Episode 84 - Daria Bahtina and 'Gen Z slang'

[Music] Welcome to Lexus, the podcast all about language and linguistics. I'm Lisa Casey and Jackie Glancy. I'm Radarana and I'm Dan Clayton. [Music] On this episode of Lexus, we're delighted to welcome Dr. Daria Batina, who is a continuing lecturer at Department of Linguistics at UCLA. So welcome Daria. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And we're also on this episode. We've got Amanda Cole, who's many people will already know as a friend of the pod and a kind of honorary member of the podcast team, who's going to be a guest guest in to the year today. So hi Amanda. Hiya. So Daria, first kind of thing that we thought was really interesting was coming across your work as part of some stuff you're quoted on in the Guardian newspaper about youth slang. So you talked about some terms, I mean I feel really bad even saying this word now because it's so cringe isn't it, but six, seven. You were quoted in article about that. It's old, yes. Okay, let me say so. I'm a social linguist and that's why I really care about how social identity is created through language. And once in a while I get to dispel some of the myths on wider social media explaining that none of them is bad, none of them is wrong. So, but at the same time, I want to say that I'm not necessarily an expert in specifically youth vernaculars or any other type of communities that I may have commented upon. And I love this parallelism when we say that, okay, we don't ask a doctor how many illnesses they have, right? We don't ask a linguist how many languages they speak. We don't ask a social linguist if they know about all the communities, but I'm invested into understanding how the system works, how people actually develop this particular ways of using language. So if you come with, I don't know, some quotes from your teen and you wonder if something's wrong with them, I'll tell them what they have. I can give you the diagnosis. They have social identity. So, and probably some vernaculous of a kind. So this is the most natural thing that people have. And I really love explaining that there is nothing wrong with it. Language does what it's supposed to do helps us index who we are, show where we belong, keep the group boundaries, and kind of sometimes creating shortcuts, creating humor, but really it's for social groups and showing to the world that we are our own selves and we belong to certain groups. And I guess those things kind of change quite quickly, don't they? As well, like we see with something like a slang term, like six, seven, which has kind of like a brief, you know, birth and then exists and then people look kind of back away from it very quickly and stop using it. Yeah, for six, seven, I think the last glories moment for that was around Halloween last year. For me, that was definitely the highlight. This is the time by which most parents have already figured out what six, seven means, or at least that it's a popular term, maybe not being able to explain this. And for me, it was the perfect combination. So one of the interviews just came out about six, seven, everybody was talking about it. And I decided to make it super cringe for it. So I have a 12 year old and to make sure that this goes out, you know, the old folks have to start using that slang. So we dressed a six and seven and walked around the elementary school as for the Halloween hunt. And I think that was and so many parents did that too, I think. This was to make sure that youth, unless they are maybe five or six. So this, this kids are still keeping public it anybody older than elementary is probably not using that anymore because yes, it goes out of fashion so fast, which is not new. I like to think about the spread of popular words you can refer to them as slang or the cool words. It's like trickle down fashion, right? At first, only a very select elite is going to use them. And you can think about this either marginalized community is who use that for their own purposes, right? Or maybe over time, the cool groups, the dominant communities, and we can think of younger generation, typical of being the kind of the super spreaders in that respect by the time millennials or other uncle people start using that, you know, that's it. It's over. So just like in fashion, you know, when you see that on the podium, oh, I would never hear from now. Okay, I'm going to get that myself. And then everybody wears that your mom is wearing this. No, don't ditch that this, this jeans are no longer utilizingable. So I think that's what's happened with the seven two, but probably faster than with some other slang or generational things that we can I ask what actually name six seven? I know I'm not wondering is that, but here we have to start by saying that we expect there to be like a very specific meaning or a definition of all times. And while generally we can describe that this is kind of some level of uncertainty or something is not amazing. If you ask, Jen, I'll fall, they'll say it has no meaning, but they'll give you a very specific context or a scenario where you can actually use that. So this is a reaction. First of all, you'll often hear that. I think that was kind of one of the primary uses. So it's just funny when a math teacher tells you that you have to solve six seven problems, right? So you just show that you recognize it. But it has also come to me like, well, this or that, maybe not I'm, I'm bivalent a little bit about it, right? So the closest to the finish would be like probably not too good, but actually they insist it does not have a direct meaning. One of the projects that I currently, I'm supervising, they look specifically at a gen alpha and how other generations are able to interpret that. They actually made that task much harder. They asked to translate that into academic English, a mission impossible because they don't translate. They don't have the same function truly. Academic English is about something entirely different and we have to present evidence. And it's, it's more palpable in a way. And the six seven and all the, all the meme culture in general, it's about what kind of reaction you're expected to demonstrate when you hear this, when you encounter this. So just like, oh, hi, yo, you don't really say oh, hi, yo, but you react to some way when you hear that. So six seven is more of a, you recognize that. But yes, you can also just signal that. So during this Halloween hunt, the, the biggest success of my life ever, I don't think I'll ever be as popular. Every nine year old would notice that it was like the neon letters, the numbers that I mean. And they were just shouted as completely excited. So it wasn't about the meaning. It's like, I know this. Oh, it's so funny. You know this. And you thought it's important enough for you to make your outfit based on six seven. So I think that just like with a lot of language that is specific to any particular group, we have this amazing sensation of like, wow, they too know it. So I'm from Estonia and we have this sort of untranslatable phrase, which would literally just say the joy of recognition. But I don't think you use it that often in English, but it can be when somebody explains your experience to you. There's something else here relatable and very recognizable. And there's just pure joy in knowing that you're not alone in this. So I think that six seven, when it started, when it was more exclusive to those younger communities, then it had this like, I belong and the Prieta lessons are another lessons, even more so are all about belonging. So it was really an identity marker like index saying, you know, like we're in, we're in the know. And the others will keep talking about it, guessing it, but they'll never use it right. So I think that the goal is for us to never use it right. Right. And I suppose it's that ties in as well, doesn't it, with that sort of sense of like feeling like you've been seen in some way, you know, as you say, kind of that sort of recognition, understanding of like different social groups? Do you think it is, I mean, you mentioned generations, quite a lot already. I mean, do you think there's a sort of generational aspect to these things? I mean, you said six sevens kind of gen alpha, it's kind of, you know, it's cringy when someone from like, these millennial or gen X, like me, for example, might be kind of using it. But do you think there is that sort of generational slang? So generation is where we notice that because we have this, it's not necessarily friction, but we get those encounters where we'll say have millennial parents with gen alpha, or we'll have gen Z and, you know, again, their parents. And now that my best combination when gen Z doesn't get gen alpha, like this is the best I feel revenge. So the generations are where it really comes to the fore because the this groups interact, they cannot not interact. So any mismatches are kind of very visible. And we just keep guessing what the other group means. But there's differences in just like any variety, any subset of language belongs to distinct groups. And we will always belong to multiple groups. It can be our professional group. So you can think about professional jargon and how people will always use that not just to convey information the most precise way, but it's like, Hey, you're a medical doctor. It's amazing, you