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How social media is changing our world...

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Kelly Jo Stuckey Argumentative Essay

Effects of Social Media Walking into a college lecture and asking the students who use social media daily, 90% of those college students will raise their hands. Social media plays a big role in everyday lives. Social media sites have changed the way people interact with each other. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and more, make it simple to stay connected in people’s lives making it easier to catch up with friends and family. However, social media also has a huge effect on the variation of the English language. In the article “Social Media: It’s Changing Our Language”, John Sutherland, who is an English literature professor from University College London, states: “The English language is evolving at a faster rate now than at any other time in history because of social media and instant messaging.” This is because people keep creating new words and a new definition for the words. Based on all the changes in language that social media has created, leads to a big question: Is social media ruining the English language? It is important to know because to some people, changes in language on social media are a step backwards which inhibit kids to learn correct grammar and proper language. Some people also believe that social media will affect their communication skills, as well as their writing skills in a way that nobody will notice since everybody is just going to accept the changes in language on social media. In the article “How social media is changing our language usage”, the author Pascale noted that “According to the Nielsen Company, Americans spend approximately 8.18 hours a day on social networking sites”. The statistic alone is reason to believe that social media must be

influencing the way people speak. Social media has helped the world to communicate with a much larger number of people on a global scale which is great when it has to do with keeping friendships alive over great distances. For example, the average number of friends a person has on Facebook in the USA is around 300 – even if they are only friends with 10% of that number that is still 30 friendships to be maintaining. Social media lets a person communicate quickly, effectively and, efficiently because written exchanges are concise and shared between all the friends a person relates to, meaning he or she only needs to write them once. As the result, this is how a lot of people start to communicate less and less with each other in person. People using their phone most of the time instead of communicating with each other. Nevertheless, some people seem to be a talkative person on social media, but they are the ones that seem to be quiet. It is more appropriate to consider just how much of an effect it is having on the way the world communicates. Many words originating from social media have become so commonplace that they have now slipped into popular usage without realizing it. Just a few interesting words that have their origins in technology are blogosphere, troll, and buzzword. Even some acronyms have made the transition into everyday speech as words, ‘lol’, for example. Rather than meaning “laugh out loud,” LOL is now a marker for empathy. In the article “How Social Media Is Changing Our Language”, the author Pascale explained that a pragmatic particle, meaning a word or phrase that is not connected semantically to the context of the sentence, but rather indicates the speaker’s attitude. Other more familiar pragmatic particles are “uh,” “um,” “like,” and “you know.” This new ‘LOL’ usage can be seen across social networks, as seen in the examples below. The ‘laughing out loud’ acronym change from initialism to pragmatic particle shows the evolutionary nature of language, and the conversational nature of texting and social media.

Another evidence of people trying to create a shortcut of the word is the reappropriation of existing words and words based on brands to refer primarily to their social media context. According to Pascale, reappropriation is the cultural process by which a group claims words that were previously used in a certain way and gives them a new meaning. In this way, the people who use social media are quite literally creating new words and giving new meanings to existing words. “Friended” and “unfriended” are two examples of words that have been given a new meaning due to their usage online. The words friend and befriend is from Old English originating in the 13th Century, but it has been given an entirely new meaning thanks to Facebook. There are even instances of online brands becoming so powerful that words have crept into the English language based on them. Google is the world’s leading search website, and it has become so universal in its usage that the phrase “Google it” has virtually replaced the phrase “search for it” in common speech. However, there are some people that still argue social media is not ruining the variation of language. The reason why is social media has helped some people to improve their language skills. They also using slang words and short forms, but that is only on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. They do not use such terms in their examinations or anywhere else. In the article, “Is Texting Killing the English Language”, the author, McWhorter stated that “some historical perspective writing was invented 5,500 years ago, whereas language probably traces back at least 80,000 years. Meanwhile, the first social media was invented in the late 70s and early 80s” meaning the variation of language already happened way before social media even existed. The language has been changing since the time of Shakespeare. Going back to one of Shakespeare's famous books, “Romeo and Juliet,” one of the most quoted lines of Shakespeare is also one of the most misunderstood, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou,

