My little cousin and I seem like we speak different languages and have different meanings for all different words. Even though I’m technical “Gen Z”, he just turned 9 and already has his own vocabulary that he learned at school. My mom says it was the same for her and I. Can someone explain if there is an actual science behind this?
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Slangs develop for the same reason fashion styles, music genres, different hairstyles develop etc.
Humans are constantly trying to find ways of expressing themselves in a more unique way that reflects their own unique experience in a specific environment.
When I think of the slang words I used back when I was younger, it was a way of feeling connected to my peers. It was a way we carved our own identity & pushed away the identity of the “adults” that wanted us to conform, and of course youth = rebellion. But as I got older, I abandoned most slangs.
The study of the evolution of languages is called Linguistics. Languages are constantly evolving. Modern English is really different from Middle English that was spoken until the 15th century. When a group gets isolated by age, status, culture or territory, differences in their language will start to appear naturally.
“More often, slang serves social purposes: to identify members of a group, to change the level of discourse in the direction of informality, to oppose established authority.”
That is, it’s often very much a “Thrse people are in my group, and these people are not.”
That’s just from a quick google from open universities. Credited to Tom Macarthur.
It’s a pretty good eli5 bit there is a lot to it, it’s a very interesting field. Slang is often part of the ‘pragmatics’ arm of linguistics, obviously there’s a lot of semantics as well and the sociological aspects
Check out the Hidden Brain podcast episode called “Slanguage” about how slang and language relate. Fascinating.
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