Young people’s everyday interaction : A sociolinguistic study of six upper secondary school adolescents’ use of speech, writing and interactive media

This thesis explores young people's interaction with different individuals through a variety of media. Three girls and three boys aged 16–18, from an urban school, a rural school and a suburban school, were each observed for a week, at school, at home and during leisure activities. The data analysed consist of field notes, video and audio recordings, and texts written by the participants. The aim of the study is to investigate how young people’s use of language varies in relation to different contexts. Questions are asked about what activities they participate in, what media they use and how they use them, and how they express themselves orally and in writing in different contexts and through different media. The study is based in sociolinguistic theory and activity type theory. Data were collected using ethnographical methods, and analytical tools were drawn from a broadly defined field of discourse analysis. The investigation sheds light on the relationship between what young people are doing socially in any given situation and how they interact. Variation in linguistic styles is made visible by a study of the same individuals involved in different communicative activities. Young people are shown to be a heterogeneous group who engage in different sets of activities. The study questions prevailing definitions and categorisations of adolescents’ linguistic styles and use of electronic media. The outcome is a complex description of everyday interaction, which is found to be shaped by the frames for communicative activities, the technical characteristics of the media employed, and individual factors. In conversational turns, Internet chat messages and text messages, young people select resources from their individual linguistic repertoires in order to achieve specific goals or construct particular roles through their interaction