THE ADOLESCENTS VOCABULARY - STUDY OF THE LEXICAL VARIATIONS OF NORMAL ADOLESCENTS DEPENDING ON THE LISTENER

Clinicians and parents are familiar with the fact that adolescents hav e a special vocabulary, but very few studies have examined this. Lingu ists describe it as deeply metaphoric, creative and lively, thus showi ng that young people have a deep knowledge of language and truly exper ience pleasure using words. This contrasts with teachers' complaints a bout the little taste adolescents show for oral school activities and how poorly they express themselves. Some of them link this to the use of this polysemic and all purpose vocabulary. The context of locution is probably the explanation for these diverging opinions. Using this h ypothesis, we have realised a quantitative study of the lexical variat ions depending on the person the adolescent is talking to in two group s (20 and 19 subjects), from very different social and educational bac kgrounds. Each teen-ager had to perform the same linguistic task: the description of a photograph on two occasions, once with an adult exami ner and once with a friend. We studied the lexical differences between the two narratives. When adolescents are together they use their part icular vocabulary four times more than when with an adult. But this qu alitative difference is not a quantitative one, such as the length of the narrative or the number and repetition of whole words, and isn't c orrelated with the lexical stock. The use of this vocabulary runs acro ss gender and social class categories. It can equally be found in high performance and upper class students as well as in underprivileged yo ungsters of technical schooling. It is the only variable that does not change between the two high schools. Thus this special vocabulary wou ld not be connected to the subject's lexical competence, nor to gender or social background. It is the psychological function of this langua ge that seems to be prominent.