know, we're we're the same. So there's kind of understanding and common ground right away. We can see that in regional dialects, when you say you're somewhere else and you hear somebody says, pronounces that vowel that the way you do no longer feel like a weirdo. You're like, I know you're my person, right? So there is a lot of this social meaning just like recognizing your kin in a way. Generations make it more notable because how often do we necessarily, you know, in our day, we'll have interact with people who have entirely different professional background, entirely different regional background. So we do, but the generations, it just happens in every household probably. So we're kind of more aware of it. Plus, I think this are the communities that have the fastest turn around thanks to social media. Yeah. And is it just when you were saying about 6, 7 that Jennifer would say that it's meaningless? They don't say it's meaningless. They don't say that it has a specific translation. So I don't think that these things, it's meaningless. They'll resist the urge, absolutely, to put like one definition on it. And they typically will tell you about a meme, about how it has done right, about the proper context. And they'll say, no, you cannot just say, I'm not convinced or this is not so good. So they don't treat that as meaningless. They just refuse labeling it down to just one phrase that explained it. That's my take on it. But actually, like it has, that's been one of the insoles, right? I'm a lot of Jennifer's. I'm saying, oh, that it's meaningless or that you know, it's this form of brain rot. What would kind of be your response to that when slang or I guess maybe more just like vernacular terms or new vocabulary or termed brain rot or meaningless? I guess that this is not evaluative or like the users themselves don't worry about this. But I guess like if we call it this way, then we perceive that as truly, you know, languages go into the dog. Is it, you know, what's with the kids? Are they all right? So I think that Gen Alpha and themselves don't worry about that at all. I wouldn't worry either. I think that one aspect that again, we tend to simplify is that if we're not part of this community, and well, like, well, it doesn't even translate into normal English, right? So must be meaningless, must be brain rot. It says it. Now again, if we'll look closely at what both Gen Z and Gen Alpha tend to do with any forms of communication, they have a strong push away from the literal meaning and things as they are. So extreme irony, extreme indexicality, extreme kind of inclusivity of understanding, meaning only within the very specific context, which language does for all groups, but this is taken to the extreme in a sense. Think about the emoji and think about the three generations using a mojo or even just take any two generations that have at least 10 years apart. Oh, let's say 20 years apart. You know, this infamous example when a say Millennial mom sends a text, grandma died and the crying emoji, which I call the two rivers, the daughter, teenage daughter responds, what's wrong with you? Because this is, I'm, it's so funny. I'm crying because crying does not mean crying that means crying from laughter. So he cannot put that emoji after a devastating news about a loved one, right? So and it's going even further now. So what is the laughter? What is the LOL of Jen alpha? It's the skull because I'm dead, but it cannot be taken literally, right? So and a lot of the things that they're using in their online communication are not to be taken literally. So rain, right? It's not literally rain, right? It's what they show to the maybe to keep it a little more exclusive for a bit longer. So the old folks don't understand, but we see that also in other things, how they try not to engage with statements directly, they really like this contextuality and complex meaning that can be understood. If you know the most recent memes, if you know what's going on, so it's really kind of keeping it a secret language for a little longer. And it actually pretty extreme what I heard from my Gen Z students, they say, well, I decided to go on a social media cleanse. I've been out for a month. I come back. I don't understand what's going on anymore. So they have to keep up today with us in order to stay on top of things. So I think that this is what's really happening with the, that's why I don't, I don't think that calling it brain rot is in any way the jarred air because truly, it's just so complex, we don't get it. And that's okay. We're not supposed to get it. We're not, we're not 15. We're not. So and also, you know, the moral panics are, I just want to kind of get all the generations especially. And moral panic has always been there when the newspapers came out, oh, we're going to stop talking to each other, the phones, you know, Lens, our people will never meet in person. Social media, we're so a social and high social. So it's always been there. And specifically for younger people's language, it was, I love this work, the Scott Kisling's work on dude, right? So around that time, everybody thought that the generation has forgotten how to use language because everything has become dude. Any response is a dude. And he was able to show that, yeah, all the surfaces looks like we've oversimplified language and everything is just one word, how degenerate of us, right? But he was able to show that this is a stand smarker, this is indicates, so it's not about the direct meaning like, oh, I call everybody dude now or now the upgrade is bro, which is different bro and bro, I completely different things don't get those mixed up, right? So it's about the, again, dude was all about the contextual use. What is the international contour, right? What is the overall context? Who are the people? So he can decode that and you probably have seen the Budweiser commercial, right? That came out of that. That finally showed to the people like, it's not the same word. It's very rich in meaning. So I think brainwired is just like that. We are not supposed to get it. They get it. And it has reach meaning. That's my interpretation. I mean, I'm showing my age here, but I'm one of my favourite TV shows is The Wire. And there's a classic kind of moment in that in one of the episodes where two of the detectives are looking for where like a bullet has gone to kill somebody and they just use the F word, something like 20 times, but with different kind of intonations to describe their sort of reactions and to like kind of respond to each other. And it's like that word clearly doesn't just mean it's literal meaning, whatever that might be taken as it's all of these other kind of things as well. Like you say, we like dude. Yeah, exactly. I love SNL because again, many of my students here at the UCLA will watch that and they have some skits on girl and how girl will to have lots of meanings. The B word, so many meanings, especially depending on whether the female is into buying people actually here that themselves or somebody else is using to refer to them. So there's a lot of difference in that too. Yeah, so this words might become kind of flagships of a particular generation or a community for a while. And whoever is not part of that community will always assume, okay, that's the only word they can use anymore, you know, that tells us everything we need to know about them. But if we were to ask them, okay, translate that. They'd probably discover that the meaning is actually very nuanced and is not just one word. I mean, it's really interesting isn't it? Because as linguists, you'd be thinking, okay, well, nothing that's a sign or a symbol is meaningless. It's going to carry some sort of meaning anyway. And as you said, it's like social meaning is often sort of encoded, isn't it? So even if they can't sort of define exactly what's meant by meant literally by 6, 7 or something of skibbiddy or something like that, then at least what they can do is kind of, you know, you as a linguist can say, well, look, he carries these social meanings about identity belonging, etc. as he said. Absolutely agree with you. So if you look at the function of language, referential is one of the six functions that language has. So we have fatted communication. We have all these other things that we can do. So conveying information is a small fragment of why we talked to each other or write or sign at all. It's important. We should not discard that. But language does so much more than just convey information. Yeah. And the other guiding article that was really interesting was the more recent one. This was about, I guess it is a kind of moral panic, but maybe also a kind of, you know, genuinely rooted panic in what's going on amongst certain communities. But it was about in-cell slang. And the language it's kind of gone from quite some niche online groups, you know, like, you know, I don't know, online forums kind of read it groups into more mainstream usage. And there's a really nice bit you quoted on in that article where it's, you say, highly specific, rapidly evolving slang creates in-group cohesion by making comprehension contingent on being in the loop. So is there something about kind of online communication, do you think, that is kind of speeding up the kind of process of slang changing or going through different kind of forms? Yeah. Okay. So let