Beyond Rules: A Study of Linguistic Liberty With Reference to Virtual Space of Communication

Abstract

With the advent of internet following onset of virtual platforms of communication technically named as social networking sites, the use of language has undergone a tremendous change across the globe. The whole dynamics of language governed by its lexical, syntactical and other grammatical rules has been reconsidered and reintroduced subsequently with changes effected at both linguistic and non-linguistic level forming the basis and medium of communication. The linguistic- nonlinguistic integration results into bypassing the age-old defined rules of language giving way to a kind of “meta-language” as a medium of communication independent of any specific language with its set principles to be observed. This trend has received its own share of negative and positive comments from “communication corruptor” to “language liberator”. Irrespective of the comments, though, what is clearly understandable in this context is the fact that the new style of communication taking on creative lateral changes with respect to language and beyond is largely informal for the reason that such communications are quite unintelligible and ambiguous at times. The paper under discussion titled “Beyond Rules: A Study of Linguistic Liberty with Reference to
Virtual Space of Communication” aims to study and examine the extent of linguistic liberties taken
by the users while communicating on virtual space. ‘Virtual Space’, as used in the title, would
include only three platforms, namely, Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter from amongst many others
like Hike, Snapchat, Linkedin, Instagram etc. ‘Beyond the Rules’, as used in the title, signifies both
the structural shifts from principles of a language and the establishment of newer communicative
patterns that extend beyond a particular language and the rules thereof. Newer communicative
patterns engage themselves with linguistic and non-linguistic elements that change and altogether
redefine the whole idea of communication performed earlier through a pure linguistic medium.