I found this SNL skit that describes a celebrity translator to help teenagers identity which celebrity their mothers are actually talking about.
This skit clearly marks two different identities: 'moms' and youth. In the "commercial" the moms are unable to pronounce celebrity names and clearly don't really know what their talking about in reference to pop culture. The moms in the skit sound almost like they aren't quite paying attention to the news and so mispronounce names and movie titles. Youth are positioned as people who are savvy and in the know about pop culture. The "translator" allows youth and moms to connect across a gap of language and knowledge. In this case, mothers are positioned as people who aren't current about pop culture, are white and middle-class, perform sterotyped activites (cooking etc) and are blithely unaware of how little they actually know. Their teenage, young-adult children on the other hand, are knowledgable and patient, willing to work with their naive mothers to connect on celebrity gossip. Mary Bucholtz talks about identity work happening in language and in non-verbal ways and this "commerical" seems to be an example of that. The moms are identified by their older, middle-class whiteness, but most esepcially by their inability to get celebrity names right (their language use). Obviously this skit is a parody and is supposed to be extreme but I still think it points to an interesting generation division in our culture - one that is marked by "inside" knowledge expressed by language.
I really like your point about the "inside" knowledge being expressed by language. I think it is also interesting, in correspondence with this point, to think about the non-verbal cues to language being used. The kids body language is sort of cool, savvy, and "in the know" whereas the mothers body language is awkward and disjointed this making them appear to be on the outside. I think non-verbal communication is also important because it identifies the groups of the people who know the "inside" knowledge and those who don't.
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