A chronolect is a linguistic variety linked to the age of the speakers.
Natural language is known as the form of language that, provided with syntax and subject to various principles and rules, is used to communicate. These natural languages, which are made up of a system of signs, can have linguistic varieties : particular forms that are characterized by the features used by a certain community of speakers.
A chronolect , in this framework, is a linguistic variety whose form is given by the age of the people. This means that, according to the age group to which it belongs, a subject usually uses certain words and expressions, which are not used by individuals of other age groups.
Example of chronolect
Suppose a young man enters a restaurant and begins to insult the diners. An Argentine teenager, when referring to this situation, could express: “The kid came in and started raving to everyone.” An adult of the same nationality, on the other hand, can comment on the matter: “The boy came in very upset and started attacking everyone.”
If you compare both statements, you can notice the differences in the chronolect: “chabón” , “re sacko” and “delirar” (as a synonym for verbally attacking or mocking) are terms typical of adolescents, rarely used by adults.
Changes over the years
Chronolects change over the years. The linguistic variety used by children in the 21st century in Mexico is different from that used by children in the same country in the 19th century , to cite one case.
On the other hand, being linked to a certain age, whoever uses a certain chronolect will not appeal to said linguistic variant throughout life, but, over time , will adopt another chronolect. This leads us to recognize three different types of chronolect: infantile, juvenile and adult. Although this structure is not rigid, since we could recognize at least one more class (the elderly) and within each one, subdivisions, it is possible to apply it to the majority of Spanish-speaking societies to study the characteristics of the language from a social perspective.
Onomatopoeias are frequent in the children's chronolect.
Children's Chronolect
The children's chronolect is the linguistic variant that is related to the word changes that usually take place among the youngest children. Some of the most common examples internationally are when children use onomatopoeia to refer to animals, such as "moo" or "woof" to talk about cows or dogs, respectively.
Among the various causes of its existence, the infantile chronolect appears as a direct result of the poor linguistic knowledge that human beings usually have during the first years of life. As in all cases, this does not apply to one hundred percent of children, since some develop unusual skills in their childhood, especially those who receive adequate stimulation from their environment.
Youth and adult speech
With respect to the youth chronolect , we can say that it is the most evident in society, given that it dominates the media . This chronolect has a close relationship with slang, a type of slang that many people share. Nowadays, given the influence of the Internet at a global level, the scope of this chronolect is no longer limited exclusively to one region but can transcend borders and become fashionable in other parts of the world.
Finally comes the adult chronolect , which is usually associated with formality and a greater degree of correctness in the use of language, although this is not always the case. Adult speech is often merged with the jargon of their profession, which is why it is usually easy to know what someone does simply by the way they communicate.