me tell you, there are two things I think that you mentioned that are really important. One is the moral panic and I'll tell you two cases when I would be word at least say as a parent and a social linguist maybe like bringing more awareness, but speaking about where language develops. Online environments have created more possibilities for you to find this very niche environments to meet with people otherwise. I don't know. In the past, yeah, you could write, you can be pen friends, right? Fem pals. That was possible. But now it's so accessible. So you can find the people that you like, people that are like you in a much more efficient way. However, I wouldn't emphasize that language, specific forms of language, like the variety, the subset of language that will be unique to this in group, continues to develop both offline and online. Again, we just may be exposed to more of this because of the online environments, but I absolutely love mentioning, you know, the Arctic study. So there were just some scientists and they spent I think around half a year together and then linguists were observing what happened to them. And guess what? They all developed their own lingo and some of that was about the phonological adaptation. So they developed like new ways of pronouncing things because they were all from different backgrounds. English was not mother tongue for many of them, so they just developed like this new variety. And that happens in all languages, like in dialectology, you know, we'll dedicate a lot of attention to that. But also they've created a lot of lexical items that were either old words with new meaning or, you know, maybe kind of something that they've just coined to refer to things. And I imagine that for them, it would be very valuable. You take them out of this community and then they're able to speak again. It's kind of a reflection of shared experiences and anytime that I encourage students to reflect on where they have this special language. I ask them to think about the communities of practice. So, community of practice can be online or offline. And the phrase itself comes from social learning and language is through socialization. So it is part of social learning in itself. So we're thinking about the inevitable kind of a byproduct of people who interact for whatever reason. Be working on a very, you know, high-tech project together like some engineers maybe, right? Be a small kind of community of students working on the project during ten week course. Yeah, my favorite, the needing circle. And then you just end up talking both about the process but also kind of the social relationship. So you do develop this insider's language. It's not because you're trying to, but you will in order to kind of create this cohesive process. And as long as the introduction is well prolonged, so it does take more than a couple days ahead. It would assume and it's frequent and you're continuously engaged in the activity. You will have the shared forms of communicating. Doesn't mean that you will become besties. Does not mean you're going to be aligned on everything, but your language will reflect this tied interaction and maintain interaction. Now the moral panic, I think that one case where we want to maybe raise awareness, not stop the language, don't stop the language, language will go where it wants to go. We have, we can do nothing about it. But raising awareness and maybe kind of giving people the choice to know whether or not to use certain expressions, subset of language is to think whether appropriation is part of this. So a lot of slang, the coolest words that are out there always come from marginalized communities. And this community is, are typically discriminated against because they have this language, right? But once the dominant groups are using that, it's the super hip thing. So we know that all the best expressions, the most, kind of they always will come from, come from queer communities, from African American vernacular, all of this community kind of contributes, right? Regularly. So we want to kind of be mindful, you know, how we contribute into the same processes. Now the the in cell topic that you mentioned, I think that once we start using certain subsets, all in which that we recognize to be part of the community, we could also see and we don't, we don't take away from them, right? Like they're not maybe criticized the same way that some marginalized communities are. I don't know if we're raising them, especially something about the, the manosphere language in official context. I don't see popular slang or like the youth slang in those formal environments that much. But if we have, I don't know, a Pentagon quote, all of the in cell language, I don't know what kind of signal ascending. So I would, I would want to at least mention that, you know, we should know where it's coming from and what it represents. And think about this as you decide, for example, to no longer buy a product from a company because you're against animal testing and you know, they are continuing with animal testing and that's not, does not align with your values. So you'd rather not purchase their products. So a little something similar can be applied here. Maybe we don't want to participate in that or not to raise the status of this group through using this language. But again, it's kind of a thing lying to walk, but I would definitely want to at least be aware where the language that it comes from. Yeah, I see what you mean. It's an interesting thing isn't it because it's quite sort of tension there isn't there between kind of what you're saying there, but also about the whole nature of how people actually use language. It's that there's that, you know, as you say, younger generations may well be deliberately using language that's got kind of like extra layers of irony or it's used in a way that another generation may not understand. And if we're sort of saying to them as older people, oh, don't use that because that's a bad word. Don't you know where it comes from? They'll be like, yeah, but I'm not using it like them. I'm using it in a different way. You know, they don't hear that kind of, you know, boring. There's always this tension. And I think that a lot of the words that I would not be allowed to say it love the members of the community can use it. There's always this different rules. I think like, of course, we should not forget about this. Some people have the rights to use this words and they do mean something else, including the C word in some context, which can be like, you know, a word of empowering and then get a reclaiming reclamation of the name and so on. But specifically for say brain rot, I did have a conversation with my 12-year-old about some aspects of it. And I'm not talking about all this is simplified Italian. We're done grading them to, you know, okay, fine, I maybe we are, we speak Italian in the family, too. This is one of our family languages. So I'm like, okay, our Italian family has not made a big deal out of that. So we'll let it pass for now. But there are some aspects of brain rot that actually suggest violence or that somehow index or make comments about certain very hate crimes be normal. So not to go into the details. I want her to know, for example, that there is a difference between when her teacher says through the in the which they all love because what the teacher is doing is demonstrating, hey, I respect your culture. You mean something to me. So I will learn your ways of speaking and I'll try to speak your language, which just creates an amazing rapport between them. But it's not the same if we talk about this fictional character that says that bombing kids is fine. So I'm like, well, maybe that one you want to know and make a choice then. So it's not just saying all brain rot is good or all brain rot is bad or all max whatever is going to only mean in cell. Yeah. So I think like trying to maybe have discussions about the nuances in the meaning, just kind of raising awareness, having conversations with kids that are just youth so that they can make choices for themselves. And if they say, well, when we use that in our community, it means something else. Fair game. Yeah. In terms of linguistic appropriations, he mentioned that something that obviously we have to be a bit sensitive about when we understand the origins of words. How would you like suggest that we can kind of differentiate between when a word is being appropriated. And I know a lot of slang, particularly in the West, does come from African-American English and like natural processes of linguistic the future, particularly when the origins of new words and like linguistic form often do come from languages or dialects with covert prestige. So how can we kind of like distinguish between natural processes of diffusion and when something like that. So I will, yeah, I don't know if you have the answer. I definitely don't have the answer, but I want to maybe raise the status of some of, like, give credit. I don't know how you can actually give credit, but we, you know, there's there's language passing, right? There's language crossing. There's different processes that we describe in social linguistics when we either pretend that we have some respect for the culture and we would like to be like them. And I think it's doing one thing at the other time we try to pass as members