-signals castigated are all part of my own sad repertoire)…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11627655/Generation-Z-reveal-hand-gestures-cool.html

Last summer the Daily Mash had issued another (spoof) warning to the middle-aged, this time of Gen Z‘s behaviour in the workplace…

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/work/the-middle-aged-guide-to-fitting-in-with-gen-z-work-colleagues-20220704222915

At the end of January I talked to Karyn Hay of Radio New Zealand about Generation Zed (the preferred term in Wellington and Auckland), their language and online activities…

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2018875098/tony-thorne-gen-z-communication

In February 2023 King’s College London Faculty of Arts and Humanities, host to my Slang and New Language Archive, featured my activities in their Net Gains series…

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/is-tiktok-a-breeding-ground-for-a-mutation-of-culture

*For help in understanding the language and online mannerisms of TikTok and GenZ, I’m grateful to my daughter, Daisy Thorne Mrak*

Tick Tock, TikTok

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Earlier in May I talked to Dillon Thompson of Yahoo News about slang and its online incarnations. Dillon was exploring the ways in which slang and new language both affect the way we interact in an accelerated digital age, and the way in which digital environments such as TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and the internet-based rituals, gestures and poses embraced by Generation Z in turn might influence the sort of language we – or some of us – are creating, adopting and using.

Dillon’s article, with new insights and with contributions by me and from US linguists Sunn m’Cheaux and Daniel Hieber is here…

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/internet-changing-think-slang-133422776.html

More on how internet culture has displaced ‘pop culture’, from Günseli Yalcinkaya for Dazed magazine…

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/56571/1/pop-culture-is-dead-dime-square-microtrends-tiktok-web3?utm_source=Dazed%20Digital%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dazed%20Daily%20%7C%2018th%20July%20%28Uvq9AQ%29&_kx=VqOlbvI-XfM1UZnIHgww3HUoHkUNg3Z5eyYSN8HS5iw%3D.YsDqRL

FAMILECT AGAIN

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DOMESTIC DIALECT FEATURES FAMILY FIXATIONS

Families and Older Generations Stock Vector - Illustration of grandparents, seniors: 114207016

In 2016 I wrote about so-called familect, the ‘microdialect’ originating in the home*. Also known as ‘family slang’ and ‘kitchen table lingo’, this is one of those underappreciated, under-researched varieties of ‘in-group’ language which, like slang and jargon, make use of the same techniques (metaphor, irony, analogy – alliteration, rhyme, assonance, reduplication) as poetry and literature and at the same time offer a window into the private worlds of ordinary people: their preoccupations, pleasures and ways of bonding. Familect can also be a sharing ritual within the household whereby humour and creativity and inventiveness are enjoyed across generations. Kids are adept in creating new words from an early age and at playing with existing language to create new and colourful expressions, while older family members have their own ways of coining expressions and recycling or reworking the language of their youth, so the home is also a laboratory in which to cultivate new literacies.

Just recently the cApStAn Translation Team reviewed the topic and provided a useful link-fest and bibliography…

New words and phrases generated via a collective experience can either unite or sow divisions: the case of “Familects”

Today another article, by my friend Connie Chang, featuring interviews with specialists in the field, was published in the National Geographic…

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/family/article/why-your-familys-secret-language-is-good-for-kids?loggedin=true

Familect can provide a useful subject for research and field work as part of exploring word creation and language innovation for school or college projects. Its users can be encouraged to look more carefully at the words and phrases they have invented themselves or shared or just heard, and asked to consider…

  1. Why was the expression invented? (usually because the object, idea or feeling described is precious or important or super-familiar. Sometimes because there isn’t an existing word or a memorable word to describe it in standard English)  
  2. What is it that makes these words funny, understandable, memorable? Is it that they sound like something else, remind you of something already familiar? Or is it the spelling and sound of them itself that makes them amusing?

In fact the school itself may be a source of similar novelties, as Tabitha McIntosh wrote in the TES this summer…

https://www.tes.com/news/schools-teachers-does-your-classroom-have-its-own-unique-language

Grandparents with Kids are Walker Stock Vector - Illustration of happiness, cute: 153811703

One year on, in August 2022, the Guardian featured the phenomenon in an article by Arwa Mahdawi…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/09/i-am-beshwiggled-and-incatacipated-why-theres-nothing-better-than-family-slang?CMP=share_btn_tw

*https://language-and-innovation.com/2016/07/23/family-language/