Is the English language deteriorating or is it just changing at such a fast pace that older generations can’t keep up? The English language is constantly evolving; adding new words, changing acceptable grammar, and so on. One of the largest influencers on English today is the Internet and social media. The users of the Internet are constantly creating new terms with all new semantics, changing the morphology of old words, and using both of those to change the syntax of how we communicate on a daily basis. All of these changes can have some serious effects on a language, causing separations between the groups that accept it and those that don’t.
Online, everyone likes to be a descriptivist, making their own rules on what the correct way to talk to someone else is. This can cause some issues because with everyone being their own descriptivist, there is no real universal guideline to online language. Also, there are different online dialects that vary depending on the website. A website like Tumblr has its own language and common topics that can be seen throughout the entire website. Then, a site like 4Chan, another blog site, has a language that is very specific to its site that not many people know outside of the site. One of the most common social media sites, Twitter, has a different dialect of abbreviations and sayings, like smh and imo (shaking my head and in my opinion) that are completely different than the other websites.
Also, people can be descriptivists by creating their own words or sayings and putting them online to spread. Sometimes phrases catch on and spread throughout the world wide web. Examples of this are when someone. uses. periods. in. between. words to show emphasis, or when someone is mocking someone else they will CaPiTaLiZe EvErY other letter and put a Spongebob meme with it. People start these phrases with the goal of gaining internet fame and millions of followers.
For the youngest generation that is just getting online and on social media, the generations about them act as online prescriptivists and set the ground rules for the online language. Without language teachers, this online language would be a confusing mix of dialects and idiolects that no one would understand. Language learners look for comprehensible input when trying to learn a new language. For the online language, this could be through the use of previous conversations and knowledge or any concrete examples. Also, the younger the generation, the less of an affective filter there is, helping them learn more without holding themselves back.
The language learners are now adapting the online language to almost be their first language. Young language learners are starting to take this language off of the Internet and social media and use it in daily conversations. Kids now are using rn instead of right now, lol instead of just laughing, and v instead of very in conversations with one another. This works well with other kids, but start saying this to someone who’s unhooked from the Internet and they’ll think you’re crazy. Some grandparents are unable to have understandable conversations with their grandkids because they talk in social media language. Social media and the Internet are creating a very defined split between the young and the older generations. The older generation isn’t on social media or the Internet as much, so it is harder for them to keep up with the changing language.
Even though language is dividing our population’s age groups, it is connecting those of the same age group. Today, it is almost easier to send a tweet to someone across the country or world then it is for some people to talk to someone in person. People can
After taking this class and learning about languages, I believe that the English language is deteriorating, as well as, changing faster than some generations can handle. I believe that we are spending too much time online and not enough time actually talking to people. Social media and the Internet created a fast way for people to communicate through