Gender Factor in Teenspeak

Panko M. O. Gender Factor in Teenspeak : Master’s thesis in Philology / supervised by V. V. Orlova. Kyiv, 2025. 76 p.

This Master’s paper investigates the multifaceted influence of gender on the linguistic features and communicative practices constituting contemporary Teenspeak, with a particular focus on its manifestations in digital environments. The study explores how adolescents utilize language to construct, perform, and negotiate gender identities within their online and offline interactions.
The research is grounded in a theoretical framework drawing from sociolinguistics, gender studies, discourse analysis, and pragmatics, emphasizing contemporary social constructionist and performative theories of gender. Methodologically, the study employs a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach, analyzing a 1,000-message digital corpus compiled from diverse platforms (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Discord, Telegram) frequented by teenagers.
The paper provides a detailed examination of gendered patterns in Teenspeak across lexical (slang, acronyms, intensifiers), syntactic (sentence structure, non-standard grammar), stylistic (punctuation, tone, multimodality), and pragmatic (conversational roles, politeness, emotional expression) levels. Quantitative findings reveal discernible gendered preferences in the use of specific linguistic features, while qualitative analysis illuminates how these resources are dynamically employed to enact femininities and masculinities, signal group affiliation, and navigate peer dynamics. The study underscores the significant impact of peer groups (as communities of practice) and media (particularly social media platforms) in shaping these practices. Furthermore, it highlights the increasing fluidity in teens' gendered linguistic expressions, reflecting broader societal shifts and the conscious challenging of traditional norms through "gender play" and hybrid styles. The cross-platform analysis demonstrates teenagers' adaptability in performing gender across varied digital contexts.
The findings confirm that gender in Teenspeak is a dynamic, performed, and contextually situated phenomenon, with adolescents acting as active agents in language innovation and identity construction.