Social Media's Role in Language Evolution: Study of the Word “Situationship”
Introduction to Social Media
Over the past decade, social media’s influence and reach have evolved dramatically. Social media has transformed into a multimedia technological tool millions use for networking, connecting, and communicating. It has enabled people to easily share and take in new information, such as news, entertainment, commerce, and more. Although many argue that social media has many negative impacts on the public, it has nevertheless enhanced technology, innovations, and social interactions. One of these aspects social media has significantly enhanced is language, especially slang. Slang is informal language that commonly uses words and phrases in conversation rather than in formal writing. Typically, it is used within particular social groups to create a sense of identity and belonging. Through a study focusing on the social implications of social media on the use of slang among teenagers, it was found that “the visual and interactive nature of these platforms allows for a more immersive linguistic experience, enabling slang terms to become embedded in teenagers' identities more quickly and deeply” (Shokhrukh, 89-90). Social media has dramatically influenced the development and spread of slang by serving as a platform for rapid and widespread communication. These platforms allow new terms to be shared and adopted quickly across the globe. The interactivity of social media encourages users to play with words and language creatively, leading to the constant upstreaming of new slang language. Many aspects of social media, including influencers, memes, and viral trends, all contribute to new slang words being popularized and eventually normalized into everyday language.
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Influence of Social Media on Language
Social media plays a pivotal role in shaping the evolution of language, particularly among the younger generation. Our research aims to delve into the extent of the influence of slang through different digital platforms on the culture, technology, and mentality of individuals. As seen in a research study regarding the social features of slang, it was found that the culture of Russian youths was heavily influenced by the use of English slang words (Izmaylova et al. 3). Similar to this study, we aim to analyze the impact of social media on slang in our project by examining a particular slang word, “situationship.” The online environment adopted by many teenagers has enabled them to easily access platforms that impact their utilization of specific language patterns and slang. The results of a study conducted by Azimov Shokhrukh examining Instagram and TikTok emphasize this conclusion through its finding that “the rapid adoption and spread of new slang terms [was] facilitated by these platforms” (89). “Situationship” has developed into a term used to describe a romantic relationship that lacks clearly defined commitments and is still widely found on social media.
“Situationship” and Social Media
Considering the current applicability of “situationship” in our language, our project aims to examine the periods following the rise in its usage. By following the lifetime of “situationship’s” frequency, the surrounding sentiments, and its demographic usage, we uncovered valuable insights regarding its frequency and sentiment analysis. By examining the interactions between social media and slang, we uncovered how platforms like Reddit and TikTok impact teenagers' use of slang, specifically “situationship.” Social media has exacerbated the reach of the term “situationship” and made it very popular among the more recent generation.
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Historical & Cultural Context of Situationships
Today, situationships are much more common than real romantic relationships with commitment, reflecting a shift in how intimate relationships are navigated. The usage of the word has been increasing over the last few years. In fact, this term was an Oxford Dictionary finalist for “Word of the Year” in 2023. As described by Technician Online, “The term in popular culture is generally used to refer to a noncommittal and undefined romantic relationship—a situation” (Kannan, 2024). Now, let us take a look at the trajectory of the word “situationship” and how it came into being by exploring its historical and cultural context.
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The origin of the word ‘situationship' can be traced back to the 2000s, aligning with globalization through online dating and social media applications, changing trends in human relationships. The existence of situationships captures the fluidity of most interactions in today’s world of relationships and dating. An article in Time states, “situationships have become a popular way to describe relationships that fall somewhere between casual dating and serious commitment” (Carlisle, 2023). Quite literally, it is an amalgam of the words ‘situation’ and ‘relationship,’ underlining this kind of relationship as being based more on the current situation than future commitment. Traditionally, relationships were expected to be governed by certain rules and rites, having predetermined stages from the time when people started to court until they got married. However, starting from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the mosaic of relationships became broader and different. New forms of communication have made it possible to utilize technology as a means of maintaining an ongoing connection with a romantic partner. From this environment has grown the concept of the situationship, granting people the liberty to engage in sexual activity and emotional connections without adhering to all conventional dating standards. As noted in The Sophian, "the concept of a situationship captures the in-between space where many people find themselves as they navigate the complexities of modern dating" (Hollis, 2023).
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It is also intriguing to observe that the meaning of the term has a cultural aspect, reflecting certain changes in today’s society. The rise of situationships in modern trends results from casual relationships and the so-called ‘hook up’ culture among the youth. It points towards a shift in values in this generation that focuses more on embracing individualism and freedom instead of defined roles in a relationship. In this regard, the situationship is beneficial in equipping individuals with a fresh avenue for social relationships where the emphasis is not on deep or lasting attachment but on independent development and discovery. As societal norms continue to shift, the language we use to describe our relationships will undoubtedly adapt, with terms like "situationship" providing valuable insights into the ever-changing human experience of love and connection.
