One Quick Question: Gen Alpha's new slang is in the news. What's all the fuss about?

Today's One Quick Question, a semi-regular feature which engages WWU faculty on topics on national or regional interest, was fielded by WWU's Kristin Denham, chair of Western's Linguistics Department.

Generation Alpha's slang is in the news lately; is it a unique phenomenon or is there a pattern in how each generation forms its own slang?

"The use of slang itself is not unique at all with this generation - every generation has slang and it often arises at the cusp of adulthood. The use of unique vocabulary and new terms is a way of forming connection, of being part of an in-group. A linguist might define slang as an informal word or phrase that has not gained complete acceptability and is used by a particular group. Because slang is an in-group marker, if the slang spreads too quickly beyond that group, then it’ll be likely to be dropped. We likely all have had that experience of hearing a slang word we use being adopted by someone much older or in a different community and it gives that sort of cringe factor. 

My impression is that Gen Alpha’s slang is in the news, though, for a few reasons, and may be a little different from previous generations’ slang basically because of social media and YouTube. Some of the terms associated with this Gen Alpha group grew out of “internet culture”, like "skibidi" which apparently had its origins with a youtuber’s video Skibidi Toilet. And then they spread quickly via social media.

In other ways, though, Gen Alpha slang is like much of American slang over the last 100 years in that it has adopted words and phrases that grew out of African American language and culture. Words like cap, sus, and bus, for example, are sometimes associated with Gen Alpha slang, but have their origins in black language, going back decades. 

Slang has always been around and has all sorts of origins. There’s a dictionary of English slang that was published in 1699 (!) which had words like "booberkin" and "clodpate," which apparently were not very nice things to call someone. Maybe you’ve heard of the British Cockney rhyming slang, where apples and pears means ‘stairs’, for example. It can be really hard to track down the origin of slang terms. In that way, some of the Gen Alpha slang is easier traced than other generations’ slang terms."

Want to learn more about slang? Study Linguistics at Western!