Degree Type

Honors Capstone Project

Date of Submission

Spring 5-1-2014

Capstone Advisor

Tej Bhatia, Professor

Honors Reader

Rania Habib, Assistant Professor

Capstone Major

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics

Capstone College

Arts and Science

Audio/Visual Component

no

Capstone Prize Winner

no

Won Capstone Funding

no

Honors Categories

Social Sciences

Subject Categories

Linguistics

Abstract

The advent of the Internet has led to the creation of new technology, and with it, a whole new language. There has also been resistance both to the technology and to the language. The best example of this would be social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and texting. Many articles have been written on this subject and how its use is ruining the English language, saying that teenagers are more likely to use chatspeak, such as u for you and r for are, in their writing. I take the opposite position, that the English language is evolving and chatspeak is simply one consequence. This study examines the language change of teenagers using the social media platforms Twitter and Tumblr. I analyzed the tweets and Tumblr posts of 48 high school and college students in 2012 and 2013 and found that chatspeak occurred less than 3% of the time, and its usage decreased as the students got older.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Included in

Linguistics Commons

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