Entry 4: Is “cyberculture” changing the way we speak or write in English?
LUQMANUL HAKIM B ABU BAKAR
(2019345127)
Salam and greeting to my readers! Culture can be defined as the ideas, customs and social behavior of a certain group of people collectively. Few technologies in the history of human kind can rival the internet in the sense of range and impact. The internet has truly affected and changed we as societies interact amongst and between ourselves. The word cyberculture refers to the collection of cultures made possible and accessible by the internet (Silver, 2008). Language on the other hand, is an ever-evolving medium that has been proven to be so throughout comparisons from the early stages of the language, in this case is English. As for the case of English and many other languages, there are many variations in accordance to time and geographical reasons. So, to answer the question, yes cyberculture that was born through the fruition of the internet has and will continue to change the way we speak and write in English. But that is not a bad thing per say, as the ultimate function of language is for communication which is to deliver a specific message between two parties, so as long as the message can be delivered and understood without any much problem then there is no real problem. Despite not being a real problem in the sense that it does alter the way we speak and write, it has become a difficulty for people who are not kept updated to the newly-formed words and slangs of the net to grasp the meaning of those said words. Undoubtedly, any new innovation might scare some people off but we have to understand that change is the constant and that again, language itself has always been evolving and we don’t really have a say in it.
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