Tony Thorne's Slang Theory

In class we have been looking at language and the internet, we were given a sheet which provided us with a lot of information about how language is changing. I decided to do some further research on Tony Thorne and this is what i got...

Tony Thorne is an author, linguist and lexicographer who specialised in slang and jargon. He talks about how language is changing and how we use language in our lives. Thorne’s theory was that more articulate children use internet slang as acronyms and initialisms, this is called code switching. He believes that teenagers are the ones that are responsible for new words and phrases as they use special terminology to exclude outsiders from conversations and so they have their own identity. He also said that prisons and schools create new languages; he said that new words are formed when you adapt and play with existing language.