This story is jointly published as part of the Utah College Media Collaborative, a cross-campus project bringing together emerging journalists from Salt Lake Community College, Southern Utah University, the University of Utah, Utah Tech University and Weber State University. The collaborative is an Amplify Utah project with support from PBS Utah.
Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, entered the workforce and reshaped the way people communicate in a professional setting. Phrases like “facts” and “slay” are being used in meetings, leaving managers and older coworkers searching through Urban Dictionary for answers.
From baby boomers to Gen Z, each group has their own way of speaking, which can make conversations more confusing than productive.
Each generation has their own slang, due to their different experiences. Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, popularized the terms “threads” and “groovy,” which may be foreign to Gen Z. On the flipside, Gen Z has phrases like “ok boomer” and “bussin” which, depending on context, could be taken negatively by someone in the boomer demographic.
Jeshua Enriquez, a millennial and an assistant English professor at Salt Lake Community College, communicates with Gen Z students daily in his classes.
“Gen Zers tend to use more compassionate and open-minded language when interacting with others, and many of them go out of their way to show kindness and avoid sounding entitled to others,” Enriquez said. “In many cases. they seem more shy to share opinions or judgments than other generations.”
Enriquez said he recently asked one of his classes how they feel they speak differently and how they communicate with different generations. During a free-write exercise, he said, students described their generation as taking a more casual approach to language, often using slang that confuses older generations. One student noted that Gen Z communication frequently incorporates references or quotes from TikTok and television shows, almost like linguistic sponges absorbing and repurposing content from various media sources.
Jeremy Hendrickson, a baby boomer and a trainer with Teleperformance, said he does his best to understand the new hires he works with at the Salt Lake-area call center.
“We hire a lot of younger folks to help relate to the customer[s],” Hendrickson said. “But I am going to be honest, I don’t understand a word they are saying. I feel as if I need Google Translate to help me out.”
But, Hendrickson said, the generational language barrier doesn’t seem to hurt their retention of information.
“I mean, they pass the tests to get on the phone,” he said.
Baby boomers contributed significantly to the American vernacular, introducing many terms that remain in use today. The linguistic impact, according to language-learning platform Babbel, extends beyond slang.
“Part of the reason it’s so hard to measure the impacts of baby boomers on language is that, at this point, we’re all living in the world they created,” Thomas Moore Devlin, Babbel’s editorial lead, wrote in a 2022 article. “While millennials and boomers are measured by how far they deviate from the linguistic norm, boomers have created the norm and continue to shape it.”
CheyAnn Lee, 26 and a member of Gen Z, works with a lot of people from different generations at her job at Pride Transportation.
“[Coworkers] come in trying to talk like their grandkids, but they have no idea what they are saying, and all I can do is laugh,” Lee said.
Other times, she said, they use words that seem to come from their own youth.
“They use some words that I don’t know what they mean. I usually leave meetings confused and have go to the internet to find the meaning,” Lee added.
Forbes reported that research offers mixed messages on whether generational differences impact workplace operations, but a May 2020 study from a researcher at Wichita State University found that Gen Zs prefer to communicate with their managers in face-to-face settings.
“To engage with employees of all ages, management must understand their communication styles and preferences,” Merry Beth Hall wrote in a June 2018 report exploring how a shift in hiring mindsets will be crucial in recruiting for a younger workforce.
To communicate more effectively with Gen Z in the workplace, Forbes suggested six tips, ranging from focusing on output to prioritizing transparency and using channels they’re comfortable with to recognizing what’s important to them.
“By simply substituting more Generation Z-friendly language,” Hall wrote, “employers may find that they can attract the best and brightest of the younger generation.”
As workplaces continue to bring generations together, the language barrier persists in ways both challenging and humorous. Whether it’s Lee leaving meetings to search the internet for meaning, or Hendrickson feeling like he needs Google Translate for his younger colleagues, these communication gaps have become a daily reality.
Shyanne Beecher reported and wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College.
I find it quite insensitive that the linguistic history of these words, which is from African American Vernacular English, has been reduced to “Gen Z Slang”. There is a rich history behind these phrases which originated in black communities and have become nothing but a symbol of how black culture is watered down and appropriated by Americans.
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