Social Networking Sites (SNSs)- Shifting Paradigm of English Language Usage

English is the globally accepted language in various nations and professions in different varieties, but the English that has acquired a wider spectrum than all these Englishes is the English used in Social Networking Sites which has changed the scenario of English language usage due to the ease in its accessibility and the kind of flexibility of language usage. The English used in Social Networking Sites like Facebook and Twitter has changed the linguistic behaviour of the people by producing a number of acronyms like BFF, FB etc, creating new verb forms like ‘to tweet’ or nouns like ‘tweeple’ or producing many compound nouns such as ‘netiquette’, changing the meaning of traditional verbs and nouns by introducing new meanings to them, e.g. the word ‘friend’ is used to refer “someone to an online list of acquaintances”, and by making use of prefixes like ‘un’ for the purpose of conveying the meaning of negation as in ‘unlike a comment/update’ by ignoring its original prefix ‘dis’ for referring the antonym of ‘like’. By emphasizing on the aim of communication, grammar and vocabulary are put on the peripheral value in Social Networking Sites. Therefore, the focal point of this paper is to study the changes in the linguistic behaviour of the people caused by the SNSs.