The Language of Memes and Popular Culture
Based on last class, I would like to discuss the
linguistic properties of expressions of popular culture. Believe it or not,
“YEET” has become a more common phrase, even if most people who know of this
word use it ironically. For example, my friends and I use “Yeet” when we need
to get each other’s attention, locate the other, or just as an acknowledgement
that we are in fact speaking to each other. If she says my name, I sometimes
respond with “Yeet?” Even if it’s in our tiny subculture of a clique,
references and memes are an effective way for us to communicate.
The origin of this word is in the link. Note that
there is one curse word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bjy5YQ5xPc
We can assume it’s an exclamation, commonly one of
frustration or of effort, like when a person grunts when physically exerting
themselves. However, as it seems to be a made-up word, can we count this as an
example of the facets of linguistics and the development of human speech?
One of the rules of linguistics is that language is
always changing. Either words are being made up, or the words are kept the same
while the meaning differs. For example, “lit” in a traditional sense means to
light up something, like “I lit the lantern for extra light”. However, “lit”
can now be used as an adjective to describe someone who is intoxicated or under
the influence, because they are “lit up” in expression, have lit up a
cigarette, or were smoking weed. Then this meaning came to mean “exciting”,
such as in the phrase, “That party was lit!”
As someone who spends way too much time on the
internet, I am stoked to see that the vocab I’ve picked up is valid. Meme on!
First off, I love the use of the word "stoked" in that ending line, a word I haven't heard in a while. But I defiantly agree, this meme culture is very interesting, epically since we are sort of the first to use it with the advancement of technology, I will be interested to see how it progress with future generations, and how they will perceive our use of it later on. Will it become part of out language or will it remain silly lines we used, much like the 80's and so on.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how the future generations will react to some of the words we came up with willy-nilly in our youth, and visa versa, how will we react to the word the next generation use? In our life time we've seen some words that our grandparents would scoff at, such as ain't, become an accepted part of American English. Will some of the words that we use in our younger years, such as "lit" become what ain't has? I think it will be interesting to watch the next generation create their own word.
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