Etymological Semiotic Changes Unfolding in the Digital World - Transforming the English Language in the Apocalyptic Times – The Transformation of Language from the Corona Virus to Present-Day AI Infiltration into the Educational Domain

Abstract

The world has changed and will never be the same again after the pandemic made a worldwide sweep.  It all seems like a surreal dream; one day we were in our classrooms teaching and lecturing to our students in concrete structures called universities and colleges and the next we knew we are sitting locked down in our homes meeting our students online. What a sudden drastic change from the temporal classroom in the real world to the virtual world of smartphones and laptops. And still, with the revolution called AI, we English professionals are still in a state of suspension of disbelief or are we waking up to the reality of the future where the world is without barriers and communication has become the byword of success.  Is this truly a boon or the sword of Damocles suspended in mid-air waiting to crumble the world and everything once held dear?

This article focuses on how it has always been the trait and the intrinsic nature of humankind to endure, adapt, and evolve. Language being the main domain of expression of a human being is a major game changer that evolves and develops most speedily in pressing times like these. The English language undoubtedly belongs to that exclusive club, of not only being one of the languages that spent the best part of a millennium cheerfully adopting new terms and ideas but also of being a dynamic language that is genuinely international, whose history has become part of the history of countless places, people and movements.

These are truly Apocalyptic Times; if we have eyes, we will see the signs around us. We need to adapt ourselves to the rapid changes of digitalization. Once upon a time, it was globalization and new technology that accelerated both the speed and the scale of linguistic evolution but now the Coronavirus Pandemic that erupted mysteriously has made all boundaries blurred and has men and women enslaved to a virtual world from which there is no reprieve. However, the greatest difference between digital and pre-digital times is that the future of communication lies onscreen in a virtual world. These screens are transforming not only how we communicate but we mean and think too. Disconnected from human faces and voices new conventions and registers are developing to express the emotional nature of language.