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The spread of American slang across Twitter

https://qz.com/465820/how-brand-new-words-are-spreading-across-america/

 

Discussed in this article is the spread of slang words across America. Forensic linguist Jack Grieve examined over 9 billion tweeted words to determine how exactly they spread across the map. He found some particularly interesting results that he used infographics to display in an aesthetically pleasing manner. What’s more important though is this aligns nicely with the information cascades discussed in lecture, and found in Networks chapter 16.

In lecture, we discussed how information cascades may determine and/or affect the decisions an individual makes, based off the decisions of another individual. Some of the benefits include direct and information benefits. In the example given here, Grieve is unsure as to why the words came to be, or even why they spread. Yet, we can make some intuitive guesses such as the direct benefit of an individual to use slang.

If a teenager wants to fit in, he conforms to the present norms, which today includes slang words used by the constantly tweeting famous individuals. An example of this is given with the slang phrase “on fleek.” It began with a Vine user Kayla Newman who exclaimed, “Finna get crunk. Eyebrows on fleek.” From there, big names such as Kim Kardashian and Taco Bell began to use it and it wasn’t before long that the word appeared regularly on Twitter as if it existed for an extended period of time rather than its actual age of one year.

However, Grieve also claims that the opposite may be true. Rather than word usage being jumpstarted by a particular celebrity, his data shows words such as “Fuckboy” and “GMFU (Got Me Fucked Up)” started in a particular region, and spread at a steady rate from there. In either case, we are witnessing an information cascade, where individuals directly benefit (with ‘cool’ points) from using a slang term.

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