Abstract

Gen Z language in social media is expressive, unrestricted, and liberated. Many studies have revealed that the use of social media has adverse effects on the writing skills and performance of Gen Z. Thus, this study was conducted to identify the interests of Gen Z based on their postings and to design writing tasks that may be of interest to them. This critical discourse analysis aimed to explore and analyse the content and functions of Gen Z’s posts. Additionally, the writing style of Gen Z in social media was also investigated. Specifically, posts were limited to Twitter as it is believed that this platform is where Gen Z youngsters become loud, proud, unfiltered, and genuine in their language. A total of 45 tweets were collected by the researcher. Findings revealed that Gen Z posts are commonly about school-related tasks, entertainment, and personal matters. Their posts function to express appreciation, frustration, uncertainty, longingness, relief, sorry, wishful, and love. Furthermore, this study revealed that Gen Z people do not conform to the conventions of language, uses cursing and swearing in posts, and uses emojis to intensify and reinforce a strong emotion. Teachers are encouraged to adapt and embrace the technology to create engaging, authentic, and meaningful writing activities that may address the possible writing challenges of Gen Z in academic writing.

Keywords: Gen Z, language, social media, posts, critical discourse analysis

 

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