This study seeks to establish the factors affecting the youth’s use of discriminatory language through a nationwide survey and proposes the amendment of primary and secondary education to put an end to the use of such language. Discriminatory language is defined as “the linguistic expression of the idea that a certain person should be differentiated and treated differently because of the nature of the group that he or she belongs to.” The five factors listed on the survey were the use of discriminatory language by others, the attitude of empathic speech, peer conformity, gender, and school year. 3,429 teenagers nationwide from the 4th year of elementary school to the 3rd year of high school were surveyed and the results confirmed the impact of each variable. Stepwise Multiple Regression analysis was conducted, entering “use of discriminatory language by teenagers” as the dependent variable and the five listed factors as independent variables. The analysis confirmed the repercussions of all five factors. Upon checking the effect size of the variables, “gender” and “school year” were found to be negligible. Conditional Process Analysis was later conducted, designating “use of discriminatory language by others” as an independent variable and “attitude of empathic speech” and “peer conformity” as moderators. This test corroborated the significance of the three aforementioned variables and yielded more conclusive results than that of Stepwise Multiple Regression.
Based on the results, the proposed best course of action is to educate communities against using discriminatory language collectively. The importance of encouraging empathic speech and responsible use of language among the youth is also discussed.