The Journal of Studies in Language ISSN:1225-4770(Print) 2671-6151(Online) 언어연구

The study aims to explore the differences in the use of languages in social media communication (SNS) between generations from pragmatic perceptions. The paper first analyses the social media dialogues based on Grice(1975)’s Cooperative Principle and Sperber and Wilson(1995)’s Relevance Theory. Second, the survey results with 213 English native speakers and 255 Koreans in terms of the use of social media languages are discussed. The results show that there is a clear difference between generations in the use of SNS language by Koreans compared to native English speakers. The younger the generation is, the more SNS language is used while the older generations use less. Regarding whether the language used in SNS is understandable or not, there was a significant difference in the average between the 10s and 20s with people over 60s in the Korean group. In the case of English native speakers, the result is not proportional to age groups, unlike the Korean participants. However, except for the Korean 10s group, the majority of generations in both groups think that the social media language creates communication problems between generations.