of this community. So again, it depends on what the goal is. So if you really are fascinated by the culture, but you also don't pretend to be a member because the only the members of this community will have the history of particular social hierarchy that was treating them a certain way. So I think that kind of, it's not that you'll never be able to say that, but to say that with some sort of acknowledgement. So if that comes with part of cultural appreciation instead of appropriation with sort of giving credit with raising the communities that contributed to that, then I think this, this would be one way to still create space for that, participate in the language use, but not kind of pretend that this community has never existed or had nothing to do with that. In practice, I don't know what that should look like, but I do know a lot of, for example, of the entire fandom of camp culture, I think that they're very supportive. So while not necessarily being part of the community, they'll know everything about the drag queens, they'll kind of, they'll be the whole fandom and kind of talk about that and explain that. So if they use some parts of that language, then I think it's very there. It's seen very differently. They are raising that community. They are lifting that community and not pretending that no, I came up with this whole word. It's only people in my vehicle group that use it and I don't care what was before me. Again, I don't think that it's very easy to point out what happens in a daily day-to-day basis. But again, if I just want to think about the positive scenarios, so like kind of the camp affection that is so widespread, I think this is wonderful. The other aspect is when the community is themselves just either reclaiming, because what we typically see is semantic bleaching or kind of some other form of bleaching, when we kind of knew for a while it comes from a community that was dispervalidged. But who cares? Like over time, it doesn't matter the word, kind of they lost access to this word, to this expression. Now everybody can freely use it without referencing them anymore because we kind of forgot who gave this word to us, right? But with reclamation, it's like, okay, you called me the bad word? You know what? No, I'm gonna use this bad word. And this bad word will say, I'm proud of being my community. And you don't get to give me that name as a pejorative, as a derogatory term. It's no longer slur. This is me saying, you know what? Yes, that's me. And I feel empowered. And I'm allowed to use that. But then I think that the outsiders are still not in the position to use that word, or at least in most contexts they are not. So I think it's about whether we engage the community themselves, whether they have given some sort of symbolic credit, and whether they now benefit in any way, from a particular subset of language that they've popularized indirectly, being so fashionable, being so trendy. So can they enjoy some of this? But again, it's not a very practical solution. It's more about like sometimes it works, in those very few scenarios. So I think I just looking at that one train to think, how can we recreate more of that? Yeah, like can they keep claiming the royalties? For the words. Yeah, yeah. In the name, yeah. Exactly, yeah. And so bringing it back a little bit, to be talking about it being, well, not how the new slang is something that's kind of maybe developed online, or at least spreads online, or at least online is one of the big kind of, almost like, unities of practice. If you could consider it a community of practice when it's so broad, I guess, we've had to like, I'm not angry, right? Oh, okay. I think that with it, yeah, online is probably going to be two, two general of a term, just like I won't go with speech commuting. It means everything and nothing at the same time. So I think that you can name, say, Discord channels, or what they are. You can think of particular fandoms. You can think about Swifties, for example. Yeah. So just name something that happens online, but has like a focus. So that's one I'll expect them to have something short. So again, we are interested in whether a particular community will have shared language. I don't think everybody online speaks the same. There will be some very general trend, just like all speakers of English, or all speakers of British English, or all speakers of American English, and then they can search some grammatical rule, right? Or like, this is the word we say, what are fountain and not something else, right? So we can describe this, but it's going to be so general, it doesn't capture the more of the social identity. So these are just like shared resources. So online, most of us by now, no, not to put a period at the end of a sentence, right? It's aggressive. Put an emoji, or don't put anything. Just, you know, if you're a very old, put dot, dot, dot, dot, but don't put a full stop there, please, right? No periods at the end of the sentence. It sounds mad. You are really mad at whoever, yeah. It sounds like a separate statement. So, and in the in-person communication, would typically know that from the contacts, we know that from how our voices shifting, from nonverbal behavior, from eyebrows, you know, moving in a certain way, no scrunch, anything. But in the online environment, maybe frontation helps you decode that. So there will be some of this general things that we've all kind of acquired as a speech community, as an online speech community. But most of the particular shared language is going to be focused around those activities, K-pop, something, right? People who watch, I don't know, crime serious. So this will have, again, the definition of commuter practice that you have to engage in some activity around a topic that you work on together, or you just care about enough. So if you find those online communities that are more specialized, this is where you'll definitely find specialized language that they've developed, even if they maybe don't know each other's pet names or something, they definitely have developed a lot of shared language that will be not 100% transparent to the outsiders. So not all the internet at once, subsets of internet, focused on something that unites them. - Yeah, I mean, that makes a huge amount of sense, yeah. But I suppose in that way, it's still kind of a bit broader, right? Like, you know, the people who are gonna engage with a certain online trend can still potentially come from a lot more different places, maybe than if we're thinking of like, - It's yeah. - It's a group of academics who are talking about who've gone to the Arctic. - Yeah. - But kind of moving on, we wanted to talk to you a little bit about your language life blog, and we both had a good read of quite a few different sort of articles and resources on that, and thought it was a really fantastic resource for a level teachers and also students. So many different projects that your students have undertaken, and so lovely to see their work really kind of spot. - Thank you. - Quality and the sort of breadth and depth of their work as well. Could you tell us a little bit about maybe some of your, the favorite projects you have, what your students are. - Okay, let me just explain why I have this blog because it really matters a lot to me. So I started as a lecturer here in 2019, and to my shock, I discovered that undergrads are not obliged to do any project. There's no thesis. They can, but this is considered like an honors track. And I am a strict believer that you can only do something when you apply that knowledge. So I thought, okay, let me try to do a research project for anything I teach if I can make it happen. Spoiler alert, yes, I made it happen for 99% of the classes, even when they would say no, it's not possible. They are doing it. Now, the other motivation was for me to really empower the students because I remember my own shock. That was my first year, my first big conference. I was already a doctoral student, and I've been writing my drafts on certain literature, and then I see that such or such. It's standing there talking to a colleague, drinking coffee. I thought that person was long dead because I was reading the theory, and they're kind of a big name. So my world kind of turned upside down in that moment. I was like, wait, what? And then the second realization was like, well, maybe I can also contribute a little bit. So again, my biggest dream for all of my students is to show them that they are capable, that they are the ones who can actually contribute to the scientific knowledge, and that they know what's happening now. I cannot tell them what they have to do. They know I can give them the tools, and the block serves as an encouragement showing them. You love grades and anatomy? Please study that. You care about a different show where people eat spicy stuff, right about that. So more of the background, this comes from four different departments, and very different formats. Some of them were writing courses. Some of them had a heavier support on particular methods. Some of them required transcription others didn't. So they are very different in kind of the methods that they're using, but they all start in the same, like the formula is the same. Are you passionate about something? Is there a puzzle in your head about, well, I am a member of a community or have