Linguistic Deviation in Social Media: An Investigation of English Neologisms on Facebook by Sri Lankan Undergraduates

In the modern world, social media has replaced face-to-face interaction as an effective and efficient mode of communication. Language on these platforms is a significant variant of its everyday spoken and written formats as deviation from conventional linguistic norms is frequently identified in their discourse. In this context, the present study examined the English neologisms on Facebook used by Sri Lankan undergraduates. The study was conducted to examine the linguistic innovations in virtual communication, their lexical formation, and their role in facilitating communication. 30 first-year BSc undergraduates studying at a national university were selected through a questionnaire by employing the purposive sampling method. The data comprised of neologisms extracted from picture captions, individual comments and status updates of the individual Facebook profiles of these users. An open-ended questionnaire was also distributed among the participants to investigate the different functions of neologisms in the communication of Facebook. The findings revealed that, new lexical items were present in the participants' discourse in the forms of complete words and abbreviations. It was identified that compounding, clipping, omission of vowels, and derivation are the common strategies for generating neologisms on Facebook. As per the perspective of the participants, neologisms are mainly used for the objectives of experimenting with the language, for creativity, to draw the viewers' attention to the posts, to follow the language style of other Facebook users, and to save time. It was evident that linguistic innovation on Facebook facilitates effective communication by enhancing the better expression of ideas.