Language is directly related to the power of group of language users. Language changes all the time because of the power of the group of language users. Because of English class, it's become a habit to over analyze even simple tweets on twitter. In one of P. Diddy's recent tweets he used the word "reppin". I often hear this word and if P. Diddy did not have the fame and was not the celebrity that he is, many people would not use "reppin" in place of representing. Another good example of how language is directly related to the power of a group of language users is the movie Mean Girls. During the movie Gretchen Wieners tries to make the word "fetch" something people regularly use when describing something cool or awesome. Gretchen, one of the plastics is not as popular and does not have as much power as Regina George in the plastics group and yells at her saying, "stop trying to make fetch happen!" If Regina George was trying to make "fetch happen" fetch would happen because she has the most power.
Yeah i agree with Bronte that words of a powerful group such as celebrities and other socialites could easily influence our use of language. The similar examples can be found everywhere,in China, especially through social media, several new awesome and cool words or expressions come out almost every month that spread in a speed of light, followed by a number of people, particularly teenagers. They follow them out of the admiration for those stars as well as the new trend of fashion. And it seems that those celebrities or politicians are the ones who have the most power over language; if my friend said something cool, we, as his friend can only make a small ripple to spread it, and probably the words will die out soon.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I like the mean girls example because it is spot on there are thousands of people who tried to make some kind if "fetch" happen and failed. However, through today's social mass media there are people with no power but are anonymous online so if they try to make "fetch" happen it could become a major trend. This happens all the time in social media where the anonymity of people allows other people to ignore the question of power.
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