Lauren Stochl is from North Attleboro, Massachusetts. She is a senior Music and Linguistics double-major with a minor in Speech Pathology and loves studying languages and how they evolve. After graduation, Lauren hopes to pursue a Masters in Speech-Language Pathology and one day use her love of music and singing in clinical practice.
The history of a language is fascinating, as many words and phrases that develop do so either to communicate new ideas or to express old ideas in a new way. For as long as there has been language, it has been evolving to meet the needs of those who use it to communicate. This paper explores the natural phenomenon of language change, specifically how it is facilitated by slang spread amongst youth via the internet. While informal speech is nothing new to society, there are many who regard it as linguistically, even societally, corruptive. The views of these “language purists” are unwarranted, reflecting a misunderstanding of a process that is as innovative as it is inevitable