Theoretical Lenses
Applying Reader Response Criticism to the analysis of "situationship" in real-world contexts involves examining how different communities and individuals interpret and use the term. On Reddit and TikTok, users share their personal experiences and stories involving "situationships," contributing to a collective understanding of the term. This participatory culture underscores the idea that slang words are not static but are continuously reshaped by the people who use them. For example, discussions on Reddit often highlight the emotional complexities and ambiguities associated with "situationships," while TikTok videos frequently depict humorous or relatable scenarios that resonate with a broad audience. These platforms allow us to observe how the meaning of "situationship" varies among users, influenced by factors such as age, cultural background, and personal relationship experiences.
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Moreover, the application of Reader Response Criticism extends beyond digital platforms to everyday conversations and media representations. As "situationship" gains traction in popular culture, its usage in movies, TV shows, and music further illustrates the fluidity of its meaning. By analyzing the real-world applications, we can understand how “situationship” functions as a word and a tool that shows contemporary relationship dynamics. In today’s world, the word symbolizes a cultural artifact capable of reflecting social trends and attitudes in the social and relationship realm.
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The Marxist theory perspective is also key to understanding the origination and real-world use of the slang we use in our daily lives. Marxism offers us the necessary context required to see literature and other types of content as external realities. The slang words that we use in our daily lives often originate from class struggle or the feelings of the masses. The word “situationship,” being used as slang in today’s age, gives us a perspective of the masses in the relationship realm. A deep understanding of Marxist theory in relation to the word ‘situationship’ tells us that people are often “stuck” at the situationship stage or that they want something which describes the word situationship. Platforms like Reddit, which are often pseudo-anonymous, allow people to express their real feelings without judgment. This offers an amazing platform where people can interact freely and get advice and opinions from others without hesitation. Using Reddit as a platform to get our data also allows us to analyze the class struggles of people in our society.
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This image displays how social media represents the masses in today's age as almost everyone uses slang. This directly relates to class struggles and what people feel in their lives.
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Furthermore, these different opinions help us analyze different viewpoints in this sphere. For example, some users on Reddit associate the term ‘situationship’ with economic uncertainty. One user spoke about why they prefer to be in a ‘situationship’ rather than a ‘relationship’ due to economic uncertainty and the ever-changing world today. The popularity of the word ‘situationship’ often underscores its use as a linguistic tool, which can describe a particular scenario and reflect the reality of living under the capitalist commodification of intimacy. It also highlights the need for more authentic and genuine connections between people. Movies, TV shows, and songs that use this slang word often describe it as a dangerous trend in modern-day relationships. Overall, the Marxist perspective helps us dive deeper into the true meaning and culture behind a particular word and analyze the feelings of the people using it.
Methodology
We collected data from two main sources: Reddit and TikTok. While both are very popular forms of social media, they differ greatly in their use. Reddit is a medium more typically focused on communicating through text and words, allowing for in-depth discussions and detailed narratives. Users on Reddit often engage in long-form posts and comments, providing a wealth of written content to analyze. On the other hand, TikTok is a social media platform that focuses on video posts and comments that discuss the video. TikTok’s format encourages creative and visual expressions, capturing a different aspect of user interaction. Including both social media sources ensures we cover various social media users, making our data more diverse. By integrating data from these two distinct platforms, we can gain a holistic understanding of the term "situationship" across different modes of communication.
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We obtained data from these social media platforms relating to the word “situationship.” The process for obtaining this data from Reddit involved looking at relevant subreddits and gathering all posts that mention “situationship” in any way. We used Browser Flow to scrape our data, applied it to CSV form, and stored it in Google Sheets. In the sheets, we stored the data in columns of web link, subreddit name, year posted, age of poster, gender of poster, and post title. To account for blank or not applicable information, we decided to filter out entries where the gender and age columns were blank or not applicable. This process enabled us to carry out a comprehensive demographic/age/gender analysis, the results of which we discuss later. A similar process was implemented for our data collected on TikTok, where we grabbed all posts mentioning “situationships” or potential relationships utilizing a web scraper. After collecting all these posts, the next step was data cleaning. For data cleaning, we kept columns such as the web link, username, comments by the user, and date while also removing unnecessary vocabulary and emojis.​
Analytical Models
Our project utilizes three different models for analysis. One of the three models we employed was topic modeling, where we applied sentiment analysis. Certain emotions, sentiments, and situations surrounding a post on Reddit and TikTok were collected. To visualize our findings, we found a word cloud to be most relevant as it would display the frequency of certain words related to “situationship.”
