Lexical Variation of the Language Used by the Selected Grade 10 Public and Private

Students

Vince Justin Roland S. Madriaga

This research study determines the language variation of students in the public and private high school.
Specifically, this determined the a.) lexical variation identified from the language used by public students;
b.) lexical variation identified from the language used by private students; and c.) kind of lexical variation
used by the public and private students and d.) implication of the different lexical variation to language
development.

Cluster sampling was employed to classify the students into two group of respondents: public represented
by the 22 Science Class Grade 10 students from Marinduque National High School and, private
represented by the 25 Grade 10 students from Marinduque State College Laboratory High School. A
developed pamphlet, together with a video presentation, was used to carry out the session-interaction of
the study.

The findings revealed that the common lexicons used by the students from public and private students
were "drugs", "drug pusher", "government", "Catholic Church", "war on drugs", "human rights", "poor",
"Ten Commandments", "drug lord", "killing", "kill", "illegal", "drug user", and "police". The language
used by the students vary in word choices and was classified as lexical variation because variations occur
overtime. Furthermore, lexicons were classified into three categories namely: formal onomasiological
variation, semasiological variation, and contextual variation. The study implies that the standard and
technical terms used by the public and private students are continuously being used so the language is
said to being developed. In addition, it also implies that these technical words can be held back from
extinction.

Key words: lexical variation, public, private