Opinion Article - Teenspeak

Opinion Article - Teenspeak

Is it really true that teenagers are incapable of communicating with their peers? Recent studies have suggested that the new era of 'teenspeak', which has developed through modern technology, has tainted the way that this generation and future generations to come will communicate.
  

Howard Giles' Accommodation Theory suggests that we adjust the way we speak to one another to 'accommodate' the person we are addressing to. This is something that everyone does in society, including teenagers. With this in mind, we can appreciate the idea that teenagers know their limits when it comes to who they are speaking to. Dialect from teenagers is much different from the way they speak and act around their friends and more profession and authoritative figures. The stigma around the way that teenagers are manipulating this unique form of communicating into their writing and speaking to anyone who isn't within their social circle just isn't true. In fact, the rate of 'teenspeak' has been at a decline in more recent years, as Gary Ives has touched on. Teenagers now no longer feel the need to use terms such as 'u' instead of 'you' and other abbreviations. QWERTY keyboards, autocorrect facilities and decline in predictive texting are all factors that have led to teenagers nowadays not feeling the need to use abbreviations, and also the fact that it has just gone out of fashion.