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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
Twitter – a space I value greatly and make use of to keep abreast of cultural, social, political controversies, to exchange facetious remarks and gossip, and, above all, to keep in touch with linguists, writers, influencers, anonymous wits across the virtual globe, has of course been a-buzz with the news that its owner, would-be tech-bro, multi-billionaire Elon Musk, has rebranded the platform as ‘X’.
In ‘linguistic’ terms the X sign is already overburdened with signification – in other words it has an ‘excess’ of potential meanings, so is a very odd choice for a brand in that many of those meanings have negative connotations or connotations of absence, erasure, taboo, cancellation, prohibition, etc, etc. Among the only well-known positive ones are kisses, the marking of the spot on a treasure map and the Christian chi-ro symbol ( ⳩).
Although it can evoke mystery or anonymity, the many meanings of ‘X’ veer strongly towards the antipathetic: the cancellation mark, X-rated, unknown values, in superstition and mysticism death, danger, endings. In branding(!), as it depicts a generic version of the product being promoted—as in “Brand X”—the unidentified product deprecated as inferior to the named brand; it can serve like the asterix in replacing key letters in taboo words, in demographics Generation X is the ill-defined, cohort, adrift and stranded between boomers and millennials. It can suggest the scene of the crime, the sniper’s crosshairs, if multiplied it can describe the strength of strong liquor or moonshine, it can imitate crossed fingers or a puckered or defiant closed mouth. All these and more potential senses of the sign make it both risky and confusing as a solo identifier. Musk’s declared notion that the sign will also remind us of our ‘imperfections’ is putting it very mildly indeed (and who wishes to be reminded of their imperfections every time they log on?). Geeks, nerds, ‘edgelords’ and tech-bros (and nepo-/man-babies too), as we have seen in the case of other dominant brands, have their own , touchingly ingenuous ideas of what is mysterious, evocative, triggering or inspiring. They also have the means to inflict these insights on the wider, often more engaged, more discerning online community…
I spoke to Clare Thorp of BBC Culture about the linguistic implications of the rebranding and Clare’s article is here…
The reaction of the World Wildlife Fund: the German text reads ‘Protect our wildlife before it is too late’
The reactions to the imposition of the new symbol by tweeters/tweeple/the twitterati (what should we call them now?), at least those who inhabit my corner of the platform, has been overwhelmingly negative, hostile and dismissive. Just a very few tech-bros, would-be influencers, crypto-enthusiasts have sympathised with Musk’s declared attempt to re-present the site as a multi-purpose, multimodal platform including new facilities such as banking, investment, dating(?). I have put together a checklist of articles commenting on all aspects of the venture, focusing especially on the symbolism and semiotics of the X itself. A small selection is here..
On 30 July came news of a tagline or slogan designed to accompany ex-Twitter’s new visual identity. The phrase being promoted is ‘Blaze Your Glory’. @SmoothDunk’s response to this was a visual one:
…Other users of the site are fighting back, finding ways to delete or mask the ‘X’ trademark and restore their cherished bird symbol:
I talked to Jim Mora at Radio New Zealand on the same subject on August 4th:
…And, as if to confirm my misgivings about the choice of letter, the Guardian reported on August 8th: ‘Ministers have opened a new vaccine research centre in the UK where scientists will work on preparing for “disease X”, the next potential pandemic pathogen.’
I thought it might be interesting, even informative, to look back from our post-Brexit, post-COVID vantage point in early 2023 to a time before a culture of impunity had become embedded, a time when there still seemed to be a consensus across political persuasions that competence was a first requirement of whoever was elected to govern Britain, (but a time, too, in which there was a feeling among many that profound changes were overdue). In 1997 I made a series of programmes for BBC World Service Radio, looking at how emerging words and phrases seemed to embody novel attitudes on the part of the British. The broadcasts were aimed at listeners outside the UK, although at that time also accessible inside the territory.
The first in a series of short programmes looked at the language of New Labour, at perceptions of a closer relationship between its politicians and what is now called the mainstream media and at the role of the spin doctors (one of the very new formulations heard in those days) responsible for what is now called comms and messaging and for negotiating that rapprochement.
I was fortunate to be able to draw upon insights from Derek Draper, at that time one of New Labour’s highest placed political advisors and lobbyists, journalist and columnist Julia Hobsbawm and writer and critic Peter Bradshaw. Our conclusions were at that time revealing, I think, even if now the notions and the behaviour we were looking at and the terminology that accompanied them have become commonplace.
