One of the most fascinating aspects of human language is the development of slang: expressions that people take from standard English (or whatever native language) and completely change the meaning of to signify something completely different! These words and phrases are essentially inevitable to encounter when living in a dynamic social society; it’s easy to assume that the vast majority of Americans have heard such words as “cool” when referring to something as interesting, or the phrase “hanging out” used to mean spending time with one another. A few words have come up just over the past five to ten years that sparked my curiosity; my main question being, “What do certain slang words mean to people of different age groups?” While most slang
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Evidently the data supports my initial hypothesis and predictions, illustrating that for each of the slang terms that have come up over the past few years, there is a large slang-definition gap between those under and over the age of 25. What was most surprising after getting these results, however, was seeing that internet usage did not affect knowledge of slang terms at all! Most of the respondents over 40 years old spent more than 28 hours per week on the internet, yet evidently this did nothing to affect how they acquire or use new slang. If I had a chance to redo this study, I would insert a few extra questions into the survey. I would firstly add a question asking if the participants have children; this would hopefully account for some of the outlier adults who knew slang terms that most other adults didn’t. Also, I would add a question asking where people usually pick up on new terms, whether it be through the internet, other media, friends, or family – this would be interesting information to look at. One day though, once technology catches up with every age and with people from different cultures, maybe the older generation will become slang creators. Maybe one day grandparents and their grandkids will have similar-sounding conversations with the same cultural lingo; only time will
Evidently the data supports my initial hypothesis and predictions, illustrating that for each of the slang terms that have come up over the past few years, there is a large slang-definition gap between those under and over the age of 25. What was most surprising after getting these results, however, was seeing that internet usage did not affect knowledge of slang terms at all! Most of the respondents over 40 years old spent more than 28 hours per week on the internet, yet evidently this did nothing to affect how they acquire or use new slang. If I had a chance to redo this study, I would insert a few extra questions into the survey. I would firstly add a question asking if the participants have children; this would hopefully account for some of the outlier adults who knew slang terms that most other adults didn’t. Also, I would add a question asking where people usually pick up on new terms, whether it be through the internet, other media, friends, or family – this would be interesting information to look at. One day though, once technology catches up with every age and with people from different cultures, maybe the older generation will become slang creators. Maybe one day grandparents and their grandkids will have similar-sounding conversations with the same cultural lingo; only time will