“So very nice”: youngsters are becoming bilingual
Languages are alive and subject to constant change, because new developments also require new terms. In the German language, these new terms are often English words. This became particularly clear during the Coronavirus pandemic, when English terms such as “lockdown” and “social distancing” quite naturally became part of everyday German. At the same time, social isolation resulted in a boom for digital media. People were streaming, chatting, zooming, learning, singing – large chunks of daily life happened online, and a great deal of this content, such as films, series, computer games, songs and social media, is in English.
Just how this affects the language use of Generation Z in Austria is being investigated by sociolinguist Julia Davydova at the Vorarlberg University College of Teacher Education with funding from the Austrian Science Fund FWF. For her project, principal investigator Davydova comprehensively surveyed 630 young people between the ages of 14 and 18 with a view to elucidating their media behavior. The sociolinguist is interested in how and to what extent English is the language of choice for the students while watching series and TikTok videos or using platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, what content they prefer and how their use of English influences other areas of their lives such as school, leisure time or interactions with their peers. Davydova notes that more recent studies could provide us with insights into how massively the internet is bringing English into our everyday lives, but so far there are few studies that quantify this spread.
The sociolinguist Julia Davydova researches how language change and language use take place in German-speaking countries based on English as a global language.
Massive use of English in leisure time
Initial evaluations from the ongoing project are now available and support Davydova’s hypothesis: when it comes to English, young people in Austria are no longer classic foreign language learners. Similar to being digital natives, they grow up with this language and use it in everyday life as part of their linguistic repertoire. Given this situation, one must wonder to what extent the huge spread and increasing accessibility of digital media can influence the core areas of language. One thing is certain: the media have not only changed the habits of consumers, they also play an increasingly important role in shaping social life. These observations are of particular sociolinguistic importance, as it was previously assumed that contact with a language and the concomitant linguistic change were primarily engendered by personal contacts.
Among the 14 to 18-year-olds surveyed, almost 57% declared that they use English on the internet every day. A lot of this internet time is spent on social networks such as TikTok (65.9%) YouTube (51.3%) or Facebook and Twitter (47.5%). When asked what they use the internet for, the result is even clearer. Almost 71% state that they use it for entertainment, while only 39% use it for educational purposes.
Everyday vernacular learned from English-language television series
Netflix and Amazon are the top two streaming services. Just under 54% of all respondents stated that they watch English-language films and series at least two to three times a week. Surprisingly, this does not only involve recent productions: Friends, Peaky Blinders and Grey's Anatomy top the list of the most popular series. Davydova’s research also explores the extent to which media language and everyday language overlap. Emotional language is one good identifier in this context. Modal adverbs, or “intensifiers”, are used in the television series to heighten the impact of statements. Terms such as “really”, “very”, “pretty”, “totally” or doubles such as “so very nice” are popular emotional intensifiers in the storyline – everyday language that is stirring and makes the protagonists seem authentic. In addition to school lessons, which continue to be an important source of foreign language learning, the internet delivers the experience of hearing how native-speakers talk right into young people's homes.
The current study drastically illustrates the extent to which English has already penetrated the lives of young people in Austria. More than half of those surveyed stated that English is also one of the languages they use in private conversations. Just under a quarter of them use English on a daily basis to talk to friends at school. Around the same number (19.5 percent) also do so in contact with close friends and relatives.
English as a second language for Generation Z
“These results are revealing in the sense that they contribute to existing empirical work suggesting that, at least in some Western European countries, English has systematically made inroads into areas traditionally reserved to one’s own mother-tongue, such as private conversations,” notes Davydova. She also makes reference to an identical survey she conducted at the University of Mannheim in 2020 with 172 students. Only 10 percent of the Mannheim respondents stated that they used English informally on a daily basis, compared to 22.5 percent in her current study.
It is interesting to note that the Mannheim cohort belongs to the same generation as the Vorarlberg youngsters, but is ten years older on the average. “This means that we can see a visible increase in the use of English in everyday language practice within a short period of time and among some of the younger members of the same generation,” says Davydova.
Sociolinguistic change
The researchers conclude that, as it increasingly conquers the intimate areas of social life, English no longer serves as a foreign language, but rather as a second language. It is becoming the psycholinguistic reality of a substantial number of digital natives. “Constant online streaming enables young people who are willing to do so to internalize English to the point where they are able to use it relatively freely in addition to Germanic varieties in response to their immediate sociolinguistic needs, such as in conversation with their friends,” Davydova notes. In other words: English is increasingly becoming a natural means of communication for more and more young people and is part of their daily media consumption – like, totally!
Personal details
Julia Davydova is a sociolinguist at the Vorarlberg University College of Teacher Education. She completed her habilitation in English linguistics at the University of Mannheim and took up her professorship in this subject in Vorarlberg in 2018. The project “Linguistic variation in English-language mass media” will run until 2025 and receives EUR 118,000 in funding from the Austrian Science Fund FWF. The first publication on this basic research project will appear shortly.
