If you have spent any time online recently then you may have run into new internet terms such as “chronically online”, “on fleek” or “yeet”. Or perhaps you may have run into language that has begun to get a whole new meaning such as terms like “cap”, “cancelled” or “gaslighting”. Either way, and despite it being inherently ‘cringe’ to write these out, the internet has proven to be a haven for the progression of language, but is this for better or for worse?
Linguists primarily sit into two camps when it comes to the progression of the English language in any way. On one hand there are prescriptivists, who largely view new iterations of English as straying away from the golden age/version of English, usually Queen’s English (or rather King’s English now). On the other hand there are descriptivists who view English language progression as natural, something to be observed rather than controlled.
In the case of internet language, the former camp is where you will hear most opinions being sprouted from, especially in publications falling on the right wing side of the political spectrum. Cast your mind back to only a decade or two ago into the infancy of online culture and you will find a vast array of neologisms that we no longer use such as “rofl”, “swag” and “luv” and some we still use such as “lol”, “omg” and “yolo” (granted the last mainly means Wednesday nights to most of us now).
Cast your mind back to only a decade or two ago into the infancy of online culture and you will find a vast array of neologisms that we no longer use’
Plenty of commentators viewed these as the end of language as we know it, bemoaning the lack of effort these text abbreviations took to write as meaning that formal register as we know it would be doomed to fail. Furthermore, if you want to find some more prescriptivist outrage, simply do a Google search on the word ‘literally’ and its broadening of meaning to include things that are not quite ‘literal’, and you will see an onslaught of takes on why that spells the end of language as we know it.
But did formal language and language as a whole die? No, not at all, we can all code switch between writing academic papers and talking to our friends, and to do so is one of the key skills for succeeding in the modern world. Plus the fact a lot of the old text neologisms died out is merely indicative that they served their purpose as text limits and charges subsided in the 2010s, and that language adapts to the context it is used in.
But did formal language and language as a whole die? No, not at all we can all code switch between writing academic papers and talking to our friends’
So what does this mean for the modern day use of language on platforms such as Tiktok? Well for the most part it is the exact same and people are merely using the language they see in their day to day lives. However, there can be something to be said for the trivialisation of more serious words such as chronically, gaslighting, depression and so on. They might literally be seeing the same semantic broadening as… literally; but there can certainly be some valid concerns that by overusing these terms we dilute their original meaning so much so that they no longer have the right weight to illustrate what the speaker is trying to convey.
But then again is that just a 2020s version of the prescriptivist view?