Analysis

The Reflective Piece “Trending” recounts challenging experiences or the effects of social

media on many teenagers. The writer also states how everyday usage of social media platforms

can affect a person's linguistics and everyday dialect that changes due to social media platform.

The writer uses a combination of registers such as language registers dialectal, variations,

attitudes to language. However, we will focus on language registers and attitudes to language.

In the reflective piece formal register can be found in the stanza “It’s ‘through’ not ‘thru’

my teacher said.”  The teacher correcting the student on their speech which suggest that this

conversation was taking place in a formal setting (school). This interaction with the teacher is

portraying a formal register. In the stanza “The health effects of this endless scrolling cause our

nervous system to be damaged how is that possible you may ask?” could be identified as a

consultative register. A casual register that may be identified in the poem is “‘Yolo’ they said,

and it became my motto”

Attitudes to language is evident throughout the piece. Evidence of this is highlighted in the line,

“It’s ‘through’ not ‘thru’ my teacher said but thru am used to it, it will always be thru.” This

showed that the teacher was disappointed with the student bad language, the teacher corrected

student insisting the student should speak better. This was used to show that teenage uses slangs

and shorten words to communicate with each other on the web. In the poem a “For every second

I glanced at them was a second I could have glanced at myself obsessing over their look,

Imagining it was me.” disapproval of the way they look. Another attitude to language could be

in the line “There are persons on the web luring teenagers, by pretending to be someone they’re

not befriending them on the web using any form of trickery liking and commenting on their post,
befriending while we fall for the bait that was cast and we begin to be groomed by grown men.”

This state the dangers that is associated with social media.