Language, through the course of its evolution, has remained consistent in one of its most central goals: allowing us to connect with one another.

In order for language to do this, it has evolved in ways that we could have never predicted. In fact, the evolution of language is so prevalent, that we linguists have a whole discipline dedicated to it: Morphology!

Morphology deals with the structure of words and how they are formed, changed, and reformed again. In the age of social media and the internet, we have been able to see more of these formations/reformations due to the increase of informal writing records.

This is where the concept of Memes come in!

First coined by Richard Dawkins in his famous work titled "The Selfish Gene", memes are considered replications of language and ideas. 

These replications, similar to genes themselves, retain original source information while being able to morph into something new entirely. Within memes themselves, there are various examples of all the central morphologic concepts that make language so fascinating. 

    Affixation

Affixation occurs when a morpheme (affix) is added to an existing word. This type of morphology is very prevalent in memes due to the constant recycling of concepts through social media sites. Check out some of the following examples!

Yassification- from the word yassify, coined by the LGBTQ+ community in social media spaces like twitter. This word describes the process of taking a picture and dramatically enhancing it with photoshop software to be more aesthetically appealing. 

Capper/Capping- from the word cap, which has roots from AAVE (African American Vernacular English). To "cap" means to lie or make a false statement, and so a "capper" is a person who lies, and "capping" is the action of lying

Generified Words

When words are generified, brand names of products become names of similar types of products in general. In memes, this isn't always related to brand name products, but instead is usually a specific word that is used universally for similar experiences. In this way, the conceptual experience becomes generified, which is an evolution of the concept itself!