The use of emoticons has also been a development in language brought by the use of social media. Emoticons are images used to express feelings instead of communicating. Through social media, users used emoticons such as a smiling face to show they are happy and a crying face to show they aren’t sad. The use of the emoticons eliminates the need to communicate our feelings in writing. They make social media interactions to be fun and interesting. Another way of language change by use of emoticons is the use of the waiving hand to greet someone as opposed to greeting them in writing (Fullwood, Orchard, and Floyd, 2013).
There has also been relaxed the rules of English language. In social media, the use of English language is used for interaction and convenience, therefore, users do not pay attention to eloquence or spelling. Social media has therefore led to the adoption of incorrect English grammar that has been taken up by the majority of social media users. For example, using Twitter, one can only type 140 characters and this leads to the use of English incorrectly through shortening of words. In the use of social media apps like Twitter, what is important is communicating the message in the least words possible and not the use of proper and correct
