Do We All Sound the Same?

Do We All Sound the Same?

by Susan Hilbourne

(Image credit - Google Images)

Just as cultural languages have adapted, developed and in some cases disappeared altogether, the language of the internet is evolving every day.

Remember when you were first introduced to the “hashtag”?

For me it was a weird symbol on the keyboard I used if I couldn’t be bothered writing out the word “number”...but now it has an entirely new meaning in the online language.                                                     

We use words such as “cyberspace”, “phishing”, “cyber-bullying” and “sexting” when we talk about activities and virtual space online.

Words that we wouldn’t usually use in everyday face-to-face conversation (unless talking about on-line networks 😉).

The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – The Wives’ Side (PTSD-TWS) page has its own language based heavily on military jargon. The soldiers speak their own unique language which they bring home to their wives’ and children. Everyone in their family network is influenced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufGY5omNlY (Rintoul, 2015).

Words, phrases and acronyms such as VA (Veteran’s Affairs), DVA (Department of Veteran’s Affairs), “State-Side”, “post-deploy”, “pre-deploy”, “recon”, “going-bush” and “flashback to the ‘Ghan” are all frequently used in the network.

By the collective group using this common language, to a certain degree the members feel a sense of self and community identity.

Someone not aligned with the military world, would not understand this language and would not be able to navigate this network effectively.

As Lechte (2003) describes, “We should note that inner experience opens the subject to the outside; this is the force of a loss of self. All those experiences (ecstasies) which we might have thought were absolutely private, personal, intimate and internal….become the basis of a oneness in the community.”

This is demonstrated in the PTSD-TWS network when one member divulges information of a demeaning, personal or graphic nature, the remaining community feels safe to share (using the same language) as well.

Tuan (1991) says “The power of words is exercised daily in the private sphere…Public places too are made a sustained by language…language is important – indeed central – because humans are language animals, and language is a force that all of us use every day to build, sustain and destroy.

This is where the real and virtual realities of social media overlap into our conscious and unconscious minds. 

Am I second-guessing myself? Do we all sound the same? Are my problems as bad as theirs? Am I allowing them to project their opinions onto me? Or am I just mirroring their problems because I am so immersed in this majoritivly negative network? IT’S A CULT!!!! (Joking)

But it is easy to become all-consumed in this virtual world and lose your own identity.

Like emerging from a drug-fuelled haze – getting clean, logging-off and embracing reality is sometimes the best medicine.

References

Tuan, Y. (1991) Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684-696. Retrieved from http://jstor.org/stable/2563430

Rintoul, Meg. (2016). PTSD, A Silent Battle – TedxTownsville. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufGY5omNlY

who are you? or should I ask…who am I? [Image]. (2014) Retrieved from Google Images

Lechte, J. (2003). Key Contemporary Concepts from Abjection to Zeon's Paradox. London, England: SAGE Publishing.