Factors and Changes of the Thai Language Usage in Social Media in the New Normal

Abstract

Languages are related to social society norms of communication in which humans learn how to use a language within different sociocultural contexts through communication. This article then proposes to analyze the factors and changes of Thai language usage in social media in the New Normal, by collecting the data and sample words used during January 2020 - December 2022 observations. This article will demonstrate the ‘concept of language change’ within a sociolinguistic analytical framework. It was found that there were two factors affecting the change of language usages: 1) internal factors (with language users)-namely convenient pronunciation, language usage according to the speaker’s feelings, and language usage according to the speaker’s social status. 2) an external factor (within a society)-namely the progress of academic advances, socio-cultural changes, and technological advances in globalization. These factors affected the change of language usage in social media in the ‘new normal’ in three aspects: 1) phonological change - namely assimilation, sound insertion, ‘sound loss’, phonemic changes and with tonal form changes. 2) lexical change - namely usage of compound words, ‘re-duplication’, synonymous compound words, word combinations, word deletions, and transcription within transliteration. 3) semantic change - namely having a broader meaning or narrower meaning in contexts. This article was complied with up-dated technological advancements and reflects the dynamics of ‘language evolution’ according to the social situations that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge of language usage for communication in the New Normal is that the language users must have communicative competence or effective language usage, both in contents and methods.