Social Media and English Literature: Pros and Cons

Namrata Paul

India

*Corresponding Author E-mail: namrataratul@gmail.com

“…language is not, as we are led to suppose by the dictionary, the invention of academicians or philologists. Rather, it has been evolved through time…by peasants, by fishermen, by hunters, by riders.” – Jorge Luis Borges said this on the evolution of language.

A language has very long and fascinating career. The language we speak or write today is a result of over thousands and thousands of years of growth, development and change. A language is thus a changing, evolving and organic entity. Variegated factors have paved the way for the expansion and maturation of language.

The history of the English language commenced with the arrival of three Germanic tribes- the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, who invaded Britain during the 5^th century AD. Over the years, it has slowly and steadily developed with several it has slowly and steadily developed with several changes in its structure and usage. The openness of vocabulary of the English language implied both free admission of words from other languages and the ready creation of compounds and derivatives. English adopts or adapts any word needed to name some new object or to denote some new process. Words from more than 350 languages have entered English in this way. Besides, it is the rapid progress of science and technology which has been driving the evolution of the English language. The invention of the telegraph, and later of the radio and the television, had exercised a profound influence on the English language. New words were invented to describe these new technologies, and new styles of speech were invented by broadcasters. However, it is the internet that exercises the largest impact on the English language, changing it in a rapid way in less than two decades. Thus, diversified factors had led to the evolution and modification of the English language.

The rapid advancement of technology is marked by our increasing reliance on smart phones and several other electronic devices, which brings about an upgradation in the mode of communication in our day to day life, making it easier for us to interact with people across the globe with a single touch through social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Given the popularity of social networking sites lately, it has made an effect on the English language either in a positive way by adding new words to the dictionary or in a negative way by misusing the grammar and using incorrect abbreviated words turning “you’re” to “your.”

A research titled “5 Ways That Social Media Benefits Writing The English Language” written by Mallary Jean Tenore in 2013 mentioned some ways that social media benefits writing and language, such as how it increases the awareness of mistakes, when people make grammatical or spelling mistakes, people will point them out via these websites thus we become more aware of our spelling and grammar, thus improving our language. She also talks about how it creates new words and meanings, such as “googled”, “tweeted”, “friended”. She said that it also spotlights short writings meaning it valued storytelling with Vine videos where we have just six seconds to give a message and in Twitter, we only have 140 characters to use which forces us to make every word count.

The maximum 160 characters for texting and 140 for tweeting, along with other form of social media, have a concentrating effect on the verbal environment. Examples of this effect are haiku reviews, 6 seconds videos, and the 6-word memoir, “Recklessly Squandering My Happiness on Today”. The 6-word memoir was born in 2006 and soon was featured in universities, at dinner parties, on blogs and on corporate retreats. Now it has a popular website and an expanding series of collections. At the very least, these forms of ultra-minimalist narrative didn’t emerge until after social media was on the scene. It made us aware of the fact that writing short and well isn’t easy. This form of narrative enabled us to express our thoughts and views within a limited number of words in a precise way, thus enhancing its readability.

Ultra-minimalism has been further boosted by the invention of whole new world of acronyms and abbreviations, and these spread like wildfire across the social media. Acronyms such as FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and YOLO (You Only Live Once) have made their way into the ordinary speech of young people, and even into the pages of some reputed dictionaries.

Internet has also encouraged the invention of new words by expanding the definition of existing words. ‘Traffic’ used to refer to foot traffic, and then to horse and carriages, and then to automobiles. Now, it refers to people visiting a website.

We also see how internet words have made it into the Oxford Dictionary which proves its impact on the modern English vocabulary, for example, the word “Tweet”, which means according to the dictionary, “a posting made on the social networking service Twitter”. Users of social networking sites as Facebook are familiar with ‘tagging’ people or ‘posting’ something to the wall.

Sometimes words are given entirely new definitions. A ‘troll’ used to be a malicious creature from Norse legend, but now it refers to someone who enjoys harassing other people over the internet, especially on social networking sites. ‘Spam’ used to be a kind of canned meat, but now it refers to a self-replicating message, often containing advertising, or promoting a scam. Sometimes, the internet creates new verbs out of nouns. ‘Troll’ and ‘stream’ can both be used as verbs and ‘to google’ is an entirely new verb that has even been included in some dictionaries.

There is another research called “Social Networking: teachers blame Facebook and Twitter for pupils’ poor grades” written by Andy Bloxham in 2010. It talked about how teachers blame Facebook and Twitter for kid’s poor grades. He said kids spend too much time online which makes it harder for them to concentrate in class, they become more distracted and have shorter attention spans as researchers found. Teachers are also very unhappy that students are replacing words like “Tomorrow” to “2mor” or “message” to “msg” or “before” to “b4” and many such words are being converted to shortened versions. It also discusses how the kids with the poorest grades are the ones who spend more time on social networking sites. The research discusses how social media is a bane and improper shortening of words are resulting in degradation of the students’ learning of the grammar and syntax of English language.

