Social Media and Its New Vocabulary
Thanks to social media the English language has radically changed from what it was 50 years ago. It has changed so much that new words keep being added to the dictionary, words that if we are being completely honest are usually only used by people no older than maybe 30. Words that have been invented in recent years are words like “fleek”, which is generally used to describe when someone is looking good. Another example to the ever growing list of contemporary language would be “bae”, which apparently means “before anyone else” or it also used as a shorten version of “babe”. “Selfie” is also another word that is extremely popular, especially now that Instagram is exceptionally popular. Finally, the most popular of all would be “YOLO”, which means “you only live once”. This word became quite popular in 2011 thanks to Drake’s song “The Motto”.
These words could also be added to the list of words that parents have no idea what they mean. Not only have people created new words, they have also created acronyms to communicate with people. For example, “TBT” which means “throwback Thursday” is used for when people want to post old pictures on their social media accounts. “NSFW” is an acronym that is used when posting things that are not suitable for the work place, hence the “not safe for work” acronym. These are only a very small portion of the words that had been added to the English language in recent years, the list is surprisingly longer than anticipated. Something that should also be taken into consideration is the negative affect these new vocabulary or even shorten way of communicating have on the English language. With the ever rising number of people who use smart phones and usage of texting, the way of communicating has also changed. People not only use a cell phone to speak, they also use it to text. This was motivated people to use “text speak” instead of using normal sentences. Which, in reality wouldn’t be a problem if students limited the way “text speak” to only texting. Students are implementing the way they text into their writing at school, and not only that they are writing that way everywhere. Something that I have observed in my blocks is that students are slowly but surely forgetting what is the proper way to form a sentence or even how a word is spelled. According to Khan: People are often heard saying that the beauty of social media English language lies in its brevity. Yet one cannot deny that this ‘brevity’ is achieved at the cost of young people’s disregard for spelling and grammar, a habit which today seems to be creeping not only into classrooms, but even formal documents today (7). Which is extremely tragic, because grammar and spelling is one of the main foundations of education. Furthermore, kids have all this technology at their disposal, and its saddening that they don’t use it to have a head start on their education. It’s not that hard to search for an online dictionary when they don’t know how to spell a word correctly. Or even when they don’t know the meaning of …show more content…
Which ranges from the ordinary people to the celebrities. These “role models” are people who, for the most part, never attained a higher level education. Which of course doesn’t mean they are not intelligent, but they don’t really know much more than their 12th grade English education. These celebrities maybe don’t realize that the way they speak or communicate via these social media platforms impact the younger generation.
The mass appeal of the popular culture today which finds manifestation in lowbrow mass media forms, which are forms of reality television, pop music, escapist fiction, kitsch, slapstick, jingoism and pornography etcetera. With the help of mass media, almost the entire world is made to pass through the sieve of this low brow industry which precludes any space for sustained thought or imagination. As a result, the classical highbrow English Language that once offered the world a rich legacy of artistic literary genres, has been severely and badly affected (Khan
Thanks to social media the English language has radically changed from what it was 50 years ago. It has changed so much that new words keep being added to the dictionary, words that if we are being completely honest are usually only used by people no older than maybe 30. Words that have been invented in recent years are words like “fleek”, which is generally used to describe when someone is looking good. Another example to the ever growing list of contemporary language would be “bae”, which apparently means “before anyone else” or it also used as a shorten version of “babe”. “Selfie” is also another word that is extremely popular, especially now that Instagram is exceptionally popular. Finally, the most popular of all would be “YOLO”, which means “you only live once”. This word became quite popular in 2011 thanks to Drake’s song “The Motto”.
These words could also be added to the list of words that parents have no idea what they mean. Not only have people created new words, they have also created acronyms to communicate with people. For example, “TBT” which means “throwback Thursday” is used for when people want to post old pictures on their social media accounts. “NSFW” is an acronym that is used when posting things that are not suitable for the work place, hence the “not safe for work” acronym. These are only a very small portion of the words that had been added to the English language in recent years, the list is surprisingly longer than anticipated. Something that should also be taken into consideration is the negative affect these new vocabulary or even shorten way of communicating have on the English language. With the ever rising number of people who use smart phones and usage of texting, the way of communicating has also changed. People not only use a cell phone to speak, they also use it to text. This was motivated people to use “text speak” instead of using normal sentences. Which, in reality wouldn’t be a problem if students limited the way “text speak” to only texting. Students are implementing the way they text into their writing at school, and not only that they are writing that way everywhere. Something that I have observed in my blocks is that students are slowly but surely forgetting what is the proper way to form a sentence or even how a word is spelled. According to Khan: People are often heard saying that the beauty of social media English language lies in its brevity. Yet one cannot deny that this ‘brevity’ is achieved at the cost of young people’s disregard for spelling and grammar, a habit which today seems to be creeping not only into classrooms, but even formal documents today (7). Which is extremely tragic, because grammar and spelling is one of the main foundations of education. Furthermore, kids have all this technology at their disposal, and its saddening that they don’t use it to have a head start on their education. It’s not that hard to search for an online dictionary when they don’t know how to spell a word correctly. Or even when they don’t know the meaning of …show more content…
Which ranges from the ordinary people to the celebrities. These “role models” are people who, for the most part, never attained a higher level education. Which of course doesn’t mean they are not intelligent, but they don’t really know much more than their 12th grade English education. These celebrities maybe don’t realize that the way they speak or communicate via these social media platforms impact the younger generation.
The mass appeal of the popular culture today which finds manifestation in lowbrow mass media forms, which are forms of reality television, pop music, escapist fiction, kitsch, slapstick, jingoism and pornography etcetera. With the help of mass media, almost the entire world is made to pass through the sieve of this low brow industry which precludes any space for sustained thought or imagination. As a result, the classical highbrow English Language that once offered the world a rich legacy of artistic literary genres, has been severely and badly affected (Khan