noticed my younger sibling, or you know what, when I, every time I have a conversation with my roommate who is from X and Y, so they have a bit of a, something's going on, I'm not sure what exactly. And this is how we get them started. I mean, they're forced to, of course, but while they're forced to complete project work, I tell them, find something that you're gonna hate less. And sometimes they really get passionate about it. So then it's very important, of course, to give them the right tools, and yes, students come with very different backgrounds. For some, you really have to explain what an academic article is, where to find evidence, how we kind of try to triangulate the research that's behind us that we already have, and the different forms of evidence that they can bring and how they can interpret that. So I really encourage them to tackle any topic that they can come up with. Often that means that I have to read up about things, I have no clue about what they're talking about, that may not be my area of expertise, but I'm like, you know what, I'll tell you how to, you'll find literature, you'll go to the research support center, to the writing center, together we'll make it work. And I think that it gives them a lot of confidence. So I think that it's hard for me to name like, my favorite project, it's really the diversity of topics, diversity of methods. So the topics are very diverse. So they all could be summarized as social linguistics and bilingualism, I would say. A lot of that includes ethnography, so more of the health participants feel about certain topics. So I'll try to encourage students to both observe what they can do through elicitation, through observation, but also have some sort of interviews to really get the more qualitative kind of, the insider perspective, what that language means to the community is how they interpret what they think it's important or not. And there is a lot of insights that come from that kind of addition. And I love just like the, anytime we have election, it's gonna be about political choices. During the protests, we had a really nice project on political framing. So the project showcased that when people, so these specific elected students with the assumption that students will be like more left leaning and pro supportive of people expressing their concerns and being kind of active members of the society. And the other group that they interviewed were kind of police officers on campus who are supposed to maintain order. So they had a very different perspective on that, right? And they would see the same clip and ask to describe that. And they had a completely different framing that ranged from, well, what I'm noticing is that people have a cause. I'm sympathetic. And then people who job is to maintain order would mostly reflect on whether that's within, you know, safety range, like the markers for like, should we intervene or not and care a lot less for the actual cause, which you know, I think is very insightful how we look at the exact same, thing and we see very different things and we use very different discourse to describe what we interpret. So the interpretive frames, right? A lot of students come from multilingual backgrounds and just like everywhere else that will be the standard language that has the highest social prestige, right? A particular variety, a particular set of pronunciation norms and this people who have this other languages as heritage languages typically they feel less adequate about where there's other languages belong. So a lot of projects actually explore that. How, for example, the use of Spanish is used to create, you know, grihisian and group belonging and kind of what kind of indexicality and warmth and everything else that it creates. Or also, I really love when students try to do and it's not like a dichronic change. They go like a longer span, but they sometimes will look at online comments and the proportion of certain languages used in this online environments before and after certain events. So I'm still waiting for the project to cover the bad bunny. Yes. Yes, well, we cannot go. Yeah, we cannot talk about system with six without that bunny. I do have, I think, two projects, but they did not specifically look at the before and after, but they were trying to gauge, for example, use experience in online environments, you know how this is like the most known fact in social linguistics, of course, that people who are communities, who belong to communities that do not enjoy the highest, kind of socioeconomic status or just the social prestige will continue to auto discriminate in ways that, you know, if we ask them, do you think that person is reliable? Do you think that person is trustworthy? Would you want a person who speaks that variety of language to represent you? So typically in this type of match guys test, we see that they will still say, yeah, maybe not so trustworthy, maybe not so professional, but then trying to see you care. But what do they actually say? So one of the projects looked at whether the sites that we see in either the most standard American language, standard Spanish, code mix or Spanish, how they will kind of prefer those two. And yes, the standard answer is confusing to people because online sites are still perceived as a not discord channels, of course, but like more of the website for something. They still perceive that as a formal domain and they want kind of the standard language there. That's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, that actually that reminds me of some of your work, Amanda, on vaccinate attitudes and sort of social status and, you know, solidarity features and things like that. Yeah. So yeah, some of the work I've been looking at how essentially, acts and biases is reproducing of societal biases and that people think they're talking about at a certain, but actually, you know, they're not. They're talking about the people that have those at a sense. And I think the same sort of lexical choices as well. And probably coming back to when you say people say, like criticise, general for and Gen Z, vocabulary, is it really about that or is it like, no, you have to talk the way we do and we don't value the way that you speak. And I think whenever we look at evaluations of language, we're looking at something a lot more, right? Oh, yeah. It's never the language itself. And, you know, the same language can have very different status in this country in the next door, right? The language did not change. It's the people that use that language and they just enjoy very different status. Yeah, absolutely. The replication of the norms that are so kind of entrenched in our mind. So if I'm asked to just give a rating, I'm going to go for it. Like, I'm very likely to give the highest rating to whatever I perceive the norm and the standard. When I'm being asked, did it feel good seeing a website in the, in the Spanish that I use myself? Yeah, it kind of, it was strange, but it felt good. I felt like I'm represented, but like, there's this, yeah, but because we're not used to that. So I really love when students actually discover those kind of tensions, not necessarily ruptures, but like the tension that lies within the society itself, when the smaller groups are not claiming what they could be claiming and they still look kind of orient to the larger social norms that say that certain groups deserve more than others. Or the change of gendered perceptions or portrayals over time. Again, I absolutely love when people start noticing that, yes, we, we have not overcome certain biases, but you know, let's say media representation is improving. Everybody talks about how I don't know code switching is all more accurately shown online or in the current kind of media, I mean, kind of scripted media, that it's not always so bad. I think that for me, the best part is that students really will try to identify something that they care about and then they can show it at least to their friends and maybe start a conversation and about some of the things that they felt were constricting or constraining them in some way and a lot of that has to do with the traditional family kind of values that they've been given, but now they feel that they don't fit those anymore and they can use the language to describe that, how language participates in that. The type of comments, you know, the girls who are always told you are too loud and then they say, well, mom, you know, remember, you would always tell me this, you know what? Maybe I should swear, maybe I should be louder, maybe I should do more of this because I matter to you. So I sometimes hear that kind of comments from people who have not really, who have the experiences, but we're not able to necessarily name them and reflect it back to their immediate families to their communities and say, like, maybe we want to update some of their norms. Maybe we don't have to kind of reject them, but maybe we can update them a little bit so that they're more aligned with how we see the community today, how we feel most comfortable. So yeah. Yeah, and I suppose when you're setting up things like that with your students, I mean, as he said, you're drawing on a lot of the resources they've got, linguistic resources that are, you know, they have their families have communities, but you're also as the tutor, you are giving them