Alison Kroulek's K International blog entry discusses the fact that Twitter has introduced new vocabulary and linguistic practices into the English language. Amy-Mae Elliott of Mashable explains what they are.
Kroulek quotes a few different experts in the field of anthropology and social media who believe that Twitter lingo has bled into English vernacular usage. She also cites the Oxford English Dictionary's addition of the words "Twittersphere" and "ZOMG" into its lexicon. (Of course, this was written in 2011. Since then, the OED says it has added such gems as "ICYMI," "subtweet" and "SMH" among others.)
Elliott's blog and infographic list a plethora of Twitter jargon, from symbols like the hashtag (#) to acronyms like "RT."
I was glad to read the Mashable article, because I've only recently started to notice all the acronyms that I do not comprehend on Twitter. Here are a few that I learned about that might be useful in the future:
- $: "The dollar sign is used on Twitter before a company's shortened stock market name/code as a kind of financial hashtag. For example, $AAPL (Apple), $GOOG (Google) and $MSFT (Microsoft). Within tweets, codes prefixed with the dollar sign will become links."
- #FF: "This stands for "Follow Friday," a way to give an endorsement or shout out to other Twitter users by suggesting that people follow them."
- HT : "Occasionally styled H/T, "hat tip" is a way to give a polite nod to the person who originally shared content you are tweeting. Similar to giving someone a "via" (which is a phrase also used on Twitter) a HT will be followed by an @ mention giving a namecheck. For example, "Useful article - www.urlurl.com. HT @Bob.""
- RT: "Retweet. Forwarding another user's tweet, usually with an added comment, letting the "RT" abbreviation mark the end of the forwarder's comment and the start of the original tweet, e.g., "Must watch! RT @Bob: This video is cool www.urlurl.com.""
- Kroulek's blog seems to me like nothing new. What are some other vernacular terms we use that began as tech jargon?
- Hashtags seem to have a functional use and a rhetorical use. Are there any resources about the finer points of their use and effects in different rhetorical contexts?