Contact and ethnicity in "youth language" description: in search of specificity

This article questions the specificity of the “contemporary urban vernaculars” (Rampton) usually called “youth languages”. Starting from a review of the different labels designating these language practices, it shows that many of them link them to the expression of ethnicity, hence the success of the category of “(multi)ethnolect”. After having criticized this recourse to ethnicity, the authors discuss the role of linguistic contact in contemporary urban vernaculars since their linguistic hybridity if one of their mostly noticed features. They argue for the necessity to take thoroughly into account the social context of these language contacts in a way to understand their outcomes. Henceforth, the authors examine the role played by factors in the shaping of heteroglossic urban vernaculars: social attitudes towards immigrant languages and identification processes on the one hand, and specific forms of verbal interactions within the speakers’ “street culture” on the other hand.