The Morphological Dynamism of Digital Discourse: A Mixed-Methods Study on Derivational Productivity in the AI Era

Abstract

We also checked out the process by which words are always evolving in the digital world—like how we’re creating new words with internet slang and AI. So, we’re all about speed and creativity in the digital world today, and Gen Alpha and Gen Z are essentially rewriting the rules of the past when it comes to language and words. So, to really understand the process by which language and words are evolving today, we actually looked at a massive digital database of 1.2 million words to see just how often people use tags like “-core” or “cyber-” and even interviewed people to get the real story behind it all. So, it turns out that social media sites like TikTok, X, and Reddit essentially act like a pressure cooker for language and words—making brand new words feel "normal" quicker than ever before. To be honest, the process by which language and words are evolving today isn’t "ruining" the language so much as it’s actually a really cool testament to just how logical the language is today.