Do young people use "love" and "hate" too much?

I don't know of linguistic studies but I imagine it's part emotional intensity as you said, but also a smaller vocabulary. Read more, and your vocabulary expands.

Plus at least in the United States, we have really conditioned young folks that they should only have sex with people they love. This is nice in theory, but instead of raising the bar on one's sexual partners, it seems to have lowered the bar on one's loves. The term feels cheapened, at least to me, as we keep seeing people here, over and over again (I admit this is a self-selecting class) who profess love for people when they don't even know the other person's name.

We see this from Indian users, too, and folks from Japan and China. They want to propose marriage before introducing themselves, and it's all due to hormones. They want to get into that other person's pants and so they use the term love, and they may be infatuated and attracted to their looks, but that's not love.

On the other side of it, the popularity of the expression, "haters gonna hate" does seem to encourage people to use it. It can be an empowering expression for people, to go about their business and let their own personal freak flag fly in spite of the "haters", when in reality those are just peers with differing points of view or fashion senses or sexualities or whatever. It's catchier than "dislikers will dislike what you are doing" or "people have differing styles, sexualities, political preferences, religions, sports enthusiasms, etc.", but neither of those statements are as catchy. It's as clichéd as saying, "you go girl" when what you really mean is "be brave" or "keep doing what you're doing" or "I support you".

I think this has been common for a long time, and i don't think it's conditioned by any age demographic. That's my two cents.

Funny you should mention it, I was listening to a "This American Life" article recently about Internet haters and one of the episodes is about "vocal fry". Apparently some researcher wrote a paper about young women using a speech affectation and it went viral. Now NPR gets all sorts of complaints about their women commentators. The segment talks about age differences in how speech patterns are received and differences between how men and women are perceived. I recommend the entire radio show, especially since you deal with some the Internet hater stuff with A2K, but act two was the one that discussed speech patterns.

One of the things I've noted in the relationship threads here is the increasing use of "confront" instead of "talk". Similar language shifts in people I know/see on FB. Things are much more intense/emphatic then they need to be.

I get that teenagers feel things very intensely, but it's not just young people that seem to have escalated the emotional emphasis in their use of language (and in some cases, the behaviour that I observe).

I sometimes want to say that not everything is that important.


(going to look for studies a bit later. The NPR piece is good, I've listened to it a couple of times.)

Definitely agree that it is a part of vocabulary expansion in general (beyond words that describe emotions).

I put the transcript on my reading list, thanks!

Yes but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzXNvBBs8PY

young punks

Everybody does this. I love tiramisu, Breaking Bad, wine made from Zinfandel grapes, and Ethiopian coffee. I hate Donald Trump, Facebook, Harry Potter, and I really hate people who talk loudly into cell phones in trains. I nearly froze to death waiting for a bus this morning. Without some overstatement discourse would be so much duller.

Sure, I do that all the time. My theory is that young people tend to do it more.

The brain isn't fully developed, and their hormones are rampaging. Thus, instead of saying: 'Out of all the choice fruit of the garden's produce, I particularly dislike this one; the (insert name here).'

They would most likely say:

'Dude, I totally hate that green fruit, man.'

They do, the trend started in US (where else) and is spreading fast through the web....European kids are now starting to use the meme.

actually it used to expresse a spiritual condition .when any one feel special for another person .in Pakistan 'India and some other Muslim countries use it as a special feeling and it is inordinately used by poets indeed I also don't know much about it .

I've been googling and reading a fair bit about this since Robert posed the question.

this combo in google led to a number of interesting/nerdy studies

language extremes + youth

A professor criticizes a reporter's skills because of the way she speaks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stop-policing-womens-voices_us_573cbad3e4b0aee7b8e8bd24?ir=Politics&section=us_politics&utm_hp_ref=politics

It's not necessary.