Meyer, Ronny (PhD)Mengesha, Abebe2018-06-262023-11-082018-06-262023-11-082016-07http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/3531Key Words adolescent , adult, age, age grading, communicative behaviors , discourse feature, gender, language change, natural language, religion, socioeconomic status, variant, variation Language variation due to age is a normal phenomenon but is not universally regular because the factors that cause the variation do not have a regular impact in all situations. Their level of impact varies from place to place, from language to language, and from culture to culture. Though many variationist studies were conducted so far, variation within the Amharic discourse is not addressed. This research embarks to compare the discourses of Amharic speaking adolescents and adults and reveal the impact level of other three social factors such as gender, socioeconomic grouping and religion on the differrences. It also tries to give insight about the differences between the age groups in their communicative behaviors as it is implied by the differences in their discourses. The researcher derived the data from tape-recorded natural conversations of twenty-seven adolescents and twenty-seven adults, fifty-four in total. An interview was also conducted with the participants to substantiate the conversational data and to find some facts that lie behind the preference differences between the specified age groups. At the end it was found out that the differences between the two age groups exceed their similarities. This leads to a conclusion that there is age-caused difference between the discourses of adolescents and adults. With regard to the impact of the three social factors, males, the lower socioeconomic group and Christians are more active in causing differences though their level of influence varies. In their power to predict the differences between the adolescents and the adults in their use of the discourse features, gender and socioeconomic grouping are at the top and religion is in a second place. The study on the diversification of the uses and variants of discourse features also indicates that adolescents lead adults.enadolescentadultageage gradingcommunicative behaviorsdiscourse featuregenderlanguage changenatural languageThesis