{"id":305,"date":"2017-03-10T19:11:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T18:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/?p=305"},"modified":"2017-03-12T15:51:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T14:51:44","slug":"the-social-media-language-a-k-a-the-prius-of-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/2017\/03\/10\/the-social-media-language-a-k-a-the-prius-of-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"The Social Media Language A.K.A The Prius of Languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term \u201clanguage\u201d covers both speech and writing. While these two aspects are unified under the abstract label of language, they are usually considered distinctive, due to their large number of differences<\/a>. For example: speech is as old as man, relies primarily on our hearing capability, is more rapidly produced than writing, etc. Writing is relatively new and is produced differently than speech because it can only be written and read \u2013 making it deviate from traditional speech production models<\/a>. These are some of the things that make us perceive speech and writing as different. However, technological advances have started to challenge our understanding of these two communication methods as \u201cseparated\u201d and \u201cdifferent.\u201d Social media has brought with it a new kind of language that in some ways unites these seemingly opposing phenomena.
\nThe rise of social media, has given birth to a language that I consider the lovechild of speech and writing. The language resembles written dialect, but nonetheless, it still comes off as a blend between writing and speech. This lovechild is a written language that, even more so than dialect, mirrors the way people talk. For Norwegians (or other countries with alphabetic scripts), it replaces the common written language\u2019s lettersith letters that actually get articulated in the writer\u2019s spoken language. For example \u2013 instead of writing \u201ckompliment\u201d a user of this language should prefer the spelling \u201ckomplimang\u201d because it represents the way he pronounces the word. This is where it gets tricky, because there is seemingly no difference between alphabetic scripts, dialect writing and this new social media language. I think the part of the lovechild language that separates it from the former two, are its heavy use of acronyms and abbreviations. Instead of writing Oh my god<\/em>, the users of this language would prefer the acronym \u201cOMG,\u201d and \u201cTBH\u201d instead of \u201coh my god\u201d and \u201cto be honest.\u201d Some Norwegians write \u201cd\u201d instead of \u201cdet,\u201d which represents the way they pronounce \u201cdet\u201d and at the same time it doesn\u2019t \u2013 because the ortophonic<\/a> way of rendering it would be \/de\/. I believe the reason for the heavy presence of abbreviations and acronyms are in part practical, and very much intertwined with technology. The early cell phones had an impractical system for writing, which made people start to feel the need to omit certain parts of words in order to communicate faster and more effortless. I believe that the generation growing up with these cell phones kept this practical language solution through the rapid evolution of cell phones, and transferred the language over to the improved social media platforms. This is how the lovechild language develops and evolves with technological advances, at least that is how it develops for me. I have developed an annoying habit when I chat. I chat like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\ninstead of writing everything I want to say in a single chatbubble, I break simple messages into several bubbles. The reciever of my ruthless break with standard chatting ettiquette will receive several \u201cpings\u201d and\/or vibrations. I have not always chatted this way, it started with a particular facebook update that made it more difficcult to appear hard to get. The update where facebook implemented the \u201cseen\u201d feature<\/a> made me subconsciously start to treat chatting as a form of speech (as can be seen in the picture above). Maybe this way of writing better represents the way that we speak, because when you answer instantanious with the first thing that crosses your mind it can indicate that you feel pressure from an awareness of the other person watching you receive their question and compose the answer. Imagine someone asking you a question, and then you just stand there staring at them for 30 seconds before you respond \u2013 uncomfortable, right? These are the things that make me believe that social media language is a blend between speech and writing, and that this language\u2019s development is closely tied to technological advances.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the heavy use of acronyms doesn\u2019t quite fit into this language that is supposed to be the lovechild of writing and speech, because it does not contribute to the unification of these communication methods, if anything it further distances the two. We say \u201coh my god\u201d not \u201cO.M.G.\u201d Well, at least we used to say \u201coh my god\u201d\u2026 which brings me to my next point. Languages have a tendency to devour weaker languages. There is a genuine fear that our time\u2019s lingua franca \u2013 English \u2013 will devour Norwegian. I understand this fear seeing as to how I as an English language and literature student sometimes find myself in a position where I struggle to find the Norwegian word for things, well I know that the Norwegian word for things is ting<\/em>. In addition, code switching between Norwegian and English has become a reoccurring phenomenon among Norwegians (especially young people).\u00a0 There are plenty of possible reasons for this depending on the context, but our time\u2019s increasing globalization is, to me, the prime suspect<\/a>. Some consider this intensified use of English words in Norwegian speech as the start of the Norwegian language\u2019s undoing. As a countermeasure, the Norwegian Language Council frequently convert and translate English words. To stop us from killing our language, they have replaced bacon<\/em> with \u201cbeiken,\u201d hashtag<\/em> with \u201cemneknagg\u201d and keyboard<\/em> with \u201ctangentfj\u00f8l\u201d. While these words are charming, they are not widely known because what kind of person keeps himself up to date with the Language Council\u2019s shenanigans, when you can be keeping up with the Kardashians?<\/p>\n

The nature of the language that inhabits social media is hard to define. While it is definitely written language, it also embodies features that traditionally belonged to speech \u2013 making it some kind of hybrid. Even though this language\u2019s heavy use of acronyms and abbreviations seemingly separates writing and speech (because it creates letter combinations that does<\/span> not get articulated in the spoken language), it can also be seen as a form of unification. Speech is a more rapid form of communication, and these acronyms and abbreviations contributes to a shortening of the writing process, which to some degree makes it adopt this rapid feature of speech. This language, like all languages, constantly changes and evolves\u2026 and perhaps it changes faster than standard written and spoken language as it is more closely tied to\u00a0 technologic advances. Nevertheless, social media has compromised our understanding of speech and writing as completely separated methods of communication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The term \u201clanguage\u201d covers both speech and writing. While these two aspects are unified under the abstract label of language, they are usually considered distinctive, due to their large number of differences. For example: speech is as old as man, relies primarily on our hearing capability, is more rapidly produced than writing, etc. Writing is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-studentinnlegg","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/some\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}