The Impacts of the Social Media on Language and Communication in Asia
Introduction
The emergence of social media, as a result of the advancement in technologies and the internet, has led to a consequential array of new types of written languages and communication channels. According to Dovchin, Sultana, and Pennycook (2016), people now communicate through different languages and using new formats available on social media such as tweets, Instagram items, Facebook posts, blogs, profiles on LinkedIn, and so many more. it is also noted that as English remains the most dominant international language on social media and the internet in general, other languages and communications styles are being changed, as some converge to the rules applied in English and others diverging to use English in their native communication style and language. Undoubtedly, social media has affected the volume of people one is able to communicate with at a go and also affected the frequency with which communication occurs. With this in mind, the current essay looks at the impact of social media on language and communication in Asia with a specific focus on China. The development of social media in China will be explored, followed by an analysis of how this development has affected how individuals communicate in the society. The fluid nature of the Asian society will be assessed in relation to the proliferation of English in the communication avenues and styles. Ultimately, English has changed how Chinese people communicate on social media, leading to more consideration of recipients of messages and conforming to the demand for convenient and faster conveyance of messages, but has had little to no effect on the Chinese societies in terms of the language change and communication.
The Development of Social Media in China
China does not have the conventional social media platforms available to the rest of the world including Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Yet, the country has a vast network of sites that make it one of the world’s largest social media market. The development of social media in China is noted by Zhou and Wang (2014) to be very different from the rest of the world with an internet user base reaching more than 520 million individuals and the most active social media users in the world. The country enjoys a wide array of platforms that range from blogs to networking sites, microblogs, and a variety of social online communities. In China, social media stated at the end of the 20th century with a few online communities and forums, which later migrated to instant messaging by 2001 (Zhou and Wang, 2014). The emergence of user review sites, for example Dianping, and blogging sites took off in early 2005, followed closely by social networking websites with the capacity to include chatting such as Renren (Wei, Xu, & Zhao, 2015). Later, Sina Weibo emerged towards the beginning of 2010 to offer microblogging and multimedia sharing, and location sharing applications like Jiepang followed suit. Today, the above explosive growth continues to reveal continuous growth, a trend that can be attributed to global growth and development of social media. Image 1 below shows how social media has grown in China in line with parallel developments elsewhere in the world.
Image 1: Comparison of social media development and timeline in China (bottom row) and the rest of the world (upper row) (Source: Zhou and Wang, 2014)
From the above image, the development of social media in China can be said to be at per with the rest of the world. This explains why China has among the highest usage numbers in terms of active social media users, despite its large population and size.
The Development of Social Media and How it Affects Communication in the Chinese Society
Social media is applauded as the best invention of the 21st century in relation to how the platforms are used to support people across the globe in meeting new people, socialization, learning new experiences, communicating, interacting with others, and networking. However, this interaction, especially in countries like China where the use of social media is relatively high, has led to a change in the way people communicate. Bamman, Eisenstein, & Schnoebelen (2014) posit that social media has led to an increase in intercultural adaptation in China as more people interact with others from different parts of the world through business transactions, socialization, and various forms of engagement on social media. One of the notable effects of social media development and use in China is that it has facilitated intercultural communication competence, an ability to interact more with other people from various cultural backgrounds with effectiveness and appropriateness (Qin, Strömberg, & Wu, 2017). Today, children in grade school use and carry smart gadgets everywhere. Undeniably, social media use in China has not only changed the lifestyle of the Chinese people but also changed how people communicate on various levels. In the current digital age, people are knowable to pass across messages to more people in a single communication (Wei, Xu, & Zhao, 2015). The direct consequence is that language has changed significantly, including use of short hand messages, use of emoticons (emoji) for effective communication, use of globally acronyms such as LOL and OMG, and the relative reliance of memes for communicating messages (Bolton & Graddol, 2012). Language has evolved, not just because of the dominance of a new generation of internet users, but also because of the said changes in the way people pass messages across.
The Use of English in the Chinese Society
In the Chinese society, the evolution of language has included both positive and negative aspects. Positive aspects include the ability to communicate widely with more people outside of one’s culture and the ability to keep current in socialization and other interactions and engagements with people. Negative aspects have included the inclusion of other languages, such as English, in daily communication. While such inclusion has led to better and effective communication on social media, it has also changed how young people in China view their own language and culture. The older generation of Chinese people in the society view the inclusion of other languages as a divergent element that takes away from the socio-cultural benefits of the community. However, the younger internet users on social media see other language, such as English, as an added advantage in interaction with other users from different cultures (Otsuji and Pennycook, 2010). The notions about the English language are therefore different amongst various social media users. The discursive practices in the Chinese language and those in the English language are made to converge through a new language style and format used on social media. For example, new language used includes a mixture of Chinese and English with the common use of emoticons and English phrases such as LOL (laughing out loud) or OMG (oh my god). While the concept of linguistic dystopia is portrayed as a death of language and its pollution (Jacquemet 2005), it also bears several advantages in the current society where young Chinese people are able to communicate better with others on social media for various reasons including business interactions or social engagements. The overall effect of the English language on written Chinese on social media is that there is a clear distortion of writing and communication rules compared to other forms of interactions.
The English language and the influences of the same to language use on social media has brought about linguistic diversity. Linguistic diversity is a powerful tool that creates new opportunities and is a core part of a society’s modernization. Social media and the use of the English language has increased the number of young Chinese people who are bi/multilingual, noted by Pennycook (2018) to welcome diversity instead of the traditional insistence on the use of one language. Notably, social media has led to multilingualism and multiculturalism as a new norm in Chinese urban centers and in different fields including the education sector, academia, and policymaking. Additionally, there is an emergence of linguistic creativity in the Chinese society, where social media users borrow, re-contextualize, and take up cultural and linguistic resources to create new languages, identities, and meanings (Jacquemet, 2005). Social media has turned language users in China to be creative and playful in a way that allows them to mingle and mix various cultural and linguistic codes in their Chinese (various dialects) with the dominant English language (Dovchin, Sultana, and Pennycook, 2016). The result is that new meanings are incomprehensible to a specific language as an independent entity. For example, using English rules to express oneself on social media while mixing various Chinese dialects may not make any sense to an individual language, but is effective and applicable to the said situation based on context.
Conclusion
The number of social media users has grown steadily from the late 20th century to become the highest in the world today. The new trends and continued social media use has meant more active young people and increased interactions with other cultures. The result is that Chinese youth language and culture has been altered significantly to factor in the rules of writing and communicating in the English language, including how people communicate outside of social media. More people are becoming bi/multilingual and creating new languages due to the need to interact with others outside of one’s main culture on social media. In the end, English has changed how Chinese people communicate on social media, leading to more consideration of recipients of messages and conforming to the demand for convenient and faster conveyance of messages.
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