UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA Proceedings of the 7th Malaysia International Conference on Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 2012 www.fbmk.upm.edu.my/micollac/proceedings 1 “YAH, KUYA, YEAH ‘PRE, YO BRO”: EXPLORING AGE-BASED DIFFERENCES IN PINOY BIG BROTHER TEEN AND REGULAR EDITION Irish Chan Sioson Faculty of the Department of Languages and Literature St. Scholastica’s College-Manila De La Salle University College of Education Department of English and Applied Linguistics irishsioson01@yahoo.com ______________________________________________________________________________ Introduction As Sociolinguistics is concerned with what people do with language linguistic choices,and social functions of language depend on a number of variable such as age, social class, sex, culture, race, social distance, and/ or participant roles/ relationships. This study aimed to identify the different slang expressions and stance both adolescents and adults use in conversations in the reality television program “Pinoy Big Brother”, and whether age-based differences in language were statistically significant. “Pinoy Big Brother” (PBB) is the Philippine version of the “Big Brother” franchise which is a reality television show Method Sources of data 10 episodes from Pinoy Big Brother Teen Clash Primetime edition, which ran on weekdays for approximately 25 minutes, from May 11 to May 14, 2010 and from May 17- may 21 and May 24, 2010 Pinoy Big Brother Double-Up Primetime edition, from January 11, 2010 to 15, 2010 and May 18- 22, 2010 were the sources of data taken from www.youtube.com. It was intended by the study to investigate the episodes aired in the same year so that the expressions or kind of language of the participants in both groups would somehow represent the current expressions of that year and examine further whether the trend or new kinds of language be evident in both groups. Participants For the Teen edition, the participants included two groups: the Pinoy housemates and the Teenternational. The average age of both groups is 17.07. The groups were heterogenous in terms of their socioeconomic (SES), educational, and regional background.