Lexical innovation as a social marker : The case of youngsters in Oran

Abstract

Language is the one human phenomenon that is affected by anything and everything around human beings. Because language is tremendously changing with each and every alteration Man witnesses, it is 'mysterious' enough to provoke the linguist's quests to know how and why language changes in line with the changes that occur in and on our life. In view of that, the field of linguistics has given birth to a great number of sub-branches, and each of these branches represents a query of one of the language varieties, aspects, functions…etc. As for the language varieties, there are a lot of linguistic branches that investigate why do languages have different varieties (dialects, spoken varieties, lects, vernaculars…). One of the language varieties that may seem complicated is the 'lect'. The latter is a linguistic term that refers to any variety of a given language or dialect which is related to a given feature, be it sex (sexlect), age (agelect), social class (sociolect), individual (idiolect). The Agelect is the variety related to the feature of age. It marks the distinction between different generations in terms of age, and no one ignores that age differences result in other differences: at the level of behaviour, of mentality, and speech. In a given speech community, one may find clearly distinct age lects, and this is due to a set of salient factors. The question to be raised, then, is whether this distinction will give birth to a gap between different generations or to an interesting medley of spoken varieties.