Lexical innovations in Madrid's teenage talk: Some intensifiers

Juan A. Martínez López | Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen

One of the most characteristic features of teenage talk is its vocabulary, understood as a tool that unifies the group, while excluding the outsiders. When studying teenage talk, we observe that it abounds in fixed phrases of different structures and with different functions. These elements should be considered not only in the lexicological field, but also in the field of pragmatics in order for the communicative function of the phraseological units to be identified. This paper discusses these aspects by considering some of the fixed phrases used by today’s Madrid teenagers, as reflected in COLAm (Corpus de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid). The contexts in which the fixed phrases occur will prove to be fundamental for understanding their meaning and function.

Keywords: degree words, fixed expressions, youth language

Published online: 05 May 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.184.07mar

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Jørgensen, Annette Myre & Inés Olza

2020. Phraseology in teenage language in Spanish, English and Norwegian. Languages in Contrast 20:1 ► pp. 58 ff.

Roels, Linde & Renata Enghels

2020. Age-based variation and patterns of recent language change: A case-study of morphological and lexical intensifiers in Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics 170 ► pp. 125 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 march 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.