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.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background of 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. Due to the fast growing Information Communication Technology, English is a vital tool for communication among people around the world. That is because the Internet or World Wide Web enables an important event happening in a part of the world to be simultaneously and clearly broadcast to people in other parts of the world with pictures, texts, and video clip, etc. People with different races who speak different languages can consume the same piece of information or news, and share it to other internet users or netizens, and of course the core language used on the internet or websites is English language. That’s why English is regarded as “World Language”, or “Global Language”. Moreover, the communication channel does not lie on face to face communication, but it mostly lies on reading and writing texts on varieties of websites. This leads to the term “Texting Generation” referring to young people who excessively love texting messages to one another anywhere and anytime. Since time passes, the need of internet users has been satisfied more and more by the development of web technology from 1.0 – webs presenting only texts to 2.0 or web application or programs enabling each user to be able not only to retrieve information in the form of texts, pictures, and video clips but also to connect to one another on web pages. And this kind of online communication technology has become ‘social media’. The convenience and charm of social media capture the attention, and consume much longer time of more and more internet users. Social networking is the latest online communication tool that allows users to establish profiles and share information with other users. The development of English language is accelerating with the growth of social networks. The Guardian, a press association also mentioned that the Internet has revolutionized English language by making misspelling and new alien jargons the norm, people tends to type faster on the Internet and this generates a unique behavior that ignores the importance of proper language. This issue was constantly tracked by experts, but the answer and solution remained unrevealed.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Internet has slowly transformed from something we want, to something we need. Social network is one of the most important elements for Internet, which connects everyone on this planet. This connection has facilitated many things and benefited a lot of people. One of the most widely used social network is Facebook, consists of more than 1.2 billion active users in 2014. Besides Facebook, there are many other social networking sites that serve different features and functionality such as Twitter, Youtube, Instagram and many more. But, unexpected things always happen without warning. The usage of social network is beneficial for many things, but is it necessarily good for everything? Some said that the language used in social network is not necessarily correct, and it might affect other users, and domino effects occurred. Internet slang came together with the rapid growth of social networks. Internet slang refers to a set of different short forms and language used by internet users such as LOL (laugh out loud), ROFL (roll on floor laugh), AFK (away from keyboard) and so forth. Some afraid that the excessive usage of internet slangs will vanish the traditional English vocabs. On the other side, there are people who defend internet slangs, such as David Crystal, an honorary professor of linguistics at University of Bangor. “The internet is an amazing medium for languages, language itself changes slowly but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.” he told BBC News. Social networks not only connect people, they also provide a medium to share information with the world. For example, Facebook offers a feature called Pages, which enabled anyone to open a page, to share information, promote websites, links, and news. The question is, are these links, news, and information conveying proper form of English? Is it harmful for the users’ English proficiency?
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