One Can Tell a Lot About a Person by How They Use Language

Language is a vehicle for groups and individuals to express their sense of identity and sense of self. The language choices we make reflect our identity and in-group membership. The growing use of the internet has changed the way in which people communicate on social platforms and the way language is used. Within social groups, workplaces and professions, jargon, slang and teen-speak are fundamental to creating and maintaining rapport and in-group membership. Youth often manipulate their language to it in with social groups and in some cases, to exclude others.

Individuals use language on the internet to create personalised identities and to communicate with others. The internet has changed the way language is used, and how it is used reflects the was individuals want to be perceived by their peers and the public. The syntactic structure of written language on social media is indicative of spoken language, and includes non-standard grammatical structures. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram are used by individuals to express themselves, and the posts made of these platforms generally include non-standard grammatical structures. A Tumblr user posted to their page “I just went on facebook and”, attached to a screenshot of what they were referring to. While this grammatical structure is non-standard and informal, featuring a lack of punctuation and capital letters, it is a dependant clause, and does not interfere with communication between the user and the audience, as well as closing social distance between them. As people communicate with each other more commonly via digital communication, phrases such as 'do you know what the go is' and 'cheers in advance' are used in the public sphere to directly speak to someone in a non-standard posts via social media. Another example of non-standard language features online is the viral meme 'spooderman' that features a badly drawn image of Spiderman captioned with phrases such as 'wit graet paowr cums graet sweg' and “y u do dis”. The use of this language gives the users a creative, playful and humorous identity. The constant new internet trends in language, such as abbreviations and acronyms such as 'lol' and 'wtf' that have been popular for many years. The well-known acronym ''ol' is pronounced as an initialism, standing for 'laugh out loud', making it's way into spoken language, and easily pronounced as an acronym. The semantic meanings behind “lol” have shifted over time, and more recently has been adopted by teenagers to express sarcasm. The use of “lol” has recently become less “trendy” among youth, replaced by “HAHAHA” to indicate when something is funny, even if laughter does not physically occur. The ways in which people communicate on the internet allows them to communicate with peers and the public, creating an online profile to represent their social media identity and how they are perceived.

Jargon and slang are fundamental indicators of individual and group identities. Their main function is to create in-group membership, excluding outsiders. Jargon is the specialised vocabulary of certain groups, and this linguistic feature is used by people with common professions or interests to function as a reinforcement of group identity, aiming to facilitate communication while excluding outsiders who cannot understand the common language. Lexical characteristics of jargon include abbreviations and acronyms such as in medical jargon, such as “peripheral oedema” for ankle swelling, “tachycardia” for fast heart rate and “idiopathic” for unknown cause. While these lexemes make communication between doctors and nurses quicker and more specific, they obscure the truth so as not to alarm patients hearing these terms. Colloquialisms and slang terms are informal vocabulary items used among people who are in socially definable groups. Slang can serve the important function of building rapport in work places. In many Australian hospitals, slang terms such as “vegetables”, meaning unresponsive patients, or “FLK', the acronym used for “funny looking kid” are used. To patients and outsiders, these terms can seem negatively connotated and disrespectful, however they are important in the vernacular of hospital staff as it distances them from the sickness and death surrounding them. Slang can be used to keep outsiders in the dark, such as people involves with illicit drugs use slang terms to maintain secrecy. Examples of these terms include 'lemonade' for poor quality drugs' and “gym sticks” for steroids used by athletes. Once these terms are discovered by outsiders, they are dropped and replaced by new lexemes, resulting in a high turnover rate for these slang terms. Kate Burridge states “it [jargon] facilitates communication on one hand, but erects quite successful communication barriers on the other.” Jargon and slang are important in language, as they serve the function of indicating group membership and creating social distance from outsiders.

The way in which today's youth use language helps to express in-group membership and identity. Teen speak is seen as a threat to standards by more conservative and prescriptivist points of view in the older generation. However, teenagers are constantly manipulating language to meet their communication needs. The lexicon of teen speak changes rapidly, and each new term is quickly replaced by newer and more contemporary lexemes. Syntactically, utterances may feature ellipsis, for example 'coming?' instead of “Are you coming” or non-standard orthography such as “wot” rather than 'what'. Whilst such varieties deviate from the Standard, these language features are commonly found in SMS text messages between friends and are considered appropriate for the context. Similarly, in conversations, interlocutors subconsciously modify the phonotactic structure of some utterances. This is evident when one assimilates the words “going to” into the more free flowing “gonna”, which creates a casual and inviting atmosphere. Moreover, the use of slang such as “rentals” for “parents” in “teen speak” creates group solidarity by adopting terms with which teenagers are familiar. Another popular shortening is the adjective 'povo', derived from the noun 'poverty'. This was made popular by Chris Lilley's TV series “Summer Heights High”, where the private school girl character Ja'mie uses this term to describe the students of public schools. The function of this shortening in this case was to exclude the public school group. Discourse markers are also used by young speakers to indicate their solidarity with members of their group or other people like them. The most common discourse marker is 'like' which functions as emphasis “Im not like... Depressed”, softening “Can I like, borrow your notes?” and finally quoting, “And then he was like..”. As the re-enactment of speech is indicative of teenage conversation, the use of the quotative “like' makes speech more dramatic and likely. Teenagers often use discourse markers, however the lexeme 'like” is indicative of teenage girls vernacular.

Language is a way for people to express their identities and for them to fit in with particular social groups to which they belong. The internet has created a new language for people to create identities in which they want to be perceived by the public. Jargon and slang is used in workplaces and peer groups to exclude other groups and professions. This exclusiveness is also seen in the language of teenagers who use language to express themselves and to create group identities. Language is important for these reasons as “it takes us less than 30 seconds to profile someone depending on how their voice sounds” according to Lydia Smith, 20 May 2019.