1 AUTHOR: Sali A. Tagliamonte TITLE: Teen Talk SUBTITLE: The Language of Adolescents PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press YEAR: 2016 REVIEWER: Katherine Morales, Trinity College Dublin REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry SUMMARY Sali Tagliamonte’s “Teen Talk” offers a one-of-a-kind, insightful analysis of adolescent speech, with a wealth of data unparalleled by previous attempts in youth language. The volume itself focuses on Toronto Teen English, but draws on global trends of adolescent speech, such as the heightened presence of Netspeak and virtual communication (Chapter 12), and the role of television and the media in popularizing certain ways of speaking, such as quotative “like” and the Valley Girl register (Chapter 4). Each chapter provides thorough descriptions of interesting language features of youth language, offering grand-scale evidence of multiple corpora on the subject, which Tagliamonte has compiled herself throughout the years with the help of trained undergraduate and graduate students. Each chapter is equipped with glossaries and definitions of key concepts in sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics, as well as practical exercises which emphasize the content of each chapter. This volume is rich in content and comparative data; however, it is written in a way that is accessible to both specialized and non-specialized audiences. Chapter 1 contextualizes the subject of teen language to the general audience; this may be a person who is interested in learning more about teen language, a first-year linguist who has yet to come to terms with words like ‘variable’ or ‘variant’, an experienced scholar who is curious about the role of teen language in language variation, or a graduate student taking a course on adolescent speech. It provides the general audience and linguistics student with the necessary information to understand the phenomenon of teen language as it exists today: in a world where social media has revolutionized the norms of our societal interactions, and the lives and representations of our youth are increasingly virtualized. Tagliamonte rightfully raises questions of what increased mobility and connectivity mean for variationist research, questions such as: are fixed social factors, such as class and region, still helpful in describing language variation and change? To what extent are social boundaries upheld? More specifically, where does English variation fit into this complex picture? After raising essential issues, the author proceeds to talk about what is arguably one of the most recognized features associated with adolescent speech – slang – and its enregistered negative values of immaturity, laziness or irresponsible behavior. In discussing slang, she makes reference to introductory concepts that define the study of sociolinguistics, such as the notion of a variable. She describes slang as a purposeful act of linguistic rebellion, whose main function is that of shock or “a flaunting of an anti-thesis of the mundane” (2). Important questions answered in this chapter include the durability of slang lexical variants, and how these words may provide an insightful window into society at that time, and the role teenagers possess as leaders and innovators of language change. Of critical