(TheConservativeTimes.org) – There has been a new development that people have noticed from listening to their favorite Influencers speak. Many people have been hearing their favorite TikTokers talk with a unique speech pattern, and it turns out that this is something many are seeing all over different social media platforms.
Dr. Christopher Strelluf, who is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Warwick discussed this accent change and also said that it could affect many other people’s speech and change the way that we speak English in general. There are a few different names that people have given this unique accent, which includes “Tiktok Voice,” “TikTalk”, or “Influencer speak.”
Christian Ilbury, who is a sociolinguist at the University of Edinburgh said that “people are noticing a style becoming associated with influencers or micro-celebrities,” that can sound “overly informative or really colloquial.”
Experts describe the accent as a set of “linguistic quirks” that were once found predominantly on YouTube, but now we are seeing it in short-form content on TikTok and other social platforms.
Strelluf described the accent as “Uptalk,’ which is the use of a rising intonation at the end of a statement. American English traditionally uses a falling intonation at the end of statements and a rising intonation at the end of questions. So, in a way, uptalk makes a statement sound more like a question.”
He even said that this was not a new accent or a new language necessarily, but it’s the evolution of the English language and accents as they are portrayed through social media.
Experts also said that because the younger generations use TikTok, this could very well affect the way that they speak growing up and it could shape the English language for years to come. However, they did state that this was not a new thing and that this “uptalk” was once originally found in “Valley Girls” and said that this is the way that they talked, so it’s not new at all.
Strelluf finished by saying, “Language is always changing and women are usually the leaders of those changes. Sociolinguists have studied innovations in English in communities all over the United States for more than half a century. By far, the most consistent finding in all these studies is that, whatever way English is changing, it is women who are the leaders of change.”
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