sort of tools to do this. You're giving them the kind of analytical tools, you're giving them some of the methodology as well. What kind of advice would you give to you think about setting up sort of manageable, interesting projects along those kinds of lines, like the ones you do at your students? Yeah. What are your sort of top tips and, you know, your warnings for things to avoid as well? Okay. So I would say that there are several elements, and you can mention the ones I also include. It should be kind of the backward planning. So if you have a final goal, you want to think about how you get there. So I want to be able to answer that kind of research question. What would happen before that I would have my, my data, what kind of a data do I need that would, that would actually allow me to respond or to kind of to uncover the answers. Okay. So kind of always starting from the final product and how you get there and that inquires planning. And I give my students a timeline tool which specifies in this week, you should be reviewing their draft in this week. You should be sending out your, your survey, things like that. So I think like knowing exactly all the steps. And if you're doing that for the first time, you should just talk to somebody who's done that already and make sure that you have an example in front of you. So there is no point in reinventing the wheel. I also teach research methods class and I'm, I'm thinking where how much easier my life would have been had I encounter that kind of class in my undergrad during my bachelor's studies, because I had to learn by making many, many mistakes before getting there. So just always reach out to somebody who can give you advice. It doesn't have to be the most distinguished professor that is out there. It could be somebody who just has the experience maybe a couple years ahead of you. Maybe that's a grad student like, you know, a doctoral student and somebody who is willing to just give you some advice that are specific to what you're doing. But the ingredients are very similar. So you start with a question. You feel that there might be something going on. There could be some patterns that you cannot explain yet. I would say while read up on that topic. And I think that the biggest challenge for a lot of my students at least is to recognize that there will be not a paper that talks about your project specifically. If you find one, you should probably not do that. Somebody's already done the work. So that's not a good sign. But think about how that translates into something else. Say you're interested in take talk comment section. And all you find is an old paper on Facebook section. You know what? That's good. You'll do the translation between the different platforms being completely different. But this is already online environment and it has certain affordances. And you can already notice maybe the methodology that they've used. So you can kind of it's a transferable skill that you can use. Right. So they've done something that you could modify slightly. But mostly follow in their footsteps. So kind of looking for things that are already known about what's happening in that sub area. And how you can collect that data. So kind of just take in the gist of it and being able to transplant what applies and what not. And I think the biggest warning is to not reproduce the whole of me. This is so human. We want to have an answer. We are happy to find confirmation and we stop looking further. So that's why the whole topic of gender likes is so popular because people expect to see difference. So anytime they see one confirmation, they just jump for it and go for it. And they like got all the evidence. Look for everything. Look, observe everything you see. If you're interested in whether indeed there's a difference between different genders and how they, I don't know, construct an argument or how they introduce a new topic, then have a list of things that you're going to code for to count. So basically, kind of introducing a new topic. Not taking up on a topic that was offered to you by the diverging, you know, like just how many list of items and count them or like observe them for all the groups that you have in question and then look for both similarities and differences because you'll be surprised. I'm saying that to you young practitioners of scientific research, you'll be surprised how many times there are more similarities than we expect. Again, the most human trade ever to over assume the similarities within the group and to underestimate the potential overlap with the others. We are more similar than we think that we are. So your research, you shouldn't go kind of blindsided in research, expecting the difference exactly where you think is going to happen. There will be differences. They may not be as radical as you expect and maybe that's a good thing. That's brilliant advice. Thank you. It's a final question then. Is there anything in social linguistics that you're really excited about at the moment? So maybe a bit of research or maybe something you know that an academic's working on or something you read like a book or a paper? What's kind of really grab G recently? Oh, I just got and I haven't read it in full, but what I read was brilliant. It's called language and social issues. So this is kind of Cambridge. I really like that. And if I were I'm never going to do that no time. But if I were to actually write a starter's book on how to study anything in citizen linguistics or linguistic anthropology, these are probably the chapters that I would go through. So if you are curious about social linguistics, any patterns in language use defined by the social groups that you belong to, that would be a fair place to start. It impacts what language and language levels are in a very compact way. So again, I haven't read it until the end, but I was very excited. I'm not looking. Okay, what kind of intro course should I create just following this textbook? I thought it was very user friendly. And since it's a recent thing, it has the online edition, again, of the online topic as well. For research, there's just so much going on in the world and the meaning of language and the way that it represents our identity is continuously shifting and how people. So some of my recent research is on the years of languages after the 2022 Ukraine full-scale invasion. So this is kind of recalibrating what Ukrainian means, what Russian means globally. So I personally continue working on that around those topics because when people actually reject the language that they grew up with because they no longer want to be associated with this speech community stance for, there are some radical things going on in multiple places in the world where such dramatic language conversions could be observed. So I think we're going to see a lot of this work coming out still. And I'm definitely keeping my eyes on on anything that is related to this topic. And I guess as a Russian speaking Estonian, that's quite an interesting one for you to be looking at, isn't it? Yes, that's why I start by saying I'm from Estonia. So if you ask me, "Oh, who are you? I don't tell you what I am. I tell you where I'm from," because that's a safer response. So well, it's always been like that. So I guess we always have this contested identities and we want to make sure that people don't simplify us to something that they, if they don't know all the details, I don't want to be reduced to label. So that, Estonia is like, many people won't know much about it. So I say, "Yeah, we invade an invented Skype." But then, yeah, you can no longer say that. There is no more Skype. It's gone, yeah, just like six, seven, it's out. So a good way to round it all off there. Thanks very much, Doray. It's really, really interesting. And so kind of wide-ranging. You picked up so many different things. I think one of the things I, particularly towards the end, I found most interesting, I think would be really, really useful for teachers as well as students is talking about your own student projects and how you, the ideas and how they sort of spark off a kind of, you know, a project from an initial kind of interest. And then, you know, what you offer along the way to support them, that would be really, really helpful. Yeah, no, I think a lot of people don't realize how capable they are, that they don't have to grow up and become very established scholars before they can start contributing. And they know what's important now. They know what matters to them. They are, the future, I mean, or they are us. So I think that empowering them and making them ask and comfortable questions. So the critical thinking, the courage to say, well, maybe that no longer serves us, we do want to modify how we talk about things or how we are being seen by other people kind of reclaim who they truly are. I think that this is the one way towards a more harmonious society. And if not them, yeah, I'm very optimistic about the young generation. So I think that they're going to, they're going to rule the world. And on my end, I want to give them the right tool. So they keep questioning everything that's been passed on to us as some sort of a social convention. And we never questioned this. I definitely recognize a lot of the patterns that I didn't realize were kind of an artifact of time. And I just thought that they were the