Intersectional Perspectives in Designing Empirical Research. A Questionnaire for Exploring Adolescent and Youth Language in the Post-Pandemica Context

Abstract

Drawing on the perspective of intersectionality, understood in this contribution as both an epistemological and methodological framework – and therefore as an indispensable critical tool for investigating contemporary complexity – the authors seek to make explicit and further explore the key stages and shared reflections that emerged during the construction of an empirical research design aimed at investigating the language of adolescents and young people in the post-pandemic context; a language increasingly deprived of meaning (Romeo, 2026). Underlying this collaborative work, as both warp and weft, are, on the one hand, the recognition of a widespread form of existential “mortification,” particularly with regard to life planning and future aspirations (Romeo, 2024; 2025a), and, on the other hand, the observation of a depressive drift already documented and acknowledged by the scientific community within these two age groups. More specifically, at the intersection of educational sciences and linguistics, the contribution describes the design of a traditional data collection and analysis instrument – a questionnaire – developed on the assumption that the language of research participants was progressively becoming impoverished. This impoverishment was hypothesized to affect both the more structural dimensions of linguistic competence (lexical availability, semantic breadth and depth, informational density, textual coherence and cohesion) and the possibility of using language as an event (Petrosino, 1999), capable of fostering genuine affective-relational emancipation, life-project development, and, consequently, processes of growth and potential identity transformation.