GENERATION Z’S LINGOS ON TIKTOK: ANALYSIS OF EMERGING LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES

The internet is an environment where users display the prowess in language and all forms of semiotic resources for different forms of communication. The current study examines Generation Z’s use of language in order to highlight the emerging forms of language structures on TikTok, as a result of the innate ability of humans to create new forms, mostly in verbal communication. The research questions are: What are the forms of construction of Generation Z’s lingo on TikTok? What semantic peculiarities are Generation Z’s lingo on TikTok characterized by? The premise of this study is that, Generation Z’s creative use of language on TikTok, shows the innate ability of humans to create new forms, and adapt to the affordances of new platforms in using language for communication. Crystal’s (2005) propositions concerning Internet Linguistics— the Stylistic perspective is applied in this study. Fifty Tik Tok videos were downloaded from the TikTok platform, some of the videos had the same lingos, in which case only one of such videos was chosen. Seventeen videos were used, each video was played; the part of the video that had the Generation Z’s word(s) was screen shot and used as the data for the analysis. In all, seventeen images were used. Findings show that the Generation Z’s lingo is replete with: acronyms used as full words in speech, combination of words and image in speech, the use of neologisms, esoteric words, and laconic structures. Some words and phrases have new meanings in addition to their previous meanings; all these show a new variety of the English language. The study recommends that language users should deploy the affordance of new internet platforms to freely express themselves, in doing so, naturally, new varieties will spring up and widen the lexicon of the English language.