Facebook, the virtual description of the real world (Wk.5)
Facebook is a language-rich environment, in which individual
users create a virtual image of the real world. Through the use of status
updates, people often describe the world around them, creating a fictional
place, created by the foundations of language, as a reflection of the real
world. The choice of words and the difficulty of conveying tone through text,
will often limit the accurate reflection of the real world, in the virtual description
described by Facebook users. However, the ‘infinite word combinations of any
language’ (Tuan 1991), even bound by the rules of grammar, leave the expansion
of the virtual reflection, limitless. If one were to only experience life
through the language used on Facebook, they would end up with a disjointed view
of the world, with many possible variations. The beauty of language through
social networking sites such as Facebook is that many people want their words
to be left up to interpretation, that the world they create, is in flux, that
what they put on Facebook, is open for anyone’s interpretation.
Facebook for me personally, is a way of looking at the
events down in Adelaide, where I grew up and moved from not too long ago. I was
devastated to learn, via Facebook, that one of my friends I went to high school
with had died, no one had said how he died, so I had a different image in my
head to what had happened. I had a bit of a shock (and yes, I nearly did laugh)
when I found out that he had been hit by a bus, I thought at the time that it
was to cliché to be real.
Facebook creates a virtual language-based reflection of
reality. For further reading check out:
Tuan, Y. (1991). Language and the making of place: A
narrative-descriptive approach. In Annuals
of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684-696.
Wilkinson, R. (2013). Week 5 Lecture.
Image retrieved from: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/05/24/facebooks-top-ten-languages-and-who-is-using-them/
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