Where Does Child Language End and Adolescent Language Begin?

Abstract

Introduction Adolescent language is a form of linguistic self-identication expressed most vividly in oral and written speech of adolescents’ mutual communication in informal situations and it varies depending on sociological factors (speaker’s gender, age, education, belonging to a specic group of youths etc.). Adolescents’ age group nowadays includes individuals between 13 and 30. Aim of the study Aim of this article is to analyse the borderline separating child’s language and adolescent’s language, as well as to determine the di!erences in features of both language varieties. Materials and methods The article contains materials on researches of child’s and adolescent’s language in Latvia and Germany, as well as the results acquired during project “Language individualities of age groups in Latvia: linguistic, social and cultural aspect” of 2008 State research programme “Latvian Studies: research on history, language and culture” carried out in research centre of child’s language at the Riga Teacher Training and Educational Management Academy. Results The term ‘adolescents’ has failed to have a uniform denition up to now. This term includes biological and social aspect, which are understood di!erently in di!erent eras and cultures: adolescence in the cycle of each individual begins with puberty and ends when the individual has found his personal and social identity proven by economic and social independence. In psychology, sociology and linguistics, various opinions rule about the age borderline dividing a child from an adolescent. This causes additional diculties when analysing the in#uence of age on language use. Research show that various periods of adolescents’ physical and psychic development a!ect usage changes in language means of expressions at the denite age, for example, it has been concluded that an adolescent’s age in#uences his speech: the older is the adolescent the more his speech resembles adult speech. Such comparison would be necessary to carry out research an child’s speech. Conclusions Comparison of features of child’s and adolescent’s language (use of non-literary vocabulary and vulgarism, making of neologisms, and using vocabulary incomprehensible to adults) lead to be conclusion that the most signicant di!erences of both language varieties are to be found in functions of neologism formation and usage, intentional formation of vocabulary which is incomprehensible to adults and the adults’ attitude towards use of one and the same vocabulary in child’s and adolescent’s speech. Further research should nd out what extra-linguistic circumstances facilitate arising of these di!erences, for example, how school children feel in the society and how these feelings are re#ected in speech.