The mass media is a form of communication that reaches many people through media technologies such as television, the internet, newspaper and the radio. As mass media reaches a lot of people, it has had great influence on people, such as the way people dress, their views, and their behavior. Professor Jeffrey Bineham states that "the texts and artifacts of popular culture are constantly telling us how to think, how to dress, how to talk, what vocations are significant, and what we should do politically and economically; in sum they tell us who to be" (2007, as cited in Wyatt & Bunton,2012: p. 7). One particular way people are influenced by the media is how they speak, especially for teenagers.
Walt Whitman once wrote in his essay, Slang In America, “Language, be it remember’d, is not an abstract construction of the learn’d, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground” (482). This quote expresses how the American language is created by the people of society, which could be said about the languages teenagers speak in America, considering how many sociolects are …show more content…
Recently, in a 6-secound video sharing application called Vine, an African American teenage girl uploaded a video of herself saying that her eyebrows were “on fleek”. This video became viral and eventually, people began to use this word as an adjective to describe perfection. Now there are millions of posts on the website, Twitter, using the phrase “on fleek”. Some people are against using this word because it is foolish in a sense, but the use of this phrase has been increasing more and more. This phenomenon is due to the mass media, enabling people to share interesting
Walt Whitman once wrote in his essay, Slang In America, “Language, be it remember’d, is not an abstract construction of the learn’d, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground” (482). This quote expresses how the American language is created by the people of society, which could be said about the languages teenagers speak in America, considering how many sociolects are …show more content…
Recently, in a 6-secound video sharing application called Vine, an African American teenage girl uploaded a video of herself saying that her eyebrows were “on fleek”. This video became viral and eventually, people began to use this word as an adjective to describe perfection. Now there are millions of posts on the website, Twitter, using the phrase “on fleek”. Some people are against using this word because it is foolish in a sense, but the use of this phrase has been increasing more and more. This phenomenon is due to the mass media, enabling people to share interesting