Social Media - taking the English Language by storm?

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Academics all over the world seem to be up in arms about the "death of the English language"; is social media really killing English?

Social media has taken the world by storm, but what about the English language? Academics all over the world seem to be up in arms about the ‘death of the English language’; is social media really killing English?

What we find today is a truly unique situation where the two worlds of language have literally collided head on. Everyday language and ‘social media’ language exist side by side sharing the same temporal space; this requires the user to be able to switch seamlessly between each realm. It is only when the user has difficulty switching between the two mediums that the English language dies a little bit! All of a sudden people are writing “lol” in their resumes and working a smiling face :D into their email signature. It is this inability to differentiate between each realm and the appropriateness or indeed inappropriateness of the sociolect employed that ultimately impacts on the English language.

Each realm needs to be respected for its purpose, that is online and offline. It’s only when the two realms collide that confusion arises, all of a sudden you find people saying ‘Soz’ to you instead of ‘Sorry’, if you’re not a tech savvy individual you’re left scratching your head wondering what just happened! Similarly universities are struggling with these two realms crashing into each other, forcing universities to run remedial spelling and grammar classes to explain to students terms that are academically appropriate and terms that aren’t appropriate. Encouraging students to learn which sociolect is appropriate is the first and most demanding task; academics are concerned that the ‘bastardisation’ of the English language is leading to a poorer quality of essay writing in schools and universities. This in turn forces them to examine their teaching practices and how they can make students comfortable in both realms, the obvious and pervading influence social media has on the youth of today shape their world and consequently their language. Due to the saturation of social media students in particular are more comfortable using social media language as opposed to what universities would deem ‘academic writing’, thus we see examples such as @, &, u, gr8 sneaking into academic writing much to the distain of universities. We are so familiar with such English that often the user doesn’t even realise they have inadvertently used ‘social media’ English instead of everyday English.

Conversely, it has also been noted in a number of studies that more students are more willing and able to write as they’re so familiar with their social media English they don’t feel the same pressure they would had they been asked to write an academic paper. Embracing social media as a positive trend that gets kids to put pen to paper, or more specifically keyboard to screen, encourages a new generation of teenagers to express their thinking process on the road to academic writing.

English as a language is fluid and will always be changing according to the trends that shape the world we live in. What is important is that people can change seamlessly between the two knowing which register to use in a particular situation. It is only when the lines become blurry and the user isn’t sure or confident which sociolect they’re using and therefore it’s appropriateness in the situation it’s being used in, that everyday English is in trouble.