These recordings were lost for many years, and I am very grateful, both to my then-producer Colin Babb for recovering some of them, and to Urban Mrak who has managed to restore and re-record a small selection of the damaged tapes. The first of them can be accessed here, although the first few seconds during which we listened in the studio to reiterations of the ‘New Labour, New Britain’ mantra are missing…
In the following days I will add two more of these short recordings, dealing, respectively, with the idea that late-90s Britain was experiencing an upsurge in aggressive, selfish behaviour, typified by the new concept of ‘road rage‘, and an increase in female assertiveness caricatured as ‘girl power‘.
A research portal for scholars, the press and the public
The Slang and New Language Archive was created in 1994 while I was Director of the Language Centre at King’s College London. The archive, consisting of a small library of books and periodicals and a number of databases and sub-directories, was designed as a repository for the collection, storage and dissemination of new language, in particular examples of nonstandard varieties of English such as slang, jargon and buzzwords. The archive was later expanded to take in examples of media language, political language, linguistic curiosities and etymologies. It remains a resource, unique in the UK and not-for-profit, assisting researchers, students, teachers and journalists, as well as non-specialists, in accessing information about aspects of contemporary language that are under-represented in traditional dictionaries and reference works.
This link will take you to the Archive webpage at King’s College, where there are further links to relevant articles and published sources…
Glossaries from the archive may be accessed on this site by entering keywords, such as slang, jargon, MLE (Multiethnic London English), familect (highly colloquial language used in the home), coronaspeak (language related to the COVID-19 pandemic) and weaponised words (the contentious language of Brexit and populism) and slurs (racist and misogynist terms) in the search box. Once you have accessed a post of interest, check the tags and categories at the foot of the page for other articles or glossaries on the same topic.
Two of the larger archive datafiles are hosted on Aston University’s Institute of Forensic Linguistics Databank site. These are a glossary of current youth slang…
Please note that the King’s archive focuses principally on contemporary language, that is terms used from the twentieth century to the present day. If you are interested in historical slang, I strongly recommend the monumental work by my associate, the British lexicographer Jonathon Green. His dictionary, now generously freely available online, lists current and historical slang terms with timelines and citations illustrating their usage and development…
For more information, for queries, or to donate examples of language, contact me via this website or via the King’s College webpage. I’m on Twitter as @tonythorne007 too.
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.).
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)…
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…
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…
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…
Following fashions is an exhausting task. And has become more exhausting still.
I have been recording the fads, fashions, cults and trends that energise popular culture, and the labels by which they register themselves on our collective consciousness, for more than thirty years. With the advent of the Internet and messaging the lifestyle innovations, aesthetic novelties and personal badges of allegiance are nowadays free to go viral, go global, and in many cases to disappear, virtually instantaneously. I talked to Olive Pometsey of The Face magazine (itself an iconic vehicle for the propagation of new ideas and images) about the latest, accelerated, overheated iterations of micro and macro-identities competing on online platforms. The equally frenzied quality of much comment and analysis is perhaps conveyed by the notes I made before we spoke…
A crowdsourced, online, free-for-all, 24/7 source of slang, catchphrases and new terminology is my friend Aaron Peckham‘s Urban Dictionary. As the Face article was going to press this was its phrase of the day…
Coined by trend forecaster Sean Monahan, a vibe shift describes the emergence of a “new era of cool.”
Fashion is a realm that experiences frequent vibe shifts, especially with the arrival of a new decade. Gone are the days when frosted tips and low-rise jeans and Abercrombie & Fitch were in.
We’re in the midst of a vibe shift right now with the widespread lifting of Covid-19 protocols and restrictions. We’re going out again and adapting in new ways to our environment; some will survive the shifting tides, and some won’t.
Yeah I’m in my vibe shift right now. You won’t catch me in the club now that things are opening back up again. I’m all about going to the Home Depot, renovating my home and hearth, yknow? Once I tried topless gardening things changed a lot for me.
Those once-thriving subjects, Cultural Studies and Media Studies, which I used to teach in the 1990s, are nowhere to be found in today’s educational landscape, and the cultural practices we used to analyse are these days ignored by most commentators, the subcultures (and microniches, hyperlocal communities) if they are mentioned at all are dismissed by older cohorts as trivial, frivolous and ephemeral. I doggedly persist, in solidarity with The Face, Wire, Dazed, i-D, TikTok, nanoinfluencers and microcelebrities, in finding them fascinating and significant.
Just a few days after the Face article appeared, the MailOnline announced the latest look for Summer 2022…
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…
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…
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)
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…
tony thorne 