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.