YOUTH SLANG AS SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INDEXES IN MALAYSIA AND INDONESIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21009/ishel.v2i1.68483Keywords:
youth slang, digital discourse, Malaysia, Indonesia, sociolinguisticsAbstract
This paper examines youth slang as a sociolinguistic index of social, economic and political concerns in Malaysian and Indonesian digital communication. Drawing on a web-scraped and classified dataset of slang items from Instagram and Threads, the study compares issue patterns across country, platform and gender categories. The analysis applies descriptive frequency reading and qualitative thematic interpretation to three (3) main domains: social interaction, economic experience and political discourse. The findings show that social slang is dominated by conversational response, peer affiliation, emotional self-positioning and digital identity. Economic slang indexes both financial strain and consumer aspiration through terms related to cost of living, online shopping, paylater culture, gig work and budgeting. Political slang is especially marked by criticism, polarization, integrity concerns and campaign narratives. Indonesia records higher overall issue frequencies, while Malaysia shows strong localised forms in cost-of-living and partisan labels. The paper argues that youth slang should not be treated merely as informal vocabulary, but as a compact semiotic resource through which young users interpret everyday pressures, community membership and public life. The study contributes to digital sociolinguistics and language education by foregrounding slang as evidence of contemporary social meaning.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Ahmad Syafiq Amir Abdullah Zawawi, Hishamudin Isam, N. Lia Marliana
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