Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language

by Adam Aleksic

Synopsis:

A viral linguist’s account of the ways our vocabularies are evolving, the internet’s influence on communication, and what our use of language reveals about the modern world.

From the rise of leetspeak and words such as “unalive” to the trend of adding “-core” to different influencer aesthetics, the internet has ushered in an unprecedented linguistic upheaval. We’re entering an entirely new era of etymology, heralded by the invisible forces driving social media algorithms. Thankfully, Algospeak is here to explain. As a professional linguist, Adam Aleksic understands the gravity of language and the way we use it: he knows the ways it has morphed and changed, how it reflects society, and how, in its everyday usage, we carry centuries of human history on our tongues. As a social media influencer, Aleksic is also intimately familiar with the internet’s reach and how social media impacts the way we engage with one another. New slang emerges and goes viral overnight. Accents are shaped or erased on YouTube. Grammatical rules, loopholes, and patterns surface and transform language as we know. Our interactions—and our social norms and habits—shift into something completely different.

As Aleksic uses original surveys, data, and internet archival research to usher us through this new linguistic landscape, he also illuminates how communication is changing in both familiar and unprecedented ways. From our use of emojis to sentence structure to the ways younger generations talk about sex and death (see unalive in English and desvivirse in Spanish), we are in a brand-new world, one shaped by algorithms and technology. Algospeak is an energetic, astonishing journey into language, the internet, and what this intersection means for all of us.

Adam Aleksic is a little bit famous (I guess; I hadn’t heard of him) due to his Tiktok videos on linguistics. He thinks he’s really great, anyway, to judge from the way he talks about his own videos and their high quality etc etc. He never lets you forget his experiences as a linguistics enthusiast on social media, either: his story of that is deeply intertwined with his analysis of trends and how algorithms are driving changes in the language we speak. He’s as subject to them as anyone, as he at least does make clear.

As you might guess from that intro, I found certain aspects of Algospeak a touch frustrating. Aleksic is so deeply embedded in it, it’s hard to believe that he has any real measure of objectivity here, though I don’t actually disagree with much of what he writes (which feels like common sense and/or matches what I know from elsewhere).

It was overall an interesting read, albeit one that made me feel fairly old and out of touch when it discussed some of the memes, and sent me calculating dates going “no way” about how old certain memes are (and how old I was when they first appeared).

It’s also inevitably going to feel dated pretty much immediately, though I think the examples stand.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)