There is no doubt that the forces of social media and globalization alter our lives in more ways than one: our lifestyles and worldviews are adapting and converging, we are constantly establishing new connections, forming new opinions, and how we use language is changing in unprecedented ways. The fast-paced nature of the virtual environment propels these transformations and is an exciting area to research.

The linguistic landscape I focus on is Czech social media. I study how Czech is used there, and I attempt to answer the following questions: How has Czech changed due to the influence of social media? Do we see changes in the lexicon due to the growing popularity of English on these platforms? How do loanwords get incorporated into Czech? What about morphology and syntax? What are Czech social media users’ attitudes toward these changes? How do political views align with language use? Are there geographical differences?

Although it is indisputable that Czech has changed due to the increased use of social media and the prominence of English there, I’m inclined to believe that these changes have not been accepted and are not used on social media by all Czechs uniformly. Based on my personal experience and research, I argue that different people deal with the aforementioned changes differently based on the political views with which they identify and the geographical area they inhabit, and by extension the local community they want to belong to. Language and language change are known to be the tools for identity formation, community building, and political expression, and the situation is surely no different for the speakers of Czech.¹

My project assumes the following structure: I first describe the changes that Czech has been undergoing over the past few years due to the increased use of social media and therefore the increased contact between Czechs and members of foreign communities. To do so, I cite evidence from linguists (mostly Czech) who study this phenomenon. Afterward, I present my own research and data collection: over the course of the semester, I studied two social media sites, Twitter and Instagram, to figure out whether social media supports the spread of English, anglicisms, and other “internationalisms”² in some social groups. I then proceed to conclude by discussing the implications of my data collection.