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There was a time not too long ago when the SMS language swayed an entire generation, and words like frnds and thx became popular. People preferred writing constricted forms of words to spelling those out in full, and an average person’s lingo saw transformed.
Soon after, there came another age when people using truncated words would be ridiculed and writing correct spellings and grammatically perfect sentences would again become the norm.
However, life seems to have come full circle, with social media taking over the internet. As Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media platforms shot into prominence, acronyms and slangs became the most easily identified parts of the script, once again.
Need for speed
Languages, they say, are living-breathing organisms. They grow and evolve with the society that speaks them. The power, tenacity and life of a language are reflected in its capability to incorporate with ease the changing facets of its patron society. So, the next time you are put off by the LOLs and HBDs on social media, take this as your pinch of salt to digest them.
BTW (by the way), LOL stands for laugh out loud and HBD is short for happy birthday.
Communication over the internet, particularly on social networking sites, is more about speed than language accuracy. Simply put, an internet user would rather employ particular words or short phrases to supplement longer phrases, even entire sentences. The viral factor of the internet lingo implies that once a particular phrase becomes popular, its connotations quickly become accessible to a large chunk of web users.
The primary reason why people resort to shortening of words and sentences is the need for prompt communication and multitasking. Imagine you are sitting at your desk, looking through files on your computer, and simultaneously punching in a few letters on a chat window of browser. Work is in full swing. And then your boss suddenly calls you. You have to quickly tell the person on chat with you that you are not going to be at your seat for a while. All you need to do is type TTYL (talk to you later) and scoot. The person on chat it could be your spouse or a potential recruiter or your 10-year-old niece wouldn’t be offended.
Canonisation of slangs
The internet has matured over a period and, unlike in the SMS era, you are unlikely to face the judgemental eyes of your peers for a daily dose of LOLs and BTWs; the others use those as much as you, or more, and appreciate the swiftness this adds to communication.
It is for this need for swiftness that internet-birthed acronyms are often used in spoken communication as well. Take for instance the words like LOL, FOMO (Fear of missing out), YOLO (you only live once), ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing)the list is growing daily. Their crisp yet colourful nature makes them easy to use and remember.
By comparison, the abbreviated slangs that can’t be pronounced as words for example, FTW (for the win), HBD, BTW, TTFN (ta-ta for now; used for bidding goodbye) are more popular in the written form.
Though you cannot deny internet slangs have more presence in visual communication, the bulk of general communication these days scarily! happens on the internet, primarily on social media. How often do you see a friend who is normally brooding and quiet in real life turning into a lively talkative one online? Even a colleague who is not known to be an opinionated fellow is seen tweeting his views on hotly debated national issues. On the internet, everyone is vocal and, therefore, requires an array of such words. Even if restricted to the visual alone, many of these words have found their own rightful place in the dictionary. Notably, gherao, bandh and selfie are some such.
Origins and targets
The flow of words between internet usage and popular culture goes both ways. While there is the example of selfie, a word that originated in the online world and made its way into popular culture, there is another expression in duh, which comes from the popular animation series The Simpsons, where Homer Simpson says D'oh.
What made the word selfie common in general use was the action of taking self-pictures rather than the word itself. Clicking one’s own image conformed to both cultural and technological spheres.
Homer Simpson’s D'oh, on the other hand, carries with it a certain cultural significance that cannot be supplemented by any word in traditional vocabularies. The linguistic connotation, an expression of comment on a silly or stupid action, especially one’s own, as well as the traits of the character itself,has become part of usual conversations to express those brief moments of silliness through the word duh.
From popular usage to dictionary
A blog on Hubspot.com quotes Fiona McPherson, senior editor in the New Words Group at Oxford English Dictionary, as saying that the general population must keep using a word regularly for it to enter the dictionary. According to McPherson, a word must be in use for at least five years before it can be considered for inclusion.
The longevity of a word’s usage reflects how deeply it has affected popular culture and conscience. A word’s constant usage in the public sphere is a hint for compilers of dictionaries that its inclusion as a formal word might be necessary for the language to keep abreast with changing social dynamics.
The Oxford dictionary has provided some of these slangs the much-needed relegation. Imagining a world without these internet lingos today seems as difficult as imagining one without Facebook. You XOXO (hugs and kisses) your mother, call your lover Bae (shorter for babe) troll (make fun of) your friend, take a selfie or groupfie and marvel at the likes, you garner. You post and dump and surf on these slangs, not because you are lazy but because they are part of the linguistic culture of what can be called internet communication. So, next time you comment ROFL on a meme on social media, just scroll up and see other comments on this viral post. Chances are you will find many more slangs to serve as synonyms for ROFL or even more quirky words that might be waiting to enter the dictionary.
