Despite its potential influence on the standard language, there is still relatively little written about the language of the young. This book gives new insight into some important areas of their language, such as identity construction reflected, for instance, in prosodic patterns and language choice, the use of discourse markers and slang in a contrastive perspective, the pragmatics of fixed expressions and the impact of English on the teenage vernacular. Most of the articles are corpus-based, and all represent naturally occurring spontaneous conversation. The book will be of interest to linguists, university students and anyone interested in today’s adolescent language and language change.

Despite its potential influence on the standard language, there is still relatively little written about the language of the young. This book gives new insight into some important areas of their language, such as identity construction reflected, for instance, in prosodic patterns and language choice, the use of discourse markers and slang in a contrastive perspective, the pragmatics of fixed expressions and the impact of English on the teenage vernacular. Most of the articles are corpus-based, and all represent naturally occurring spontaneous conversation. The book will be of interest to linguists, university students and anyone interested in today’s adolescent language and language change.