Communication, Political or Non-Political, on Social Media and Its Impact on English in India

Abstract

Social media has revolutionized the way people communicate with one another. With the advent of smartphones with applications like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and so on, social media have registered phenomenal growth in providing multiple platforms for not only individual users but also for politicians and political organizations to share their messages, ideas and views with other users, who need not necessarily be your friends or acquaintances. India with over a 100 million Facebook users – next only to the US, 33 million Twitterati and over 500 million WhatsApp users enjoys a huge network of people employing these social media tools for communication, be it interpersonal, socio-political or cultural. Apart from these, there are other social media tools such as YouTube, blogs and a few websites that have expanded the base of communication network. When it comes to the language, in India due to its multilingual character, English has been quite instrumental in social media, as in any other walk of life. Insofar as my observation goes, around sixty percent of “non-political” communication and more than ninety percent of “political” communication take place in English. In this context, my paper would address the issues such as, how social media contributed to the naturalization of English in India and what and how are the new words being added to the English language? What is the role of people belonging different walks of life in contributing to the vocabulary? Do the limitations on the number of characters to be used or the length of the message hinder or refine users’ ability to express themselves? Has the political use of English on social media, especially social networking and microblogging sites, enhanced the acceptability of the language in India? The paper traces how social media has made deep inroads into the Indian society as tools for communication as well as propaganda mechanism in the context of rising Asia.