Digital media enables language change and innovation – of course, but how much and for how long?

I spoke to Caitlin Talbot, Culture Researcher for the Economist magazine, who asked me about the effect of TikTok talk and the slang, catchphrases and viral puns invented by Gen Z. Caitlin wondered how many new terms were actually being added to the global conversation each year, and whether these novelties would last.

My own solo attempts to record new language and to understand and comment on its sources rely on fairly haphazard, old-fashioned techniques, so it’s not possible for me to quantify the lexical items, locutions, expressions and longer elements of discourse that I come across. The major dictionary publishers do have access to powerful and sophisticated electronic methods of scanning, scraping (‘aggregating’ as it should more properly be termed) raw linguistic data from across the internet. This material can be categorised to a certain extent and entered into giant databanks from which lexicographers can select the terms they periodically admit into published dictionaries.

Attempts to amass and analyse examples of language in use are nonetheless hampered by several considerations: the language in question is primarily in the form of text, rather than authentic speech, and the texts in question are largely recoverable from published sources and media platforms, only to a limited extent from personal messages. Tracking their use over time is possible, and the popularity of some usages can be subjected to frequency counts and represented on timelines, but private use and communications by local and specialist communities is far harder to assess. One of the more interesting challenges to the lexicographer is to predict which novel terms may become embedded in the national conversation and which drop out of use – some almost immediately and others over time. In fact my experience (since I began to collect slang in the 1980s) proves that it’s impossible to predict, let alone to speculate as to why this happens.

Caitlin’s article, with useful links, is here…(if it is paywalled for you, go to here *)

TikTok is changing how Gen Z speaks

In speculating about the number of new terms generated (and the playful, sometimes absurdist tendencies featuring on social media involve not only inventing new terms but reworking and re-purposing existing language like ‘demure’, ‘babygirl’, ‘millennial pause’, etc.) we can only fall back on subjective, anecdotal, incomplete accounts, even if these may be interesting and informative in their way…

TikTok Slang: The Exclusive Language of Gen Z (Study)

TikTok is full of made-up slang and trendbait | Vox

* TikTok is changing how Gen Z speaks

On social media new words spread far and fast

Oct 21st 2024SavedShareGive

THE WORD “demure” is old—it describes the sort of modest lady Victorians esteemed—but it is freshly fashionable. There are some 800,000 posts on TikTok with the tag #demure. Youngsters today are using the word with lashings of irony, invoking it to describe everything from Saturn to sunset to New York City’s bin service.

TikTok is changing how young people talk. Other fusty words, such as “coquette”, are fashionable again. Colloquialisms are on the rise: members of Gen Z say “yapping” instead of “talking” and trim “delusional” to “delulu”. New words have also become popular. Take “skibidi”, a term popularised by a meme of an animated head singing in a toilet; it means “cool”, “bad” or “very”, depending on the context.

On social media words spread far and fast. At least 100 English words are produced, or given new meaning, on TikTok a year, reckons Tony Thorne, director of the Slang and New Language Archive at King’s College London. Some linguists think the platform is changing not just what youngsters are saying, but how they are saying it. A “TikTok accent”, which includes “uptalk”, an intonation that rises at the end of sentences, may be spreading.

The platform’s versatility encourages experimentation. Users can combine audio, text and video in a single post. That means words that sound especially satisfying can go viral, as well as those that are memorable in written form. Linguistic code has emerged, dubbed “algospeak”, to dodge content-moderation algorithms. It includes euphemisms (sex workers are called “accountants”), and misspellings (“seggs” instead of sex).

The mutation of language on TikTok is also due, in large part, to the age of its users. Most are 18-34 years old. That matters because “Young people are language innovators,” says Christian Ilbury, a linguist at the University of Edinburgh. For decades youngsters have created words to distinguish themselves from adults. On social media such neologisms find a big audience. Mr Ilbury describes this as “linguistic identity work”; parents have long called it attention-seeking.

The platform brings together fan groups and communities, from #kpopfans (people who like Korean pop music) to #booktokers (people who love reading). These groups create their own slang, says Adam Aleksic, a linguist and influencer. Some of it leaks into the mainstream. Other slang comes from specific groups: black people have innovated and spread hundreds of English words over the years, from “cool” to “tea” (gossip). Journalists and screenwriters popularise such words; now TikTokers do, too.

*For help in understanding the language and online mannerisms of TikTok and GenZ, I’m grateful to my daughter, Daisy Thorne Mrak*