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.
The reasons given are, in order of frequency, that slang was more emphatic, more exact, more concise, convenient, sounded pretty, relieved formality, was natural, manly, appropriate, etc. Only a very few thought it was vulgar, limited the vocabulary, led to or was a substitute for swearing, destroyed exactness, etc. This writer attempts a provisional classification of slang expressions under the suggestive heads of rebukes to pride, boasting and loquacity, hypocrisy, quaint and emphatic negatives, exaggerations, exclamations, mild oaths, attending to one's own business and not meddling or interfering, names for money, absurdity, neurotic effects of surprise or shock, honesty and lying, getting confused, fine appearance and dress, words for intoxication which Partridge has collected,[10]for anger collated by Chamberlain,[11] crudeness or innocent naïveté, love and sentimentality, etc. Slang is also rich in describing conflicts of all kinds, praising courage, censuring inquisitiveness, and as a school of moral discipline, but he finds, however, a very large number unclassified; and while he maintains throughout a distinction between that used by boys and by girls, sex differences are not very marked. The great majority of terms are mentioned but once, and a few under nearly all of the above heads have great numerical precedence. A somewhat striking fact is the manifold variations of a pet typical form. Twenty-three shock expletives, e.g., are, "Wouldn't that ---- you?" the blank being filled by jar, choke, cook, rattle, scorch, get, start, etc., or instead of _you_ adjectives are devised. Feeling is so intense and massive, and psychic processes are so rapid, forcible, and undeveloped that the pithiness of some of those expressions makes them brilliant and creative works of genius, and after securing an apprenticeship are sure of adoption. Their very lawlessness helps to keep speech from rigidity and desiccation, and they hit off nearly every essential phrase of adolescent life and experience.