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In:Variation in Language Acquisition: Unity in diversity
Edited by Laura Rosseel and Eline Zenner
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 34] 2025
► pp. 86–107

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Chapter 4
Goed, bad and ugly

On the role of English evaluative adjectives as a youth language marker for emerging teenagers in Flanders

 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Published online: 4 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.34.04sch
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of English in the evaluative language use of emerging teenage girls in Flanders. Through a corpus of Dutch and English evaluative adjectives (N = 1553), collected in an in-group and an out-group setting, it zooms in on how child (N = 5) versus teenage (N = 5) girls insert English as a youth language marker. First, the findings demonstrate teenagers are the primary users of English evaluative adjectives in the in-group. Second, the most prevalent category of English adjectives articulates highly positive evaluation. Lastly, although the presence of English is generally low (7%), it is higher in the combined hotspot of teenagers + highly positive adjectives (15%), where it is accompanied by specific intonation patterns and gestures.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The social meaning of English as an in-group youth language marker
    • 1.2Adding evaluative adjectives into the mix
  • 2.Research questions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Data collection and corpus
    • 3.3Identifying evaluative adjectives
    • 3.4Identifying English
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Addressing RQ1: Targeting users and contexts
    • 4.2Addressing RQ2: Targeting evaluative adjective categories
    • 4.3Addressing RQ3: Crossing users, contexts and adjective categories
    • 4.4Addressing RQ4: Multimodality
  • 5.Discussion
  • Supplementary materials
  • Ethics statement
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (40)
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