Weak Ties Effect on Language — From Martin Luther to Andy Samberg
Language is dynamic and ever changing. The words we use everyday shape the way we see the world around us, and the social influence to change the way we use language is a world changing capability.
The strength of weak ties to disperse new information have allowed both Martin Luther and Andy Samberg alike to change modern language. Martin Luther’s translation of the bible into the common language of German wasn’t into as common of a language as most people assume. He translated the bible into his own native dialect of German, which quickly became the new standard for High German or Hochdeutsch. Considering Granovetter’s concept of the strength of weak ties, the Church was already set up perfectly to distribute information in a way that could affect change on a large scale. The church consisted of a hierarchy going from priests, to bishops, and eventually to the pope. Despite the Protestant Reformation breaking down the power hierarchy, the social structure would still have existed. Priests would serve as members of a tightly knit community to distribute biblical wisdom, and doing so in a German translation would allow for a standard form of the language to make its way into each strongly connected cluster, or church parish. The weak ties that consisted of priests and ministers answering to their respective bishops would have served as an additional path for linguistic trends and standardizations to make their way into the population with the social clout of the church to reinforce their adoption. Thus, the translation of the bible and the preexisting social network caused a top down reformation and standardization of the German language and the adoption of modern Hochdeutsch.
Similarly, modern language is rapidly changed by social media. Instagram and Twitter create billions of weak ties between celebrities and their followers. It’s much easier to see how the same social networks work today than to try and examine them in the Medieval Ages. Just by recalling the process that took “lit” from a cringy joke into an everyday word, it’s easy to see that words aren’t accepted by the whole world at once, but permeate close friend groups one by one. Since social media creates weak ties between celebrities and billions of people, all part of their own social groups, it provides an incredibly powerful means to change everyday language through a rapidly moving network. What parts of that influence will cause lasting change remains to be seen.
Strength of Weak Ties by Mark S Granovetter
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2776392?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents