It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when an older person uses youth slang, they kill it – it instantly becomes deathly uncool.
And with that, we have to apologise to the young people of Australia on behalf of a handful of Australian politicians (you know who you are) for potentially ruining Gen Alpha slang.
While “slay” and “tea” have essentially become vintage (used by Gen Z who today’s tweens might regard as geriatric) Gen Alpha has ushered in a new lexicon.
The new suite of slang is imbued with gaming terms and social media references, and adults may soon make these terms uncool simply by simply using them. (We and now also their language?)
“Young people are really slang machines because what they want to do is be different, stand out,” University of Sydney linguistics professor Nick Enfield said.
“It’s a time when you’re very sensitive to the signalling function of language … [to] signal that you are part of a group.”
“To the sigmas of Australia” – politicians trying to reach young people
This month, 29-year-old independent senator Fatima Payman made headlines by giving a speech in the language of Gen Alpha and Gen Z. (Gen Alpha includes people born between 2010 and 2025, so none of them can vote, while Gen Z was born between 1997 and 2010, so some of them are well into their mid-20s.)
“To the sigmas of Australia,” she opened. “I say that the government has been capping.”
Payman she was trying to reach young people by speaking to them in their language.
There were mixed reactions, but if the comments on The Feed’s post are anything to go by, parents of Gen Alpha children were delighted that they understood what Payman was saying — a bad sign for the slang’s street credibility.
But she is not the only politician trying to employ Gen Alpha’s gamer-heavy language to catch the attention of future voters. The Labor Party and Liberal Party are both making attempts on TikTok, jumping on trends and pop culture references that may bamboozle the regular Millennial.
This week, the Liberal Party of Australia published a video using a mix of gaming and Gen Alpha slang — it leans on Fortnite terms, Alpha lingo and AI imagery.
The response was … mixed.
“It’s just deeply inauthentic,” Enfield says.
“It’s a dangerous edge to walk along when you’re trying to appeal to some kind of group by using their in terms.”
Slang is a sign of exclusivity – don’t ruin it
The purpose of slang is to indicate group status, explains linguistics influencer Adam Aleksic on his Instagram profile. And Gen Alpha’s slang is so strongly tied to gaming and social media that it alienates older people, creating exclusivity among their age group.
“And it can be hard for older people to catch up because you’ve got to be very current with the fads. It evolves so quickly online,” Aleksic told NBC News in the US.
Once slang is used outside its community (say, by politicians and parents) it can lose its appeal and meaning. That’s why kids find it particularly humiliating to see their parents use the language of their peers.
“We’re in a never-ending cycle of marginalised groups creating slang as a tool of power to build community and shared identity,” Aleksic says.
“And then other people taking that slang to capitalise on its perceived ‘coolness’.”
You may be doing more harm than good
Politicians may actually be distancing themselves even further from young people by trying to connect so unabashedly. (In the early 2000s they may have been referred to as “try-hard”.)
And once a slang term loses its exclusivity, it also loses its in-group status and becomes dated.
“If [a term] has been useful for you in the past but is no longer going to have that function, then you basically have to give it up,” Enfield says.
So if adults really want to connect with young people, perhaps they would be better off leaving the slang at bay, lest they send it to the shameful grave of “groovy”.
