Vocal Hashtags and Text Speech

Melody talked about hashtags in her most recent post. This made me think about what effect hashtags have had on our daily speech and how shortened "text speech" making its way into our vocabulary. Things like this have drastically altered the way we talk. As the Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake video showed, I have encountered people who use vocal hashtags. When combined with shortened text speech, these form a completely new language. It has to be a nightmare for ESL learners. I have noticed that it has mostly altered the speech of young teenagers. Although adults use it as well, I think it has seeped deeply into teenage culture. Imagine overhearing a sentence like this as an ESL learner:

 "OMG, I saw Becky today and I was so jelly of her shoes; they were adorbs. She totes skipped out on third hour to meet Jimmy. I def saw her leave to go to the bathroom and she obvs did not come back, even though she said she would BRB. I think the teacher probs noticed. Hashtag awk? But YOLO, I guess."

I think we need to recognize that the ease of communication has caused us to take short cuts in our speech. These short cuts might be obvious to us, but to those who are not current on modern technology or modern English language evolution, they can be confusing and misleading. As exaggerated as this conglomeration of clipped words might be, it's not too far off from speech that can be heard by young junior high and high schoolers, especially girls. I am not trying to generalize, but instead trying to make an observation and try to figure out why it might be happening. It has certainly affected people of all ages, but why does it seem to be concentrated in that specific demographic?

I am very interested to see which of these clipped words or vocalized phrases sticks around in the language and which are weeded out. The fact that more efficient, digitized communication can have such a profound effect on our language makes me wonder what the future holds for our linguistic evolution.

This article defends the use of hashtags. The author relates the context in hashtags to emojis and how both are on the rise at the same time. According to him, it adds depth and variety to what is being said. The question is, is it inevitable that this context will start appearing more regularly in our face-to-face speech? I'm not sure. But I'd like to hear opinions about it.