An analysis on how current social media trends affect the transformation of Sri Lankan English Morphological processes; A study based on ‘Aunty Netta’ YouTube channel

Abstract

Abstract: Regular changes in language can be identified as a common phenomenon in most countries including Sri Lanka. Accordingly, such deviations have caused dramatic changes in all major languages in use. From a societal perspective language changes can be identified as a historical and also a contemporary feature. Even though many tend to misunderstand this phenomenon as a situation where corruption occurs, in reality this shift is unavoidable. It can be said that everything around a particular language is changeable and it occurs due to various socio-cultural reasons. Accordingly, Sri Lankan English (SLE) is one of the languages that is constantly influenced by various languages and social aspects. Among them in the present context social media platforms perform a crucial role in causing a number of language changes in various perspectives such as morphological, syntactic, phonological and so on. Accordingly, various morphological processes can be identified in most of the languages due to the social media influence. In fact the focus of the study is on how SLE is modified according to various trends. Thus, the present study seeks out to portray the morphological processes that continuously add and create new words in Sri Lankan English vocabulary through the evidence provided by the chosen content creator ‘Aunty Netta’ by Nimmi Harasgama.