LINGUISTIC CHANGES CAUSED BY SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/Keywords:
social media communication, linguistic change, digital discourse, abbreviations, emojis, code-switching, hashtags, online language, pragmatics, multimodality.Abstract
This thesis examines linguistic changes caused by social media communication and explains how digital interaction transforms vocabulary, spelling, grammar, discourse organization, and pragmatic behavior. The study focuses on the influence of platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, X, and WhatsApp on everyday written communication. Social media has created a hybrid communicative environment in which written language increasingly reflects features of spoken interaction, visual expression, emotional immediacy, and group identity. The aim of the thesis is to identify the main linguistic tendencies shaped by social media and to explain their communicative functions. The findings show that social media communication encourages abbreviation, emoji use, code-switching, informal grammar, creative spelling, hashtag formation, multimodal meaning-making, and rapid lexical innovation. These changes do not necessarily represent language degradation; rather, they reflect adaptation to speed, interactivity, audience design, and digital identity construction.
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