When the world meets the suburbs: Multiethnic youth slang in Sweden

Abstract

The following article deals with a relatively new variety of the Swedish language, the so-called multiethnic youth language spoken by young people in multicultural and multilingual urban settings in Sweden. Due to several waves of immigrants and refugees, this country has become incredibly ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse, which, in turn, has led to the fact that young people growing up in multicultural areas of big cities, such as Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö, hear and use a variety of different languages and styles every day. This melting pot of languages has reflected in a rather unusual variety of Swedish called the multiethnic youth language, which differs from common Swedish vernacular in such aspects as pronunciation, grammar, syntax and vocabulary, more specifically, slang. The following article analyzes the multiethnic youth slang in comparison to the common Swedish one and describes it in terms of vocabulary, various sources of loanwords and ways of using its elements in the socalled “immigrant literature” and song lyrics written by the Swedes with an immigrant background. It also deals with some of the concepts that are richly represented in the multiethnic youth slang, as well as some morphological aspects of this variety. Such sociolinguistic factors as reasons for young people using this particular style of the Swedish language are also considered in this article.