How technology affects language on Maisie's twitter!

Technology can affect language on twitter in various ways but I will be looking specifically at the way it affects '@_maisiebrown's twitter.

One way technology affects the language on everyone's twitter pages is the fact that you can only have 140 characters on a tweet, so therefore tweets get to the point straight away, and use shorter words to substitute others. For example on Maisie's twitter (May-Z) every tweet is around 40- 50 characters for example she says 'Can't wear foundation into school today because my skin is so dry. Don't judge me' this is just about 60 characters.  Really you can only write around 2-3 sentence per tweet, this then leads people to tweet and then follow it by another tweet. This is usually done for two reasons, one to continue the tweet, two for emphasis. Another thing done for emphasis is the fact that Maisie often adds letters to words, to extend the main head word in the sentence for example she says 'It's fucking freshhhhh this morning'. This emphasis shows people how cold it really is to Maisie, and then they can retweet if they agree, this allows people to share experiences, especially as the majority of your followers probably live near you.

Twitter allows people to share opinions and appreciate others. As a picture of a celebrity had a tweet attached saying 'No way' and then Maisie quote tweeted it saying 'omg so dead'. Twitter allows people to have a sarcastic register and the way it's made affects how people communicate as a lot of it is trolling as people can tweet what ever they want, and it has to be reported and looked at for 24 hours after it has been sent. This picture could upset the celebrity as it is mocking her previous relationship. Twitter allows people to talk in this crude way. Another interesting thing to pick up on is the use of acronyms such as 'omg' this is used to firstly shorten the use of characters in the tweet, as well as using it to have her own language, as when text speak first appeared it was used by younger people so they could have their own language. Twitter forces people to use acronyms such as this due to the lack of characters.

Emoji's are a new app on iPhone's that allow people to put little pictures with their texts and can be used on twitter a lot of Maisie's tweets contain these, it is probably because on twitter you can't always express how you meant something to come across, so by using these emojis it allows it to become easier for people to do just that as they have a varied choice of what they want to attach to the tweet, as there is pretty much every emotion you can possibly have on there. But some people may interpret these wrongly or if people don't have an iPhone they are unable to see the emoji and just see a blank box instead.

To conclude technology affects language in many ways as it can have a knock on affect to the way people communicate and receive information, which is important as over the next few years technology like this will be the main way people communicate all over the world.

How technology shapes language.

Guardian webpage. GAP ANALYSIS.


The guardian is a webpage aimed at young adults to inform them of the latest news in various topic areas. The webpage is shaped to fit this audience, as it reads left to right listing along the tabs the most important to the least important. This is how they prioritized it according to interest. This audience are able to consume this page in many ways which also applies to the young audience, as they understand new technology better so are able to access the page via mobile and tablets, by using it on these devices it adapts to them and slightly changes its format. It also fits the confrontational type of person, as there are a lot of controversial topics in which you can suggest like 'sorry but being a mother is not the most important job in the world'. This asks for a backlash, and conversation which will oppose to the topic read.


It fits its genre by using features that are most commonly used by webpages such as tabs, hyperlinks,images, banners and commercialism by using ads, by using these features it makes it a running website that is appropriate for the viewing of the audience. The guardian targets both male and female for example one of the tabs is specifically for women only. Certain aspects of this webpage make it clear to whom it is targeting 'Sport' and 'Life & Style' these are stereo typically for different genders.


The webpages purpose is to inform the audience of all the breaking news released recently, it does this by having a banner saying 'breaking news' which gets updated within the day to keep you in the loop. This even has the time that it was last updated so you can expect new news within the day.