Thus, many critics opinionated that the Internet or rather, the social networking sites are bad for the future of the language: ‘Netspeak’ will rule and standards will be lost. David Crystal, an eminent linguist, however argues the reverse. In the Language Revolution and Language and the Internet, he argues that the Internet is enabling a dramatic expansion of the range and variety of language and is providing unprecedented opportunities for personal creativity.

In Txtng: The GR8 DB8 (2008), Crystal points out, “There were all sorts of myths surrounding text messaging when it came in the early 2000s in the UK. The myth was that young people are filling their text messages with abbreviations, that they’re inventing them to keep adults out of their lives, that they can’t spell, that they’re putting them into their homework, and all this.” And his research showed conclusively that none of these things were happening, that in the average text message only about 10 percent of the words are abbreviated, that most of the abbreviations in texting are ancient- “things like LOL (laughing out loud), that’s new- but something like ‘C’ for ‘see’ and ‘U’ for ‘you’ and all of those they go back hundreds of years in English.”

In reply of the question, “How have people’s perceptions of online language changed?” Crystal thus answered the interviewer, “As soon as a new medium comes along and people start using it, there is this moral panic that associates with it, really. That seems to have died away an awful lot now, in the UK. […] The panic has deteriorated mainly because people have become more comfortable with it. They realize that there are different styles, and they see that the original fear- that language was going to alter fundamentally because of these novelties- just hasn’t happened.”

To consider the amalgamation of social media and literature as detrimental is undoubtedly illogical. To position social media and literature in opposition to one another, with some kind of Manichean unsurpassable divide between them, is to misunderstand the use of literature. In itself it is a media, a tool for messaging, communication, and art, and more often than not is social, reliant upon an interaction with at least one other human being. Casey Brienza, sociologist and lecturer in Publishing and Digital Media at City University London, says ‘All media are platforms of human communication and expression, and in this sense, all media including literature, is social.’

Novelist and Editor Goldstein Love spoke at the first Twitter fiction festival at the New York Public Library saying that, “People say that Twitter is ruining people’s attention span- but what if we are harnessed that through serialized fiction?” The first festival was held in March 2014, and invited users to create their own stories in 140-character installments. It was an effort to revive literature and explore the social media site’s capabilities to facilitate dialogues between writers and their audience. Audiences were creative- the Greek myths were told in 100 tweets, one author wrote epitaphs for existing gravestones with the help of reader input, Henry James’ ghost story, “The Turn of the Screw” was re-imagined in today’s White House, and some tweet bits were inspired by Italo Calvino’s ‘Italian folktales. It’s one thing to create new literature in this fashion, by reducing Shakespeare to a tweet or Austen to a YouTube video we may be reducing their work to a fraction of its intended worth. But with libraries closing and art budgets decreasing, perhaps this is the best way to get more people engaging with arts. After all, as Brienza states, “Books are social. We share them, we discuss and debate them, we gather in places like libraries and bookstores that collect them”.

Social media may not be ‘proper literature’. But it does offer innovative and attractive possibilities for people in terms of expression, creativity, collaboration and participation. Perhaps it is time to reconsider our use of language and expression, what media and creativity is and our definition of ‘proper literature’, by adapting and adopting the changes that Internet and social media have brought to the English language, rather than just defending the nostalgic and sentimentalized canon of the past.

“Just as Socrates was concerned that the invention of writing could make people forgetful, people today are worried about the degree to which we are permanently shaped by digital technologies.” – Paulien Dresscher (new media research developer).

This exhibits how people’s concern about digital and social media reflects concerns from the past.

But it is essential to keep in mind that language is always evolving, and technology is a healthy part of that evolution. As David Crystal says, “Language itself changes slowly, but the internet has sped up the process of those changes.” When a language evolves, the literature pertaining to the respective language doesn’t stay unaffected. It ripens with the ripening of the language. Literature is an invaluable but changeable entity. It never changes for the worse but rather for the different, yet the spirit remains the same. Presently, the amalgamation of Social Media and Literature may not be recognized as a homogeneous mixture, but time will come soon when people will realize what bounty has Social Media endowed upon the literature of the present times.

REFERENCES:

Baker, Francesca. “Is social media killing literature?” The London Magazine. www.thelondonmagazine.org , 30 Apr. 2014. Web. 07 Aug. 2018.

Bloxham, Andy. “Social Networking: Teachers Blame Facebook and Twitter for Pupils’ Poor Grades.” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 16 Oct. 0038. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.

Crystal, David. “Txtng: The Gr8 Db8”. Oxford University Press. 256 pages. 18 Oct. 2009.

Peters, Nikki. “Social Media Language, Taking Over the Oxford English Dictionary.” Socialmediatoday.com. N.p., 21 Aug. 2010. Web. 08 Dec. 2013.

Tenore, Mallary Jean. “5 Ways That Social Media Benefits Writing and Language”. Poynter. N.p., 11 Mar. 2013. Web. 08 Dec. 2013.

Accepted on 08.06.2019

International J. Advances in Social Sciences.2019;7(1-2):23-26.

DOI: 10.5958/2454-2679.2019.00005.7