What words are unique to your family? An ingroup illustration

In this fun article from the New York Times*, the writer introduces us to the concept of familect (or, if you prefer, familylect) (Abebe, 2026). Yes, this post is about language, and I know that survey research tells us that only 41% of Intro Psych instructors cover language (Richmond et al., 2021), but I also have a place for this in the social psychology chapter. Stick with me!

A dialect is language shared by people who live in or come from the same region. In 2013, the New York Times published a dialect quiz for people who live in the United States. I grew up in western Pennsylvania and have lived five years or more in eastern Kansas, southern New Mexico, and western Washington. I have had a lot of opportunity to pick up different dialects. According to the quiz, I would not be out of place in the Phoenix suburbs of Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale, and Glendale. This area is a big retirement destination, so I’m not surprised that a mishmash of dialects are collected here. Arizona, however, is too hot for us; we relocated back to southern New Mexico.

If we zoom all the way in on language, we get our idiolect. This is our own use of language, such as all of the words that we know, how we pronounce them, and how we string them together. Of course, our idiolect changes over time. For example, a week ago, familect was not part of my idiolect and now it is.

A familect is language that is unique to and shared among family members (Abebe, 2026), residing between dialect and idiolect. The New York Times article provides many examples of vocabulary and ritualized use language that is unique to a specific family (Abebe, 2026). Some of the unique vocabulary comes courtesy of toddlers. For example, “One family adopted a toddler’s way of asking for ‘Sesame Street’ and started calling all television shaba.” In other cases, “What feels like a unique family quirk will sometimes turn out to be a regionalism imported by a parent who grew up elsewhere.” In college I had a friend whose parents were from Germany. In their household, they used the German word for ketchup. (Disclaimer: Google Translate tells me that the German word for ketchup is ketschup, so I am likely misremembering the condiment.) When my friend started elementary school and had occasion in the cafeteria to ask someone to pass her the [German word], the other children had no idea what she was talking about. This experience must not be uncommon. In the family that called TV shaba, their next child was surprised to learn when they started school that no one else used the word shaba.

“In her research, [Cynthia] Gordon [a sociolinguist at Georgetown University] noticed familect being used during conflicts, arguments, negotiations with stubborn toddlers. ‘I think it introduces a note of solidarity,’ she says, ‘into something that’s otherwise not really a solidarity-based interaction’” (Abebe, 2026). Now that is fascinating. What a brilliant—and quick—way to remind everyone in the family that the members are all part of the same ingroup.

But, of course, families aren’t the only ones with a shared language. A few days after the familect article published, the New York Times published one about Trekkies (Corbin, 2026). One person “described a childhood spent listening to his mother and his aunt quote different phrases from the show back and forth at each other, or speak them in unison” (Corbin, 2026). We can expand this part of this family’s familect to Star Trek fans (Trekkies) more generally. If you drop the words “captain’s log,” “stardate,” or “phaser,” fellow Trekkies will immediately recognize you and snap you into their ingroup faster than the Borg could assimilate you.

I cannot think of an ingroup that does not share a vocabulary of some kind. After reading this New York Times essay about going to a concert (Feintzeig, 2026), we can make the same point about fans of a musician or band. And fans of sports teams. The Pittsburgh Pirates are my team. This year the players—and then the fans—added “hoist the cone” to their collective vocabulary (Pintar, 2026). This is a good place to give a shout out to my military veteran uncle and nephews. The military takes shared vocabulary to an entirely different level. Is its primary purpose to build group cohesion?

After covering ingroups and discussing the role that language plays in creating and maintaining ingroups, consider sharing these discussion questions with your students.

What words have your family created that are unique to your family?
What other groups do you belong to that have a shared vocabulary? Give examples of the group’s vocabulary.

* The New York Times has changed their article gifting policy. Previously, each subscriber could gift up to 10 articles a month. Their new policy allows subscribers to gift an unlimited number of articles, however, readers must create and log into a (free) account to read the articles.

References

Abebe, N. (2026, September 3). Every family has its own private language. What does that tell us about ourselves? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/magazine/family-private-language-vocabulary-familect.html

Corbin, S. (2026, September 8). Star Trek’s intergenerational fan base shares more than just quotes. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/crosswords/intergenerational-star-trek-fandom.html

Feintzeig, R. (2026, September 8). Opinion | The rip-off concert tickets that were somehow worth it. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/opinion/concert-tickets-noah-kahan.html

Pintar, B. (2026, April 6). What does “hoist the cone” mean? The Pirates’ celebration explained. CBS News Pittsburgh. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/hoist-the-cone-what-does-it-mean-pirates/

Richmond, A. S., Boysen, G. A., Hudson, D. L., Gurung, R. A. R., Naufel, K. Z., Neufeld, G., Landrum, R. E., Dunn, D. S., & Beers, M. (2021). The Introductory Psychology census: A national study. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(3), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000277

[Image created by Claude.]