The interaction of gender and social class in Flemish online teenage talk.

Social class differences in teenage speech remain largely unexplored, while gender has been focused on in quite a lot of sociolinguistic research on adolescent peer group language. The interest in gender differences has also pervaded the research on informal computer-mediated communication (CMC) and more specifically on the online writing practices of adolescents in chat or texting media, but then again, the link with social class is generally absent. Yet some studies (though not on CMC)suggest that gender differences manifest themselves in different ways in different social class groups. The present research is a first attempt to fill this gap, by focusing on the interaction between social class and gender in Flemish chat language produced by adolescents with a low versus a high level of education.

Keywords:CHAT LANGUAGE, TEENAGE, SOCIAL CLASS, GENDER

Disciplines:Linguistics