Language Games in Online Communication

Language has undergone a massive transformation due to the internet and has been used as a tool for manipulation. Online communication has led to semantic shifts in the meaning of words like “Woke” “Gender” and “Red Pill’’. These words once had concrete meanings but due to online warfare have come to have different meanings to different people. Due to the internet, simple words with simple meanings have been repurposed to have entirely different meanings, sometimes it can be innocent fun like how the letter “E” was turned into a popular meme. In other cases the changing of a word’s meaning is used in calculated attempts to spread an ideology, like how the word “Brandon” was used by conservatives as a way to criticize Joe Biden and attack his public image and how liberals responded by forming their own meaning of the once harmless word with “Dark Brandon’’. Looking at language use through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstien’s Theory of Language Games, we can figure out how different groups construct and manipulate the meanings of words or phrases and how people use language games online to spread their ideologies.

Words are rapidly seeing semantic shifts and evolving their meanings due to online discourse. Cap means Lie, Lit means excited and Flex means Brag. Because of the fast nature of semantic shifts online, individual words and phrases have become ever more important in ideological warfare. For instance, the word “Woke” originally meant being aware of social injustices. However conservative netizens have repurposed the word to describe someone who is far left. Now, the word has two distinct contrasting meanings and depending on the online echo chamber you’re in, the word’s meaning will only be used and understood in one of those ways.

The manipulation and changing of a word or phrase’s meaning in online communities has a lot of ethical challenges and can lead to miscommunication, polarization and indoctrination online. When terms like “Woke” or “Red Pill” are altered to fit narratives, their meanings become ambiguous and the ideological manipulation of the term can lead to the loss of the original word’s meaning. The term “Red Pill” originally came from the movie “The Matrix” and its original meaning was viewed as waking up to the harsh reality of the real world instead of being on autopilot. The Alt-Right co-opted this term to indoctrinate people online by changing the meaning of the word to mean awakening and freeing yourself from liberal narratives and accepting fringe alt-right beliefs. The Creators of “The Matrix” movies, Lana and Lilly Wachowski have expressed disapproval of the change of this term’s meaning.

Online platforms use personalized algorithms that create echo chambers, which reinforce these manipulated terms into peoples minds and make effective communication harder because instead of providing constructive feedback you can just label something as something as Woke or far right and move on.

Some people might say that the evolution of language is natural and that a word’s meaning changes over time. My point is that the changing of a word’s meaning for ideological purposes is dangerous and can fundamentally change how people view reality. To paraphrase Orwell in “1984” “War becomes Peace.” The word “Gender” is a good example. Some think it’s great that the meaning of the word has evolved to mean male and female being a social construct rather than male or female being absolute while others think the meaning has evolved to fit an ideological narrative.

To find solutions to these ethical issues caused by language manipulation it would require a mass societal effort to promote critical thinking, and media literacy. Fact checking is also a good way to combat misinformation that is spread through manipulated language. We also need to be more transparent about the ideological warfare we all take part in on the internet and how our personalized algorithms can capture us and get us to take part in their language games.

Most modern discourse is done online and the internet has become a mass battleground for ideological warfare. In “Like War:The Weaponization of Social Media” by P.W. Singer and Emerson T Brooking, they state there are five core principles to the internet: the internet has left adolescence, The internet has become a battlefield, This battlefield changes how conflicts are fought, The battle changes what war means and We are all a part of this war. The most crucial and arguably the most fundamental part of online warfare is how we use language and construct or create meaning from word choice, whether it be as the creator of a message or as the recipient.

In “Philosophical Investigations’ ‘ , Ludwig Wittgenstien introduces the Theory of Language Games. This theory says that the meaning of words is derived from their use in specific contexts or “language games.” According to Wittgeinstein, language is not fixed. Words acquire meaning through the rules of the specific language game. This is useful for understanding how language is used in online communication, where different groups of people use the same words and terms in different meanings to promote their own agendas.

If you apply language games to online communication it can help reveal how words like “Woke” are constructed and manipulated within online communities. The word “Woke” can be seen as a part of a language game where the meaning differs depending on the context. In liberal echo chambers part of the rules of the language game would note that the word “Woke” means being aware of social injustices and if you were to type “Stay Woke” to make fun of the term, the meaning wouldn’t register and it would come off as sincere. The opposite would be true of online conservative echo chambers, where one of the rules of the language games in conservative echo chambers is that the meaning of the word “Woke” can only register if it is used in a sardonic, sarcastic or critical way to criticize liberals. Language Games help us see these different uses of language more clearly and how they are not just miscommunication but entirely different forms of life in online communication. By understanding online language games and the different rules involved, we can gain valuable insight into how online communication is conducted and the effects it has on both the individual and society.

A research question that I would like to answer is “how do different online communities use language games to manipulate and change the meanings of words and what effects are these online language games having on society?” This could lead to impactful research that lets us critically evaluate online communication. This could show how language games shape narratives and reinforce ideologies. It would also reveal how important language games are in shaping online culture.

I would research this question by going to a variety of different online platforms like Reddit, 4chan, YouTube and looking for keywords like “Woke”, “RedPill” and “Globalism” and evaluating how these words contribute to the message’s meaning and the language game rules the participants are following. Polls would also be a great way to research the effect language games have on society, by polling people on what they associate a specific word’s meaning with.

Studying how words are used online is important because it affects how people think and argue. By using the theory of language games we can see how different words are used by different online communities to promote their own ideologies.