ultimate truth. So if they start questioning more, I don't think that anybody's going to lose. We all probably get benefit from it. Interesting as well when you talk about generations. We've been talking about Jen Alpha, right? And I think that goes up to being born in 2024. And my son's too. So he's Jen Alpha. Yeah. Very much a day to where he is not teaching me language. He's not from me. So I think, well, where's this going to go? What slide will they be using when he finally understands what the internet is? Yeah. Long time. Oh, yes. We're going to be learning so much from them, I think. And yeah, that can be uncomfortable, especially as parents, I think that this is a very uncomfortable place where no, these are the rules because these are the rules. Like that no longer works. But why are these the rules? Who said these are the rules? Who are they benefiting? So all this questioning can drive parents mad. But I think that it's a healthy way to actually see if we want to recalibrate some of the things. And you know, maybe there are better ways to structure our societies. And yeah. Thank you. Brilliant. Really interesting. Thanks so much. Thank you both. Yes. Thank you so much. It was really my great pleasure. And I'll keep listening to your book as now from now on. So in this week's "Lang in the News," we're going to have a look at the topic of so-called Gen Z language. Firstly, we're going to have a look at a cluster of the popular news stories. The old kind of shared a discourse of confusion and explosion when they're talking about the language that young people are using. After that, we're going to have a look at socio-linguistics today done by Christian Elbury and Rihanna Walcott. And this looks at the appropriation of African American vernacular English as TikTok language. Yeah. The sort of cluster of stories we've got, haven't we, are all around. It's mostly about vocabulary, isn't it? So one of them, and we'll just deal with this one quickly because it's a fairly kind of nondescript average story. This one, it's a bit kind of mid, isn't it? We've got kids are saying low-key-newingly, what does it mean? Is this the new 6/7? And this is taken from some Mississippi clarion ledger. It was basically just some sort of like news feed kind of thing that I picked up from just some online searches. And they start this whole thing saying, "ever feel like you need a dictionary to decode what Gen Z or Gen Al for are saying, the newest slang trend low-key-newingly is actually pretty easy to follow. It might finally give 6/7 a break in Mississippi homes and schools. They talk about new words and phrases spreading faster than ever. They blame it all on social media sites, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat. They talk about how it spreads very quickly around the country. And they talk about low-key-newingly is, I mean, it's quite a kind of interesting mix up. They've got like low-key as a kind of term, often like an adverb. And then they've got like kind of, what's it? It's sort of blended with Gen Z. It's a blend, doesn't it? Yeah. And so they say, what does low-key-new ingly mean? Mash up of low-key and genuinely according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary website, short-hand for sincerity. This is real, but we're not making a big deal out of it kind of thing. They say it's pronounced low-can-newingly, but that makes more sense, doesn't it? Like, genuinely low-key-newly? Yeah, low-key-newly. So I'm showing my age and kind of the out-of-action is my pronouncing in a way that I've chosen. Well, I've gotten to the point where nearly every article that's about Gen Z slang, I don't know any of the words, even though I work with teenagers every day. Well, it's definitely not one that I've come across in middle-spirer. I mean, it talks about 6/7 as well, which I think everybody has come across that works in a school, but this is a new one for me. And then another one, it talks about chicken banana. No, no. But I guess this is kind of the point, isn't it? Is to just kind of throw new words at us and make it sound like these are being used by a particular generation and that they are completely alien to us. Yeah, it kind of uses that frame in device that we often get from national newspapers, even though I'm not sure I don't know if the Clarion ledger is a national newspaper in me, but the discourse and the frame in is that we, the reading masses that are reading the articles, are being kept out of, you know, teen life and teen communication with this vocabulary. And that's a fairly well-trotten discourse that we've talked about quite a lot, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. The purpose of the text is to kind of fill us in on the knowledge that we need to understand our young people. Yeah, and that runs across the other there are articles that we've picked up in the cluster as well, isn't it? Yeah, so there's the male one from a little while ago. This is revealed, the slang words and phrases experts are calling to be banished in 2026 with 6/7 top in the list. And I think this comes from January, but it's something that's happened sort of annually, isn't it? This is the lake superior state university banished words list, which I think, did you say it goes back to like the 70s, Lisa? 1970s, it's in the article that it talks about how it started as I think a light-hearted New Year's Eve whimsical game where they sort of put together a list of words that they felt overused and that they'd like to see no more of and that were sort of metaphorically banished and that it sort of spread somewhat and now they have kind of global entries from other countries also sending in words that they don't like very much and therefore be an added to, you know, this notional banish list. And again, it's got this kind of discourse of this is irritating or we are annoyed by it. And lots of the words are commonly associated with teenagers or team communication in some fashion. Yeah, and so I mean, 6/7 tops the list there. They got D'Youmuir, which I think it was a bit more like a sort of 2024 or 5 word, doesn't it? Got stuff like cooked, which has kind of been used quite widely. I mean, I've certainly heard teenagers using that. And then you've got other ones which are kind of a little bit odd like my bad and full stop, which sound a little bit more like the kind of much older terms that have been used or maybe kind of repurposed in some way. Yeah, I wonder if they could, I mean, I didn't see it on there, but I wonder if they keep words on until they're ousted by a new one so there's still old words on there. I mean, I don't know why else they'd have a reach out on there. Yeah, one of those kind of things where it's it's appeared. Maybe, yeah, they say, finally, reach out rounds out the top 10, although this isn't the first time it's been on the list. It was first banished in 1994. I guess it's kind of overuse in a sort of, you know, in maybe in sort of particular marketing things. Yeah, so it does seem like a sort of catch all list of just words they don't like, but it's kind of interesting, I suppose, to see all of that kind of covered in this, as he say with that sort of discourse of banishment around it as if it's these are things that really should be sent down the dumper. Yeah, and we and we see sort of similar ideas across all the ones we've talked about, although there is a Guardian one that talks about 6'7 and opens with the idea that a linguistic panic has swept America in recent months, corrupting our youth, annoying our teachers and leaving countless adults hopelessly confused, you know, setting up exactly the same discourse as we've seen in some of the others. But then it goes on to talk with a bit more sense and detail about the idea of where and why teenagers may use particular types of slang as part of their kind of social functions and discourses. Yeah, and I think this is a nice one because it kind of digs into the reasons why young people kind of kind new language or use language that's different to older people. And it talks about the, I think Dr. Nicole Holiday is one of the people who is quoted and she talks about how it's to do with the psycho social development of young people and how they want to differentiate themselves from older people and establish their own identity. So it's got some ideas in there that are kind of less kind of just kind of putting young people down and thinking about well why, why have we all as young people created new language that's different from the older people. Yeah, the quote, the quote here is it's not just trivial brain rot, they fun because they're exclusive, the joy lies in getting it is one of the lines from the article. And also it isn't just to convey information but to construct relationships, express attitudes and signal belonging. So it definitely goes into a bit more detail about the idea of how routine slang functions cohesively as a cohesion tool for young people. Yeah, it's kind of signaling your kind of in group status. Yeah, yeah, we're one of the ones that get it. Yeah, which I think is it's useful to think about. And I think another nice point that they're making this article is that with social media and the kind of public nature of social media, the older generation notice this language perhaps more than they might have beforehand. And so it kind of raises the profile