Youth sociolect as a historical and international phenomenon

Abstract

The paper explores the youth sociolect in Russian, German, and French languages in the lexicographical sources of 18th – 21st centuries. The numerous dictionaries of student slang, with some of them citing borrowings from the French language, reveal the richest legacy of the German youth speech. Russian academic slang emerged later since educational institutions had been established in Germany earlier than in Russia. Russian academic slang, found in memoirs, letters and fiction, is covered by «Dictionary of Russian Student Slang» by O. A. Anischenko. The comparative analysis of the two youth sociolects uncovers common trends that are revealed through the examination of their relevant lexicons. These tendencies prove to be the sources of the loanwords for the languages under consideration. The first is metaphorisation of general words. Similar to other types of slang, youth sociolect was evolving in communities defined by special social features and age groups; it borrowed its lexis from the existing language, changing it and adapting it to the communication needs of the relevant subculture. Slang users tend to catch denotation specifics which are in fact explicit meanings that can be grouped. Thus, the process of derivation which is an essential part of human mental activity takes place. The second trend is the borrowing. In 18th – 19th centuries, loanwords were borrowed from Latin, Greek, and French languages, whereas nowadays they are mainly adopted from the English language – a common practice in standard languages. The sociolects analyzed often borrow the same lexical items from the English language. The third trend is word building. Young people’s creativity is especially visible in abbreviations among which the omissions of letters or sounds are most frequent; shortenings such as apheresis and apocope can also be found in sociolects analyzed. The use of abbreviations in the youth sociolect is driven by slang users’ intentions: firstly, to make their speech unique and unusual, secondly, to make their language incomprehensible for outsiders and, thirdly, to speed up information exchange, thus making virtual and face-to-face communication instant. The similar trends detected in the development of the youth sociolect in different languages demonstrate that it is a historical process rather than a modern event. It is not a feature unique only to one language but an international phenomenon.