We used "situationship" as the keyword to search for related videos on TikTok and to find posts on Reddit. By employing web scraping, we gathered all the comments associated with these videos across these two social media platforms. We then applied topic modeling techniques to identify the most frequent words, helping us speculate on the words most related to "situationship" (Figures 1 & 2).
TikTok Sentiment Analysis
Reddit Sentiment Analysis
For our second model, frequency analysis, we tracked the frequency of “situationship” over time to identify the rise in popularity of its usage in colloquial, natural settings. The visualization for this model is a time series plot analysis to easily visualize the rise and fall of the word's usage.
Figure 4 shows the frequency analysis across top Reddit posts from subreddits related to relationships, love, dating, sex etc.
Figure 3 shows the relative frequencies of "situationship*", "situationship," and "situation*" in TikTok comments across the segments.
Noting that the demographic (e.g., age and gender) of the users is crucial information showcasing the origin and spread across different generations and locations, our final methodology includes demographic analysis. We extracted the data regarding age and gender from our Google Sheets containing such data on Reddit to create these visualizations. Specifically, a pie chart was created to visualize the gender, while a graph was utilized to visualize the age.
After filtering out all unknown values of gender, we generated a graph to show the gender demographic of the usage of “situationship.”
After filtering out ages that had no value, we clustered the data to provide an age demographic of the users of “situationship.”
Results of Our Research
The results of analyzing "situationship" are revealing about how social media influences the evolution of language. Overall, the dataset, including data from Reddit and TikTok, shows a growing popularity of the term "situationship." Given the frequency of its use, we can observe that the definition of the term is constantly being debated. The first word cloud presents the most common tags related to "situationship," where we see that the word is frequently associated with "relationship" as well as "love," "months," "years," and "dating." This pattern suggests the significant impact of the term on twentysomething romantic relationships and that it has become deeply entrenched in discussions on social media.
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In terms of its frequency, "situationship" has become particularly widespread since 2011. Its popularity reached its peak during the most recent decade, around 2023, as inferred from the frequency analysis. Demographic analysis sheds more light on the trend of "situationship," revealing that discussions around the term are primarily constructed by users in their twenties. Moreover, the analysis indicates that the majority of users involved in discussions about "situationship" are female. To conclude, these findings align with what research has found about the effects of social media on slang. Social media sites such as Reddit and TikTok accelerate the spread and adoption of new slang words, enabling trends to swiftly take root in the minds of users. Participatory culture, with users sharing personal stories and experiences, contributes to the reshaping and redefinition of slang terms, keeping them constantly updated to reflect contemporary social realities.
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Our study highlights the role that social media plays in "democratizing" the evolution of English. This bottom-up model of linguistic change is quite different from the evolution of English through traditional media, where changes in dictionaries and usage records have historically been top-down. This finding highlights the interplay among language, the emotional engagement of social media users, and the personal narratives and shared experiences of its users, showing how those experiences might shape and cement the emergence and staying power of a new term like "situationship." Contributing our findings to the anthropological discussion of language development, we demonstrate how this linguistic and emotional phenomenon is spurred by the cultural changes that social media encompasses. From this study, we can see through the living dictionaries of platforms like Twitter that language is always evolving, as are the emotional lives of its users.
Works Cited
Carlisle, Madeleine. “Situationships Have Become a Popular Way to Describe Relationships That Fall Somewhere Between Casual Dating and Serious Commitment.” Time, 2023, https://time.com/article/situationship-definition.
Hollis, Margot. “The Concept of a Situationship Captures the In-Between Space Where Many People Find Themselves as They Navigate the Complexities of Modern Dating.” The Sophian, 2023, https://thesophian.com/article/situationship-modern-dating.
Izmaylova, Guzel Alekseevna, Gulyusa Rafaelevna Zamaletdinova, and Maira Satibaldiebna Zholshayeva. "Linguistic and Social Features of Slang." International Journal of Scientific Study, vol. 5, no. 6, 2017, pp. 75-78.
Kannan, Priya. “The Term in Popular Culture Is Generally Used to Refer to a Noncommittal and Undefined Romantic Relationship—a Situation.” Technician Online, 2024, https://technicianonline.com/article/situationship-definition.
Shokhrukh, Azimov. “The Impact of Social Media on Teenage English Slang: Investigating the Influence of Platforms Like Instagram and TikTok on the Evolution of English Slang Among Teenagers.” Kokand University Research Base, vol. 1, no. 4, Apr. 2024, pp. 86-93, https://scholar.kokanduni.uz/index.php/rb/article/view/293.
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