of it and then we get the complaints about it. I think that's an interesting thing. It's not that the internet is creating this language but it does help to kind of spread it to a point where a lot of people become aware of it. And that kind of brings us quite nicely onto the actual socio-linguistics paper, doesn't it? Were they essentially ask the question, "Genzy language, is it a thing? Is it not? if it is what is it? If it's not what is it?" Again, a lovely paper from people that we've interviewed on the pod before. Yeah, we talked to Christian and Rihanna about various different things in the past. So Christian, I think we talked about, we talked to about some of the stuff related to this. And Rihanna before Christmas talked about Black Twitter. So the two of them we've got together on this paper. It's really interesting because they've got that it is as you say, it's about kind of investigating this whole thing. And I think it's like the Guardian article is a nice staging post towards this because in that Guardian article they've talked to other linguists like you're saying, Nicole Holiday, they talked to Daria Patina who we got an interview with in this episode as well. And because they're talking to linguists, they kind of know what they're talking about because they such this stuff. And Christian is very online and Rihanna is as well and they both have really explored this. And I think one of the things that sort of hinted at in that Guardian article is about that thing that you mentioned Jackie about kind of with digital technology kind of creating what they they describe in his paper is linguistic context collapse. So what happens is that you get so people sort of live, they're so linked with social media that one thing you would have said in one particular context that would have been for one particular audience. Actually, the context is just completely collapses when it goes online because other people read it and interact with it. You know, so yeah. And so the kind of original kind of very like tight knit kind of meaning it might have had with a particular group of people just ends up completely falling apart. And so it's it's like these kind of terms were used by small smallish in groups but then spread and that's yeah, that's the idea of context collapse I think. So they in in the paper they say, you know, is this such a thing as tick-tock language? And I guess, you know, it could also apply to it, is this such a thing as Gen Z language, which is another sort of question ask along the way. And they kind of say in one part of it, our analysis demonstrates that as users of social media circulate representations of linguistic styles and their speakers beyond the temporal spatial boundaries in which they're habitually used, new audiences engage with and adopt or appropriate those varieties, what we term linguistic context collapse. This dynamic we argue leads to process where the socio-linguistic field is simplified to the point that people and or communities are rendered invisible or in a sense erased. So in this example, they're kind of using this sort of sense of like African-American English as being the original sort of context. And I guess you know, the original form and been used in lots of different original contexts. But as soon as it kind of appears online, it just becomes something else. And other people start describing it in very other, you know, very different ways. So they say, yeah, lifted from one source and then reused in a new context. But then you get the next layer is the kind of media jumping onto it and thinking, oh, this is like a new form. This is Gen Z language or this is Gen Alpha language or this is tick-tock language. And we see all these articles, you know, like the ones we talked about, but suddenly start to, you know, represent it to the rest of us who haven't come across these things before. And content creators and social media who start to talk about them, some with more insight than others. So am I writing thinking Dan that the study itself looks at whether tick-tock language exists. And in an initial look at what the features of tick-tock language supposedly are, essentially what they've identified is that they are elements of African-American and African-Akula English. So they've looked at the data that they've collected. They've kind of identified the most commonly cited lexical features. So we've got words like cap, no cap, slay, child, on God, tea. And that's all kind of their all lexical features that are identifiable as African-American and African-Akula English. There are lots of things they'd have come up on previous discussions around kind of queer language and kind of a speech community language and that kind of thing as well. I think we had a similar discussion then about the fact that it originated out of A.A.V. but had been sort of labeled out of things like RuPaul's Drag Race as being linked to a really particular community because that's the way it was presented at that point. I think it was really in one of the really interesting things for us as people who are fairly familiar with kind of these sorts of discourses and to a degree ideas around kind of critical discourse analysis is that for this paper they've used sort of a theoretical frame in that we were more unfamiliar with and we may have had to go away and have a little look at it ourselves. So CTDA, not critical discourse, course analysis, but critical, techno cultural discourse analysis. It was a new one on us, wasn't it? And that's me leaving a gap. Nobody else did say that. You gave me the right to do it. I can do it if I want to have dug myself into this hole. I should get myself out of it. So it appears that critical techno cultural discourse analysis essentially is a theoretical frame that we look at for analyzing language linked to digital technologies and internet use, and particularly kind of favours groups that are usually underrepresented. The user's CTDA to explore the kind of basic, they built up some corporate, didn't they? Of some of the kind of so-called TikTok language, and then they sort of categorised it, didn't they? And they kind of explored where it came from, what people sort of positions were towards it, and they're kind of whether they were perhaps using it in a way that was, how did they put it? Kind of appreciation or appropriation. And I think they kind of, that's talked about by a few other people they cite. So I think they use as an example or two, and this is this might be familiar to people from previous work on this. Is it kind of being used by communities outside of those original contacts outside African-American communities? For example, Iggy Azalea, the rapper, who is, I believe, Australian, and I think she's white using her sort of black sand, and that sort of idea is trying to sound, trying to sound black, but also they looked at sort of corporate branding and sort of corporate representations of, you know, African-American, vernacular English to give them some sort of cool, incredible ability. Like a covert prestige thing. Yeah, yeah. But kind of like just sort of using it without any kind of acknowledgement that this is black language. And I guess as well, not how did it, how did it, if they Thompson put it, not giving black people their flowers, that sort of idea that essentially it's, it is just kind of taking it. Whereas there are examples cited, I think, in some of the literature review they do, of, you know, white people and people sort of embedded in black communities as well, you kind of feel like they are using the language that is around them and are appreciated for using it because they seem to be sort of part of those communities too, even if they're not black themselves. So this was like the sort of appreciation angle and seeing that there can be a case where non-black people can use these things. But you know, in a lot of cases, it just isn't that at all. It's just basically being sort of picked up and used by white capitalists, so actually. So the, so the CTDA approach deliberately foregrounds kind of the communities that are ordinarily left out and that are ordinarily kind of either disenfranchised or disassociated from mainstreaming ideas about it or as mainstream as it's become. Would that be fair to say? Yeah, I think so. That's my understanding of it. And like you say, I mean, I'm relatively new to this as well. I mean, there's critical discourse stuff. I think we've all kind of done a bit of that and kind of applied it to various things, as you say. But it does seem to be about kind of working out the sort of positions of different users of language and how, what kind of relationship they have with it. If they're just kind of picking it up and saying, Hey, guys, here's this great, crazy new slang, you know, that Gen Z are using or if they're trying to teach something about it, but also maybe you know, if they're offering some sort of insight, linguistic insight and cultural insight into it as well. Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting paper, isn't there? We do recommend going to go into have a look at it. It's called Gen Z language. It's a very, very, very important thing to do. It's a very important thing to do. It's a very, very important thing to do. It's a very, It's a big issue, like really interesting layers of angles that they get into. So we're looking at them.