The Modern Evolution of Language

This weeks symposium wasn’t as structured as the previous ones this semester but hey, it’s the week after mid semester break and we all know and understand just how easily one week can throw you off! Admittedly, as a result of this I found that this symposium was one that I struggled to connect with. However I did find the content Adrian discussed regarding language particularly intriguing due to the way in which he approached this subject, a way in which I have not come across before whereby rather than simply blurting out the ordinary, ‘a word is a word because it has a valid and deliberate descriptive meaning’, but rather taking the approach that a word scan only mean something by what it is not. In other words, a word holds its individual meaning by virtue of the relations of the words that could have been used but have not. It is then because of the this that words create a panoply, otherwise known as language.
Yet what intrigues me about the subject of language even further is it’s amorphous nature, the way in which it can so easily be changed through culture, memories and experiences, and most relevantly, technology. Without the rise of texting and the original constrictive limitation of words per text, would abbreviations such as ‘lol and ‘soz’ have been created that are now so widely known and accepted? Yes, these examples are abbreviations but that does’t defer from the fact that these are still a form of language that is more commonly being used off the medium of the technology and in verbal conversation.

Twitter Trolls Need to be Axed

The introduction of social media has undeniably changed our lives for good. It has enabled fast and easy contact with friends and family and has provided a new platform for meeting new people. Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram now enable online communication like never before through tags and hyperlinks of which now interlink with one another through one endless networked system. This system however is being stained with insults, offensive language and inflammatory messages all with the deliberate intent to provoke a negative, emotional response in a specific individual and subsequent readers. With this now being such a prominent issue in online communities, especially Twitter, these users have been termed ‘Trolls’ and now even defined on some online dictionaries.

It thoroughly disappoints me to see, that even in the wake of Robin Williams death earlier this week, grieving daughter Zelda Williams has been forced to leave social media as result of being directed links of pictures of what were claimed to be her father’s body while others blamed her for her father’s death.

Linking back to what has been discussed in our previous two symposiums about online language use and defamatory behaviour, it still shocks me to see just how many people fail to comprehend even the simplest online etiquette. Yet what makes me shudder in pure anger is the cowardly behaviour of these ‘trolls’ as I have no doubt that these people would express themselves in such a insensitive manner in the real world, outside of their online facade and away from their rectangular glass shield.

Click Here for the full article on Zelda William’s departure from social media
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