ABSTRACT
The boom in the use of social media in our time has no doubt
brought a lot alteration in different language conventions. The early
users of social media battled with space and time. Since social media
language is in the borderline of speech and writing they created unusual
acronyms and some other new words, like ‘u’, ur, ‘unfriend’ etc not
only to communicate faster but also to maximize the limited space they
have. Some linguists began to protest as these coinages were not only
used within the circle of social media and informal writing but began to
get into the mainstream of the English language. They see it as a
threat to their language.
This paper takes a different stand as it sees this trend as sign of
language change. We know that people’s passion for their language has
propelled them to constantly keep vigil to make sure it is protected.
This has led to the creation of ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’ which have continued
to hinder the operations of the language. But language change is so
subtle that the users hardly realize when it occurs. This shows that
they do not consciously bring this change. Though they are the drivers
of this change, they do not know how it happens. Any language that
finally ends up in the cage of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ has fallen into the
danger list and may be forgotten soon.
We should not lose sight of the fact that both the rigidity and the
flexibility of a language are domiciled in the language community, and
that calls to mind what Noam Chomsky calls langue. Language
tilts towards death any time linguists, in the spirit of protecting
theirlanguage, try to stop the language users from exploring their
creativity in the language. While Chapter one is the general
introductory overview, chapter two gives the conceptual account of
Language Change and reviews the literature in this area till date. Being
a linguistic study, chapter three presents the nature of the data
involved in this study and shows how the data
were collected and the method and processes involved in their
analysis. Chapter four presents the results and analyses them. The
summary and the conclusions of the study are made in chapter five.
From our findings it is evident that the language of social media
is not a threat to the English language. It is, therefore, pertinent
that linguists begin to see the language of social media as an agent of
linguistic revolution.
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Social media is the social interaction among people in which they
create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities
and networks. In Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein’s definition,
social media is ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on
the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow
the creation and exchange of user-generated content’ (para 1)
Social Media is the future of communication, a countless array of
internet-based tools and platforms that increase and enhance the sharing
of information. This new form of media makes the transfer of text,
photos, audio, video, and information in general increasingly fluid
among internet users. Social media has relevance not only for regular
internet users, but for business as well. Platforms like Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn and Whatsapp have created online communities where
people can share as much or as little personal information as they
desire with other members. The result is an enormous amount of
information that can be easily shared, searched, promoted, disputed, and
created.
Social Bookmarking tools and news sites such as Digg, Delicious,
reddit, and countless others make finding specific information, images,
or websites increasingly simple by assigning or “tagging” individual
sites with searchable key words.