If you’re a teenage girl, potentially the most embarrassing thing in your life is your father. Especially if he is a thirsty cheug who ends up being cringe with your squad by using your slang. No cap. See? So mid.
Take, for instance, the case of Year 10 student and 14-year-old influencer Sienna Boyce, whose broadcaster father Ben has taken her, in the company of her sister Indie, 12, beyond viral. At the time of writing, a clip of the three going through a drive-through, with the eldest Boyce placing his order using a panoply of age-inappropriate words such as flexing, bougie and yass, queen, had had 72 million views on Instagram and 5 million on TikTok, and elicited online comments from the likes of Paris Hilton and Usain Bolt.
Did Sienna even know who Paris Hilton was? “Yes, because he comes into my room and goes, ‘Look, look who’s commenting!’ But I had heard of her.”
Old men – 40-plus – have been appropriating young people’s language to embarrass the heck out of them since at least 1947′s The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, in which middle-aged Cary Grant used it in an attempt to deter the unwanted attentions of eponymous teen Shirley Temple (relevant excerpts available on YouTube below).
But young people have been developing their own language for even longer. Quite often, if they’re sufficiently groovy, the words will stay around (see “100 years of attitude”, below). Linguists have been studying it for nearly as long, and we know a lot about how it works and what it is for.
Another language
Teenage slang is, in many ways, just like any other foreign language, says Louisa Buckingham, associate professor in applied language studies and linguistics at the University of Auckland. Specifically, it is an example of a sociolect, which are “relatively stable patterns of language use (whether in speech and/or writing) that differ from the variant”. It can include new words (skibidi), abbreviated words (rizz from charisma), combined words (finsta from “fake Instagram” ) and acronyms (GOAT – greatest of all time).
During adolescence, it has an important job to do. US linguist Valerie Fridland says, in Psychology Today, “[Adolescence] is an intense period of identity formation, and it is less constrained by economic and employment pressure compared to adult speech.” In other words, kids are in a position to play around linguistically because they won’t annoy the boss.
But age isn’t the only factor at work. Buckingham also notes that gender, ethnicity, religion, education, social status and even geography also affect the language people use to define their identities.
For those of us who carry Winston’s gold card, these slang terms are a foreign language. On no account should we use them.
Although not a trained linguist, enthusiastic amateur Ben Boyce makes the same point: “Everyone growing up wants to have things for themselves. Probably, their words become something that they can use and they understand.”
Blame – or credit – social media for the current efflorescence of teen talk. Even dictionaries are getting with the programme. They now cite social media for the first use of new words, where formerly they relied on appearances in print. “So many of these first uses come from social media sources that you think, clearly, this is a bustling place for language change,” says Waikato University linguist Andreea Calude. Her book on the subject, Linguistics and Social Media, will be published early next year.
Sienna Boyce expands on this, explaining why some social media are more influential than others. She points out that the youngest of the youngsters aren’t allowed on the likes of Instagram and TikTok, but they usually have access to YouTube, which is now a highly influential transmitter of new terms. “They just came up with YouTube shorts, and that’s where a lot of memes and stuff are posted, which is where Skibidi toilet came from.”
“Skibidi toilet?” Oh, right.
To remain relevant on social media one has to have an audience, says Buckingham, who notes that language is a powerful tool for bonding people together.
Language takes in more new content than ever because everybody talks to everybody.
“Now we can participate in a kind of global discourse,” says Calude, “because anything you can post online, depending on the platform and your settings, you can share with somebody else, who then shares it with somebody else, and they can travel around the world. And then there’s always somewhere where someone’s awake and sharing and re-sharing.”
Words come and go so quickly. “Viral trends come up fast and then they go down fast,” she observes. It’s just the world we live in: fast food, fast friendships formed on Facebook, binge watching and algorithms that instantly deliver you all the music you might like.
You get the double whammy of absolute disdain with one of their words of the moment.
Sienna Boyce concurs: “Slay was a big word, and I used to be not embarrassed to use it, and it was in every sentence that I ever said. And now it’s just cringe.” Although not as cringe as parents appropriating and inappropriately using teenage language.
University of Canterbury adjunct associate professor of linguistics Elizabeth Gordon thought she might not be with-it enough to comment for this article, then remembered a piece on the subject she wrote for the Press in 2007, in which she noted that some things never change:
“For those of us who carry Winston’s gold card, these slang terms are a foreign language. It’s probably useful to know what they mean, but on no account should we use them ourselves. I can still remember my surprise when a school friend’s mother told me in 1956 that, ‘Jeremy had pranged his bomb.’ Mrs Phillips might as well have come out wearing tartan trousers. She was far too old to be saying ‘pranged’ and ‘bomb’.”
There are still plenty of Mrs Phillipses around, sometimes using anachronistic language self-consciously, either for passive aggressive effect or in a misguided attempt to connect with their offspring “on their level”.
“In moments of enthusiasm,” wrote Gordon. “I still say that things are ‘super’ or ‘beaut’. My father would have said they were ‘extra curly’, my children would say they’re ‘cool’, my great-nephew says they ‘rock’. I’m happy to leave it like that.” The words have changed, the principles remain the same.
