Photo credits: Marwa Fichera 

With words such as ‘selfie’ and ‘twerk’ now sitting comfortably in the Oxford dictionary, the term to ‘google’ ‘literally’ becoming a ‘thing’, many people have been left lost for words. In the UK, commentary surrounding language change is often a popular and persistent topic for television talk shows, newspaper editorials, and articles. Accordingly, it comes as no surprise that it has been widely questioned whether the increase in the usage of slang in recent years signals the deterioration of Language, or its progress.

It is not unusual to hear adults complain about the younger generation’s language- slang has frequently been associated with laziness and lack of intelligence. British actress, comedian and writer Emma Thompson acknowledges this, and upon visiting her old school instructed students not to use slang because ‘it makes you sound stupid, and you’re not’. Linguists who acknowledge this association are worried that young people’s language has become inseparable from slang, leaving them floundering alone in the wider world.

However, other linguists have taken a strong interest in looking at youth lexicon differently. Tony Thorne is a British author, linguist, and lexicographer who specializes in slang, jargon, and cultural history. I notice him immediately at the Language and Popular Culture Lab, having a conversation with Negar Adarkani, a visiting fellow from SOAS university who specializes in Iranian studies.

As they walk to the middle of the room to present their research, I think of Tehran and London, and how both share a population of youth that constantly challenge and push against the system. I wonder what both cities share and how they differ when it comes to slang, and I don’t have to wait long to find out.

In Thorne and Adarkani’s research, youth Lexicon collected from high school students in Tehran, as well as from students at King’s College is categorized, analysed and compared. The differences in grammatical categories are immediately noticeable- 37% of British youth’s lexicon employs adjectives, which plummets to 9.75% for Persian youth. Persian youth lexicon is also heavily saturated with nouns; 69.02%, whereas British youth rely on half the amount of nouns, 34.8%.   For both lexicons, a similar percentage of verbs are used.

The distribution of themes between the two cultures is also similar.  Intoxication by drugs and drinks, romance and sex, approbation and insults top the tables in percentages and order, with social ethnic categorizations, relaxations and money trailing closely behind. For young British people, out of 179 nouns, 9.9% are female, whereas 17.2% are male. In Tehran, out of 280 nouns, 20.35% are female, whereas 13.92% are male. 37.7% of nouns in British youth lexicon are for people, as well as 36% for Persian youth lexicon.

These nouns are then divided into sub categories based on positive, neutral, and negative connotations. From this, Thorne and Adarkani found that both languages viewed males as boyfriend, attractive, and stupid, and females as promiscuous, fat,sexy and disreputable. English youth sees males as brother, important, cool, street smart, and useless, whereas Persian youth sees males as boy, unfashionable, non-conformist and henpecked. English youth also sees females as non-conformist, pretentious, worthless, mother and chasing, whereas Persian youth sees them as virgin/non virgin, street smart, fresh, and beautiful. Semantic manipulations in Persian and British youth lexicon seem to mirror these findings, with terms such as ‘sotun’ meaning fit and tall girl employed by Persian youth lexicon, and ‘sharkin’ meaning to chase a girl in English youth lexicon.

Accordingly, Persian youth are described as having a sensation of a lack of freedom, happiness, and security as well as a dissatisfaction with Iranian identity and traditions. British Youth are described as narcissistic with an unfounded sense of entitlement, aspirant, and more socially liberal and accepting than previous generations. Such findings are not only interesting to observe but can also help pinpoint, characterize and foreshadow social and political movements, such the young people of Iran posing challenges to the Islamic Republic’s rule, or the majority of people voting against Brexit being young people in the UK.

Exploring youth lexicon and slang provides insights into Language variation and innovation and paves the way for wider questions of identity, social representation, Religion, and culture. Standing alone, slang represents a creative linguistic process with its own rules and memberships, much like every dialect of every language. Moreover, slang promotes an increase in the variety, quality, and versatility of language.

Perhaps the greatest hope for such research is that instead of being attuned to becoming better speakers, we can be better listeners too, both to the diverse voices around us and our own.

Farrah Fray

The Language and Popular Culture Lab runs twice per term on a Wednesday. Look for publicity around campus for the upcoming session!