The Specificity of Youth Slang in English Journalistic Discourse

Abstract

Youth slang has moved from the margins of informal talk into the visible texture of English-language journalism. Lifestyle columns, entertainment news, branded social-media feeds, and even some opinion pages now recycle tokens, as well as platform-driven euphemisms. This article examines the specificity of such slang in publicistic discourse: not merely as lexical fashion, but as a set of pragmatic, stylistic, and media-economic operations. Drawing on sociolinguistics of slang, media discourse analysis, and studies of digital youth language, the paper argues that journalistic slang performs identification with younger audiences, compressed evaluation, ironic metacomment, and click-oriented economy of form. At the same time it creates register clashes with the ideals of “serious” news, ages rapidly, and may appropriate subcultural codes. An analytical table maps functions of slang onto typical units, genres, effects, and risks. The discussion shows that English publicistic discourse does not simply quote youth speech; it recontextualizes it under headline constraints, house style, and algorithmic visibility. The conclusion holds that slang in journalism is a hybrid code: it indexes youth while remaining an editorial resource for proximity, affect, and traffic.