Adolescents and language use in Online social Networking sites : An investigation of lexical usage on Facebook – secondary school pupils as a sample

Abstract

Nowadays, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Youtube, and Computer-mediated communication have become an integral force in adolescent’s lives. They have a great impact in the way language is used, and in language change. In addition, these Social Networking Sites brought fundamental changes to the nature of language in general, and in particular written language in a form of short unstructered texts which are presented in many formats and written by different people in many languages and styles. The aim of this dissertation is to explore how these Social Networking Sites may influence language in particular, both lexical and semantic change. This dissertation will consist of two parts; in the first part, which will be more theoretical, we will give an account of the appearence of the internet and the Social Networking Sites which are used by the vast majority of people in general, and Facebook in particular. We will also deal with the different types of language change in prticular changes in vocabulary which are our concern, and the various factors that lead to these changes. For the second part of this research work, we will compile a list of terms and expressions which are used by adolescents in Social Networking Sites in particular Facebook. These terms will be studied paying attention to the kind of word formation strategy they illustrate ; their lexical history (e.g. when were they first used ; are they neologisms just found in Computer-mediated communication, or are they also part of the general vocabulary?); their meaning; whether they have been borrowed from English or any other languages. We investigate this by means of a questionnaire addressed randomly to eighty secondary school pupils, the data collected are analyzed by contribution of the pupils answers. In addition, publications, books, Internet sources, and dictionaries are central for this dissertation and they were of great help.