Buckingham suggests that adolescents, like any group, can weaponise their language by using it to weed out wannabes: “If someone [such as a parent] wishes to express through language use that they also have a certain affiliation … their attempt to use language appropriate for that social group [such as teenagers] may be rejected [criticised, laughed at]”.
Drawing the line
Mark Wilson, a sophisticated urbanite living in Ponsonby, Auckland, is a father of two daughters – Clara, 13, and Martha, 11. Media adviser for an NGO, he is fascinated by the way his children talk. And, although aware of the traps therein, he has made it part of his relationship with them.
He knows where to draw the line: “Even though I’m interested to know what those words and phrases mean, it feels weird using them.”
What is a parent to do? As with most teen-related issues, the golden rules seem to be: don’t overreact, and remember you were a teenager once, too, although possibly less so. “Our language at the time I don’t recall as being weird,” says Wilson. “Things were really ‘awesome’ and ‘rad’, but it wasn’t anything like the scale that I pick up on now. I feel like in the last year or so it’s become more of a thing with the kids. It doesn’t disturb me or worry me at all.”
But it does keep him on his verbal toes: “Yesterday, we were in the car and Clara was talking to a friend about somebody and said, ‘Oh my god, she’s your opp.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And they looked at me like I was just weird. ‘Opposition.’ So now you talk about somebody being an opp. Why say the whole word when you can just say one [syllable].”
Abbreviation is a very standard way of creating neologisms, as anyone who has ever answered an ad would know.
Ben Boyce admits to a certain amount of subterfuge to get teen-adjacent. “When I first started doing these videos I googled it, or put it in ChatGPT. Definitely a lot of cheating involved.”
Wilson also has his secret sources: “I follow a dad on TikTok. He’s a middle school teacher in the US doing this video for parents like me. ‘This is what this word means. This is how it’s used in a phrase.’ But it’s not about teaching the parents how to use it.”
It’s also important that parents don’t – if you’ll pardon the expression – “freak out” when kids talk funnily. It’s just a stage, or as Jackie Riach, a psychologist with the Triple P parenting programme says, it’s developmentally normative.
“There’s a heck of a lot of changes – physical changes, brain development changes – they are developing to identify more with their peer group and move away from their parents,” says Riach. “For some people, it’s a joy, and they can cope with it, and other people find it a very hard transition. I would say parents are always the major influence on children’s lives, but they begin to reference their peer group and often you get a lot of conflict, because the values of the youth might be quite different to the values of the parents. What used to be called ‘bad influences’.”
A parent who crosses the usage line will soon hear about it. If Wilson uses a word to which he has no right, “They look at you and then they go, ‘Bruh,’ and just walk away. You get the double whammy of absolute disdain with one of their words of the moment.”
If it all sounds like everyone is on the same page – or meme – be assured that there is still a gap between parents and offspring that leaves room for each side to move and just be themselves.
As Sienna Boyce says of her dad’s videos with her and her sister and their millions of views: “It’s not even like we say those words. Some of them we do, but that’s just like as a joke. And then he picks them up and he goes: ‘Oh, I’m going to use them to embarrass them.’”
I know – dads, right?
100 years of attitude
The Listener asked teenage influencer Sienna Boyce to give contemporary equivalents of some slang from a century ago:
A survey of young persons’ slang by decade during the past 100 years shows that of the many words that enter the language this way, some find a permanent home in the lexicon, some have a very short lifespan, and some are just ackamarackus. The words in the following lists came to prominence in the years shown, even if they did not necessarily originate then.
Most people in 2024 would have at least a rough idea of what the following mean:
1930s: Bash (an attempt), bread (money), gobsmacked (surprised), make tracks (to leave), shake a leg (hurry up).
1940s: Buzz (mild intoxication), clams (money), cooking with gas (getting somewhere), dish (attractive person), gobbledegook (nonsense).
1950s: Blast (a good time), daddy-oh (bro’), dreamboat (attractive person), squaresville (tedious environment).
1960s: Freak out (get over-excited), a gas (a good thing), grody (unpleasant), rap (converse), unreal (impressive).
1970s: Chill pill (aid to relaxing), dork (nerd), down with (accepting of) later (goodbye for now), do someone a solid (be of assistance).
1980s: Airhead (person of limited intelligence), awesome (of high quality), bodacious (attractive), rad (cool), stoked (highly pleased).
1990s: As if (probably not), duh (definitely not), talk to the hand (consider yourself ignored), fly (stylish), props (expression of respect).
2000s: Deets (details), fanboy/girl (an enthusiast), hella (considerably),’rents (parents), salty (upset).
2010s: Bae (romantic partner), ghost (to cut off communication), lit (very good), slay (do something very well).
Glossary:
Ackamarackus – (arch.) nonsense
Bougie – materialist, pretentious
Bruh – man, as in “hey, man”
Cheug – try-hard
Cringe – embarrassing
Finsta – fake Instagram
GOAT – Greatest of all time
Flexing – boasting about one’s competence
Mid – average
No cap – true, that
Opp – foe or rival
Rizz – allure
Skibidi – nonsense, whatevs
Slay – do well
Squad – friend group
Thirsty – desperate for attention
Yass, queen – well done, good for you
You ate that – high praise / you did something really well