Romeo?” No one uses “wherefore art thou” today. Most people do not even know what it means. Language has changed to the point where average students rely on translations of Shakespeare to pass high school English. Nevertheless, language can be suppressed, it can dissipate, and it can mold and combine with new languages. Language is constantly undergoing changes and fads. Social media has only brought around new words and phrases for people to use, and these words and phrases are not less important than any others. Some words can be overused, but this has always happened. The phrase "far out" was commonly use in the late 60s and 70s, but it never ruined the English language. In the big picture, social media only gives people a wider vocabulary. According to Cegielski, “Has Internet Usage Changed Our English Language?”, the evolution of words is not something to fear but a cause for excitement. “A very cool thing about the English language is its natural evolution,” said Donald Dyer, department of modern languages chair and linguistics professor at the University of Mississippi. “We hear people making up their own words or using words in a different context than what we are used to hearing. Often, one thinks of these people as unintelligent, but the language they are using will become the norm in about 100 years.” To make his point, Dyer uses the Elizabethan era as an example. When people began mixing up forms of “ye” and “thou,” which eventually led to the modern “you.” Throughout history, words have come and gone, changed form, and meaning and been completely obliterated, but there are many people who still think that social media is ruining the variation of language. Of course, language changes but what does not change is the need to write clearly. Bad spelling and grammar can get in the way of writing a clear sentence, to the point where some posts are not only hard to understand, but quite scrambled. Another reason to that is people cutting out needed words to complete sentences, and the reason being is to type less.

People argue that social media is ruining the variation of language. Ever since social media was invented, people start to communicate less and less in person. They use social media to be someone else but not themselves. For example, the one student that always sits in the corner and never talks to anybody can turn into a completely different person on Facebook, a talkative one. Another reason to why social media is ruining the language is because people keep creating a new word and new definition for that word. So, people are just using the word whenever they feel like it even though sometimes that word has nothing to do with the situation. For example, when a person posts on Facebook that he/she is going shopping, and there is one girl that comments on the status, “Lmfao, me too.” The question is what makes that post so funny for that girl? She just using the word “lmfao” as an empathy that she also is going shopping but not the actual meaning of the word. Social media is impacting the language in very profound ways. It has become both the consumer and the producer – in the sense that it is benefiting from and contributing to the growth in language, but the variation of language on social media are somewhat dangerous to the future generation because the language that people use on social media will be inhibiting kids to learn correct grammar and proper language. The overall problem with social media appropriating people’s vocabulary is thinking that it is normal to use abbreviations modern-day conversation. There are challenges and concerns, but the change is inevitable, which lots of people will just accept it.

Works Cited Cegielski, Emily. "Has Internet Usage Changed Our English?" The Daily Mississippian, 11 Nov. 2016, The University of Mississippi, http://libarts.olemiss.edu/has-internet-usagechanged-our-english/. "Has Social Media Changed the Way We Speak and Write English?", English Live, 18 Jan. 2018, http://englishlive.ef.com/blog/has-social-media-changed-the-way-we-speak-and-writeenglish/. Thomason, Sarah. "Linguistic Society of America." Linguisticsociety.com, Linguistic Society of America, 11 Nov. 2016, http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/language-variationand-change. McWhorter, John. "Is Texting Killing the English Language?” Time, April 2013, http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/25/is-texting-killing-the-english-language/. Pascale, Angie. "How Social Media Is Changing Language Usage and What Marketers Need To Know About It." Clickz.com, ClickZ, 05 Feb. 2014, https://www.clickz.com/how-socialmedia-is-changing-language-usage-and-what-marketersneed-to-know-about-it/33484/. Chopra, Karan. "The Effects of Social Media on How We Speak and Write." Socialmediatoday.com, Social Media Today, 17 Sept. 2013, http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/effects-social-media-how-we-speak-and-write....