The Routledge Handbook of Language and Youth Culture offers the first essential grounding of critical youth studies within sociolinguistic research. Young people are often seen to be at the frontline of linguistic creativity and pioneering communicative technologies. Their linguistic practices are considered a primary means of exploring linguistic change as well as the role of language in social life, such as how language and identity, ideology and power intersect.
Bringing together leading and cutting-edge perspectives from thought leaders across the globe, this handbook:
addresses how young people’s cultural practices, as well as forces like class, gender, ethnicity and race, influence language considers emotions, affect, age and ageism, materiality, embodiment and the political youth, as well as processes of unmooring language and place critically reflects on our understandings of terms such as ‘language’, ‘youth’ and ‘culture’, drawing on insights from youth studies to help contextualise age within power dynamics features examples from a wide range of linguistic contexts such as social media and the classroom, as well as expressions such as graffiti, gestures and different musical genres including grime and hip-hop
Providing important insights into how young people think, feel, act, and communicate in the complexity of a polarised world, The Routledge Handbook of Language and Youth Culture is an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in disciplines including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, multilingualism, youth studies and sociology.
Edited by:
Bente A. Svendsen,
Rickard Jonsson
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 246mm,
Width: 174mm,
Weight: 940g
ISBN: 9780367764166
ISBN 10: 0367764164
Series: Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics
Pages: 476
Publication Date: 26 December 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgements List of contributors Foreword Ellen Hurst Harosh Introduction A Handbook on Language and Youth Culture in the complexity of our times Rickard Jonsson and Bente A. Svendsen Part I Language and youth – traditional approaches and critical reflections Sociolinguistic approaches to language and youth Jürgen Jaspers and Pomme van de Weerd Critical perspectives on linguistic fixity and fluidity Lian Malai Madsen Part II Language, youth, sexuality, gender and affect Affect: discourse, politics, intersectionality Tommaso M. Milani ""A THIIIEF!"": humor, affect and stylizations at a detention home for young men Anna Franzén and Rickard Jonsson Affect, stancetaking, and gender in preadolescent peer cultures Ann-Carita Evaldsson English as ""the gay comfort zone"" of hybrid youth identities Brandon Epstein Part III Vulnerability, survival and safe spaces Youth cultures as everyday utopias: the pragmatics of survival and hope in the peripheries of Rio de Janeiro Adriana Carvalho Lopes and Daniel do Nascimento e Silva Youth in language endangerment and reclamation processes Haley De Korne, Lorena Córdova Hernández and Frances Kvietok Youth activism and safe spaces: decoloniality and anti-racism online Fanny Pérez Aronsson Part IV Linguistic citizenship and youth activism Approaching a politics of youth through linguistic citizenship Lauren Van Niekerk, Keisha Jansen, Sibonile Mpendukana and Christopher Stroud Youth, protest and (online) communication Ana Deumert and Nkululeko Mabandla Black youth and the fight for linguistic citizenship in the United States Kisha C. Bryan, Keisha G. Rogers and Tiffany Grayson Part V Language policy, practice and youth agency in education Linguistic diversity in education, language policy and youth agency Henning Årman Youth languaging and the school Janus Spindler Møller Youth language practices and ideologies of race and class in a UK university: a raciolinguistic perspective Steven Dixon-Smith Part VI Teasing, policing and online communication in the family Teasing and policing among youth in multilingual families Ragni Vik Johnsen Digital language practices and youth in the family Andreas Stæhr Part VII Language and youth identities in aesthetics and digital media New languages and new identities of post-socialist Mongolian and Bosnian popular music artists Ana Tankosić and Sender Dovchin Language, hip-hop and identity work on YouTube Matthew Garley and Cecilia Cutler Graffiti David Karlander Drawing Minecraft: small stories on metagames Pål Aarsand Youth video compositions as multimodal signifier chains: making meaning with gestures, objects, actions and speech Jason Ranker Part VIII Language, youth and place Youth, language and place Marie Maegaard Contact dialects in urban youth culture and beyond Oliver Bunk and Heike Weise Breaking barriers: the recontextualisation of Sheng in Kenya Fridah Kanana Erastus, Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo and Margaret Nguru Gathigia How multiethnic is a multiethnolect? The recontextualisation of Multicultural London English Christian Ilbury and Paul Kerswill Part IX Youths speak back: youth voices and the political youth Young people’s political discourse: voice, efficacy and impact Patricia Loncle and Sarah Pickard ""Trying (hard), but it’s difficult"": youth voices on lifestyle matters in a climate perspective Kjersti Fløttum, Trine Dahl and Jana Scheurer Citizen (socio)linguistics: what we can learn from engaging (young) people in language research Bente A. Svendsen and Samantha Goodchild Part X When youth(s) are talked about: representations of youth Developmentalism and the politics of representing young people in public discourse: Moscovici and Bourdieu Judith Bessant National identity and immigration in representations of youth in Western media Rafael Lomeu Gomes Mediatization of youth voices Anastasia G. Stamou Index
Bente A. Svendsen is Professor of Multilingualism and Second Language Studies at the University of Oslo. Her research interests include citizen science, multilingualism in society across the lifespan, particularly among young people, in the family, in education and in public discourse. She is author of ‘The dynamics of citizen sociolinguistics’ (Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2018), the book Multilingualism – A Blessing and a Burden (2021, in Norwegian), co-editor of Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century (2015) and co-author of Multilingualism and Ageing (2020). Rickard Jonsson is Professor and Head of Section at the department of Child and Youth Studies at Stockholm University. His work explores masculinity, sexuality, race and language use in multilingual classrooms, in texts ranging from critical perspectives on narratives of failing boys in school, to students’ play with tabooed language in ‘Swedes can’t swear’ (2018) in Journal of Language, Identity & Education, or humor and affect in ‘Fear, anger and desire’ (2021) (together with Franzé and Sjölom) in Language in Society.
