How language is changing

How language is used

Today’s language is rapidly changing due to the way it is being used by younger generations. Social media is one of the main reasons why Standard English language is rapidly changing. Abbreviations of words are being used as a part of day to day language. Words such as ‘sick’ and ‘bae’ are commonly used throughout the teenage language. The use of ‘sick’ in today’s language means the opposite of the literal use of the word, it is now used as a positive adjective rather than the opposite literal meaning the word is actually supposed to be. ‘Bae’ is a shorted way of the phrase ‘before anyone else’. Nearly all teenagers would recognise these words, however, when parents and older generations were asked about the words, majority of them were clueless about the slang words and some had never even heard of them before being asked about them. This demonstrates the complete difference in language between younger generations and older generations due to social media as the older generations would not have used social media when growing up and therefore did not use this type of language. The word ‘fleek’ is the most unknown words within parents with a huge 43% of parents claiming to not know the word or its meaning.

Emojis are also becoming the next phase of language change. Teenagers are not even using letters now to communicate but simply an emoji to get their message and feelings across. Some send texts and messages that only include emojis. There are now even full keyboards full of emojis and apples IOS are constantly adding new emojis with each update which is cutting down the use of language again. Some emojis have been put together to form sentences. They are recognised by younger generations. A frog emoji and a cup of tea emoji represent the sentence ‘but that’s none of my business’. This is a completely alienated concept for adults and parents. The emojis do not actually represent the sentence but it is widely recognised by teenagers everywhere. Language is not even used here to get a message across which demonstrates the power and use of emoticons.

One prime of social media that is causing shortening of words and abbreviations is Twitter. This particular social media site only allows 140 characters per tweet. This almost forces users of Twitter to abbreviate words and shorted words down to be able to fit their message in. Also the use of emojis gets their emotion towards the message across easily without having to explain it. Parents were unable to understand the acronym ‘TBT’. This is an increasingly popular trend in Instagram which refers to uploading old pictures on Instagram on Thursdays, thus it standing for ‘throw back Thursday’. This is used by thousands of teenagers so the fact that adults have never even heard of the term shows how much language is changing from generation to generation.

As there are a lot of foreign speakers in the UK, there language has developed as a part of slang. Jamaican slang is widely used throughout cities in England as normal day to day language which has become a part of mainstream language for teenagers. 

Self Evaluation-
I could have explored my points more and added more facts and evidence to back them up like quotes. I think I added some good points to my article.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10971949
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/06/social-media-changing-language/