DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE CHANGE: HOW ONLINE INTERACTION SHAPES CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH
Keywords:
digital communication, language change, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, computer-mediated communication, linguistic variationAbstract
Digital communication has become a major environment for linguistic innovation, providing speakers with new contexts in which vocabulary, grammar, discourse practices, and pragmatic conventions develop. This article examines how computer-mediated and mobile communication contribute to contemporary language change, with particular attention to lexical innovation, abbreviation, emoji and multimodal meaning, code-switching, and the relationship between written and spoken language. Drawing on research in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and computer-mediated communication, the article argues that online language should not be understood simply as a degraded form of standard written English. Rather, digital discourse represents a set of context-sensitive linguistic practices in which users adapt established resources and create new ones to meet communicative needs. The discussion also considers the role of social identity, audience design, and technological affordances in shaping variation. Understanding these processes is important for linguistic research and for language education because students increasingly move between academic, professional, and digitally mediated registers. The article concludes that digital communication is best viewed as one of the contemporary sites in which language variation and change become especially visible.
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