Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and HygieneHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Adolescence; Children -- Health and hygiene; Educational psychology
Conradi[9] found that of 273 returns concerning children's pleasure in
knowing or using new words, ninety-two per cent were affirmative,
eight per cent negative, and fifty per cent gave words especially
"liked." Some were partial to big words, some for those with z in
them. Some found most pleasure in saying them to themselves and some
in using them with others. In all there were nearly three hundred such
words, very few of which were artificial. As to words pretty or queer
in form or sound, his list was nearly as large, but the greater part
of the words were different. Sixty per cent of all had had periods of
spontaneously trying to select their vocabulary by making lists,
studying the dictionary, etc. The age of those who did so would seem
to average not far from early puberty, but the data are too meager for
conclusion. A few started to go through the dictionary, some wished to
astonish their companions or used large new words to themselves or
their dolls. Seventy percent had had a passion for affecting foreign
words when English would do as well. Conradi says "the age varies from
twelve to eighteen, most being fourteen to sixteen." Some indulge this
tendency in letters, and would like to do so in conversation, but fear
ridicule. Fifty-six per cent reported cases of superfine elegance or
affected primness or precision in the use of words. Some had spells of
effort in this direction, some belabor compositions to get a style
that suits them, some memorise fine passages to this end, or modulate
their voices to aid them, affect elegance with a chosen mate by
agreement soliloquize before a glass with poses. According to his
curve this tendency culminates at fourteen.
Adjectivism, adverbism, and nounism, or marked disposition to multiply
one or more of the above classes of words, and in the above order,
also occur near the early teens. Adjectives are often used as
adverbial prefixes to other adjectives, and here favorite words are
marked. Nearly half of Conradi's reports show it, but the list of
words so used is small.
[Illustration: Graph showing Slang, Reading Craze, and Precision by
Age.]
Miss Williams presents on interesting curve of slang confessed as
being both attractive and used by 226 out of 251. From this it appears
that early adolescence is the curve of greatest pleasure in its use,
fourteen being the culminating year. There is very little until
eleven, when the curve for girls rises very rapidly, to fall nearly us
rapidly from fifteen to seventeen. Ninety-three out of 104 who used it
did so despite criticism.
Conradi, who collected and prints a long list of current slang words
and phrases, found that of 295 young boys and girls not one failed to
confess their use, and eighty-five per cent of all gave the age at
which they thought it most common. On this basis he constructs the
above curve, comparing with this the curve of a craze for reading and
for precision in speech.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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