LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN THE CASE OF MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S CORRECTION OVER PRESIDENT TRUMP’S TWEETS

Abstract

As controversial as he is today, President Trump awes the public by series of misspelwords in his Tweets. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary—currently one of the mostinteractive English dictionaries in the world—responded and corrected President Trump’stweets. Every word or term corrected or commented by Merriam-Webster becomes atrending word, and people around the world search for the definition online. In a world tharelies heavily on online information, this phenomenon has become increasingly noteworthyparticularly when it is considered a breakthrough in language learning. This essay investigates how President Trump’s tweeting contributes to the development oflanguage use. While looking particularly at online news coverage such as Huffington Posand NPR on this new trend, the linguistic aspect of the discussion will refer mainly to DavidCrystal (2010) on twitter and texting. Within the context of language and culture, this essayin the end proposes an idea that tweeting and media coverage help enrich people’sknowledge and understanding on the ever-evolving English vocabularies.