The rise of social media is inevitable.
With the kind of technology we have now, it is not a surprise that all of the people are into it. Eventually, social media was born out of it. Nowadays, social media is not only for communication but as a form of expression as well. We see different people from different parts of the world posting about their lives and expressing their stories. Yet social media is not only for rekindling relationships and creating interactions. It also become instrumental in the world of linguistics as it gave way to the introduction of new words into our vocabulary.
For instance, Oxford English Dictionary (OED) recorded new words such as trapo, fam, and updation in its October 2018 lexicon. The word trapo is not unfamiliar to us. We heard it in television shows and individuals—a colloquial term for corrupt person. OED defined it is a Philippine English word which means ‘a politician perceived as belonging to a conventional and corrupt ruling class.’
Fam, on the other hand, is a graphic abbreviation for the word family in the 16th century, but it was not until the 19th century that it became popular. Similarly, the word fambam is strewn in the social media landscape which means… Pictures containing this word depict familial and social groups’ activities.
Updation is an act of updating something, which is a nominalization of the verb update. This word is not as known in the Philippine lingo as the words fam and trapo, but the linguistic creativity of its creation is remarkable.
Interestingly, the word of the year, as declared by OED, is toxic. Toxic literally means poisonous as the time it first appeared in English in the mid-seventeenth century. Nowadays, toxic has been a buzzword especially in social media. It has come to mean something or someone is not comfortable to be with, or has come to have undesirable traits. For instance, when someone’s attitude has been repetitively negative and undesirable, others can say that that person is ‘toxic’. Twitter has a lot of sentences containing the word toxic.
These concrete examples show how social media and society greatly affect the language that we have. Language is intricately connected with our society and new situations fuel people to create or recreate words that will best describe their feelings or sentiments.
As English as Second Language teachers, it is important for us to take note of these linguistic progresses as it teaches us about the evolution—and revolution—of our languages. It reminds us to take note of how our students uniquely respond to the challenges and changes of this society by forming new words. The fact that language is us and made by us is nothing but a great gift for the humanity.
By: Anna Liza F. Layno | Teacher III | JEAG MHS
