This article examines the impact of the sociodemographic profile (including age, gender, and educational track) of Flemish adolescents (aged 13–20) on lexical aspects of their informal online discourse. The focus on lexical and more “traditional,” print-based aspects of literacy is meant to complement previous research on sociolinguistic variation with respect to the use of prototypical features of social media writing. Drawing on a corpus of 434,537 social media posts written by 1,384 teenagers, a variety of lexical features and related parameters is examined, including lexical richness, top favorite words, and word length. The analyses reveal a strong common ground among the adolescents with respect to some features but divergent writing practices by different groups of teenagers with regard to other parameters. Furthermore, this study analyzes both standardized versions of social media messages and the original utterances (including nonstandard markers of online writing). Strikingly, different results emerge with respect to adolescents’ exploitation of more traditional versus digital literacy skills in relation to their sociodemographic profile, especially with respect to sentiment expression (verbal versus typographic/pictorial). The study suggests that the inclusion of nonverbal communicative strategies, for instance in language teaching, might be a pedagogical asset, since these strategies are eagerly adopted by teenagers who show proof of less developed traditional writing skills.

本文研究了佛拉芒青少年（13至20岁）的社会人口统计学资料（包括年龄，性别和受教育程度）对其非正式在线谈话的词汇方面的影响。注重词汇和更多“传统”的基于印刷品的读写能力，旨在补充先前关于使用社交媒体写作的原型特征的社会语言变异的研究。利用1,384名青少年撰写的434,537个社交媒体帖子的语料库，研究了各种词汇特征和相关参数，包括词汇丰富度，最喜欢的单词和单词长度。分析显示，青少年在某些特征上有很强的共同点，但不同群体的青少年在其他参数上的写作习惯却有所不同。此外，这项研究分析了社交媒体消息的标准化版本和原始话语（包括在线写作的非标准标记）。令人惊讶的是，就青少年在社会人口统计学方面，尤其是在情感表达（语言与印刷/绘画）方面，对青少年利用传统知识和数字素养技能的利用而言，出现了不同的结果。研究表明，在语言教学中纳入非言语交际策略可能是一种教学资源，因为这些策略被显示出传统写作技巧欠佳的青少年急切地采用。青少年在社会人口统计学方面，尤其是在情感表达（语言与印刷/绘画）方面，利用青少年的传统知识和数字素养技能的结果不同。研究表明，在语言教学中纳入非言语交际策略可能是一种教学资源，因为这些策略被显示出传统写作技巧欠佳的青少年急切地采用。青少年在社会人口统计学方面，尤其是在情感表达（语言与印刷/绘画）方面，利用青少年的传统知识和数字素养技能的结果不同。研究表明，在语言教学中纳入非言语交际策略可能是一种教学资源，因为这些策略被显示出传统写作技巧欠佳的青少年急切地采用。