Evolving Language on Social Media: Euphemisms, Code Words, and Orwell's Newspeak
Shift in communication style on social media platforms due to influence of emerging linguistic trends.
Chat it up with me, mate! You know, in today's digital world, we're seeing a swift evolution of language. It's always been on the move due to cultural, social, or technological influences, but now there's a peculiar trend on social media: a conscious avoidance of certain terms. Users are crafting new, often cryptic neologisms that are replacing common words.
Take a look at this instance: instead of saying "to kill," folks are starting to say "to unalive." And instead of "suicide"? Well, "to unalive oneself" or "to make oneself unalive" is the new phrase. In German, it translates as "selbst unaliven" – sounds like something straight out of George Orwell's classic book, 1984, doesn't it?
In Orwell's novel, 1984, we have Newspeak, a constructed language meant to manage thought and opinion. This language is designed to limit expression possibilities, making it impossible to convey dissenting ideas. Consequently, concepts like "freedom" vanish from public discourse.
You've probably read how Newspeak works. For instance, "good" is replaced by "ungood," "excellent" becomes "plusgood," or "doubleplusgood." This structural simplification trims away subtleties, and the language becomes monolithic, losing its critical function.
But a similar linguistic development is happening on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, with a different motive. Terms like "murder," "suicide," "violence," "drugs," and "blood" are given new identities:
- "kill" → "to unalive"
- "suicide" → "self-unalive"
- "drugs" → "Vitamin P," "spicy sugar"
- "blood" → "red stuff"
It's not the big brother state pulling the strings this time, but the algorithms that rule the platforms, which automatically censor, delete, or hide content containing certain words. This "digital censorship" is automatic and lacks contextual analysis, leaving users vulnerable to punishment for merely speaking or writing a certain term.
From a linguistic perspective, many of these rephrasings can be classified as euphemisms or code words, designed to avoid offense or hide meaning within a community, much like how teachers use euphemisms to describe students' behaviors to parents.
This new culture results in a secret language, making it hard for outsiders to understand conversations. Discussion gets trickier, more context-dependent, and less clear in terms of free speech.
In the realm of social media, a growing trend involves the use of euphemisms and code words, such as "unalive" for "kill" or "self-unalive" for "suicide", mirroring some aspects of George Orwell's Newspeak from '1984'. This practice, driven by algorithms that censor certain words, fosters a unique lifestyle where entertainment, news, and discussions take on new forms, blurring the lines of technology and language.
The continuous evolution of social media language has given rise to various terms like "Vitamin P" for "drugs" or "red stuff" for "blood", shifting the landscape of communication towards a more private, technology-influenced lifestyle, making it challenging for outsiders to fully comprehend conversations.
