What their friends say about the way they talk: the metalanguage of pre-adolescent and adolescent Australians

Abstract

Adolescence is a time in young people's lives when identities are being constructed and what their friends say is particularly important. The teenage years are a critical period in terms of attitudes to language, yet there have been relatively few studies of student metalanguage and, to our knowledge, no studies which have considered age-graded differences in adolescence. This paper focuses on comments from Australian students in their initial and final years of high school about what their friends say about the way they talk. The findings, based on the written responses of 642 students to two questionnaire items, show that although there are common themes in the senior and junior students’ discourse, seniors are more likely to report that they choose their friends on the basis of the way they talk and to report that they remember their friends commenting on their speech. They are also more likely to provide detailed comment about social and regional variation. We conclude that written survey data hold explanatory power, enabling useful insights into Australian adolescent metalinguistic awareness and providing a window on ideologies and perceived identity.