Dear Miss Kerr

I take the side of your argument in your article “Twerking, selfie and unlike? Young people don’t speak like that – I should know”. I believe that slang terms are more of a fashion statement, they are always changing and adapting to the world we live in. The Oxford dictionary has changed on numerous occasions bringing “slang terms” such as “bird” instead of it being an elegant word to describe this creature it refers to a woman. This word is still used but has grown out of “fashion” and is most likely replaced with a new slang term instead.

I am in a generation full of people using slang terms I am not against the use of it however, it has no place in the Oxford dictionary, as you said “pitiful emblems”. Reading your post I believe it does come across self centred and not a legitimate representation of young people or your generation. I think that this is more of a façade the slang terms that are used will just fall out of fashion like they did before, however I do believe some slang terms that are used today do deserve a space in the Oxford dictionary. Words such as “ta” which was used in the 18th century for the word thank you its still used today. Slang terms such as “groovy” are in our memory, these words will be forgotten and should not be placed in the dictionary. This slang terms definitely should not be used as our idiolect.

In our daily lives anyway we change our speech depending on who we talk too, lets say I was talking to my boss at work I wouldn’t say “Rofl” “Jk” “Snm” etc. as I want to keep up my status with them. Most of the time people would use slang with their friends and not to people of authority. In this era the younger generation use these acronym as they are fast, when they speak and talk to each other they convey messages quickly.

Lets use William Shakesphere as in example in his writing he used many slang terms, these terms are now in our society and are used by numerous people. He created words such as “assassination”  and “champion”. This was done while writing his plays, these words are slang terms but they convey the message very quickly and becomes our natural idiolect to use. Many generations before may view that as what you would refer as “unhealthy culture”, however they are now accepted and have their rightful place in the Oxford dictionary. If it has happened to these words wouldn’t in turn happen to words that our generation use? Instead I see this as a way to improve the English language.