Professionally-related communication: sociolinguistic monitoring of most frequently used words of youth sociolect

Abstract

The current article deals with functioning of youth sociolect in professionally-related and everyday communication. It relies on the concept of professional discourse. A special attention is given to professional interaction, based on professional interests. The field study is developed to investigate the usage of youth sociolect words, involving macro-sociolinguistic monitoring of frequency occurrence of English slang words in production sphere. The initial stage of the field study included the questionnaire development, defining the boundaries of monitoring, the number of lexical items under monitoring, the place of monitoring and the age of respondents. The second step in the project was monitoring. Finally, the results of monitoring were analyzed. The study was carried out through on-line questionnaire, face-to-face and remote interviewing, administered to respondents both in the production sphere and other spheres of activity. Native and non-native speakers from different countries and regions participated in the on-line questionnaire. The monitoring of frequency usage demonstrates that a limited number of lexical units of English youth slang are used in professional activity; the other part of lexicon presents a diverse picture. The article gives a number of diagrams and graphs to provide statistics confirming priority and universal use of English words of youth slang.