Does the media affect the language we speak?

Can it be possible that  the use of media that is available to us will eventually lead to the local dialects that used to be able to thrive disappearing all together?

 I have noticed over the last few years that some people have began to adopt Lexis and in some cases phonetic traits that occur in dialects that would usually not occur in the one typically associated with the south of England, it appears to be typically a more American dialect that occasionally becomes noticeable. it never appears too obvious, the occasional replacement of trousers with "pants" or chips with "fries" but never consistently, these changes seem to show that the media we watch may begin effect the way in which we speak.

A research paper published by the university of Glasgow worked under the hypothesis that the high levels television that has been produced in eastern London watched by the local adolescent population of Glasgow led to a noticeable change from the way in which they would typically pronounce certain words. the results of this paper show a marked rise in the use of certain phonetic traits that would be typically linked to an east London accent,for instance the use of /f/ in the place of /th/ in words such at 'think'; they also found an increase in the pronunciation of the /L/ in words such as milk. This led them to the conclusion that the amount of television or audible media that one watches or listens to on a regular basis can lead to differences in dialect.

Another way in which the media affects the dialect is through the internet, this occurs more frequently in the formation of Lexis as it creates a new communion that has its own lexical field. This Lexis is usually covert prestige and is used to convey humor. These fields of Lexis are usually used exclusively online. The way in which this may effect the way in which people speak is the fact that recently words typically only used online have began to become commonplace in many peoples vocabulary, acronyms such as 'LOL' or 'ROFL' have become common in spoken English. Many people go so far as to express emotion through the use of phrases such as (XD) that when typed appear to show a smiling face but spoken would usually convey no meaning. Whether or not this does indeed foreshadow the eventual death of the language doesn't matter, all this suggests is that media appears to create changes in the language and dialect that may not occur otherwise.

James Wood