The Influence of Technology and the Internet on Language

Language and Social Media

In this course, Dr Christian Ilbury (QMUL) explores the use of language on social media. In the first module, we think about the influence of technology and the internet on language more generally. After that, in the second module, we think about some of the rules and norms of internet communication, including the replacement of non-written paralinguistic cues that are found in spoken/face-to-face communication (e.g. tone, gesture, etc.) with written ones. In the third module, we think about how the affordances and constraints of particular platforms influence the kind of communication that takes place on that platform, before turning in the fourth module to the role of social media in activism and protest. In the fifth module, we think about how social media creates new contexts for communication, including the concept of context collapse, before turning in the sixth and final module to consider how certain varieties of spoken English are represented on social media – both by those who are habitual speakers of that variety, and those who are not.

The Influence of Technology and the Internet on Language

In this module, we think about the influence of technology and the internet on language, focusing in particular on: (i) the extent to which language changed before the arrival of the internet and social media; (ii) the proliferation of mobile phones in the 1990s and the arrival of 'textspeak'; (iii) the extent to which 'textspeak' represented a deterioration of linguistic ability amongst its users; (iv) the technological constraints that led to the development of textspeak, and the parallel developments in other technologies (e.g. letters, telegrams, etc.); and (v) the work of Sali Tagliamonte and the extent to which 'textspeak' represented a genuinely new phenomenon in the history of the English language.