WAYS OF SPEAKING:
MEMES AS LINGUISTIC INNOVATION
People in different internet-based communities use different grammatical structures to relate to one another’s common interests. The divide between an academic forum—comprised mainly of professional adults—and a video game forum—comprised of adolescent and adult gamers—can best be seen in the language they use to communicate about their subjects. These examples of social cyber communities both rely on specific language boundaries to dictate how the members of the group relate to one another, collapsing the sociolinguistic distance present in “the pre-Internet age, when speakers absorbed the linguistic categories of their native languages and came to the realization that these had meaning in specific social ways” (Danesi, 228). Because of the globalization of the internet, social identity is not tied as much to place as it is to one’s online community, and even then, the language in one community might translate over to another community in similar contexts.
Life on the internet can become as vivid and multi-faceted as real life, with the result of grammatical slippages and linkages between casual internet language and everyday personal language. The distance between each internet user creates a distinct communication gap, which internet users fill by constructing cyber identities. Unlike face-to-face communication, most internet communication relies heavily on the use of language to facilitate others’ perceptions of an individual’s identity. According to Danesi, linguistic identity is “the patterns of linguistic behavior that are felt as meaningful to the speaker both because they resemble those of the group or groups with which he or she wishes to be associated and because he or she believes that they have universal qualities” (228).
KnowYourMeme: Eyebrows on Fleek
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A memorable quote uttered by Vine user Peaches Monroe in a selfie video to show off her stylishly groomed eyebrows. "Fleek" can be defined as "smooth, nice, sweet," and often describes someone's positive feelings about their physical appearance.