GEN Z’s ATTRIBUTES, CHARACTERISTICS, AND LINGUISTIC CREATIVITY IN DIFFERENT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Abstract

The study tried to determine the relationship between Gen Z?s characteristics and their linguistic creativity. It shows how creative Gen Z is in terms of word formation on different social media platforms. The study used a mixed-method research design, specifically explanatory sequential mixed method design. The study respondents were the 30 selected Senior High School students of Sta. Maria Integrated High School. They are members of Generation Z who were born in the years 1997 to 2015. The qualitative data for phase 1 were gathered through them. In phase 2, the non-Probability sampling was used to gather data from interviews, and the type of non-probability sampling for convenience sampling. The attributes of Gen-Zs in terms of interests, strength, financially-minded, in terms of being digital natives, visual learners, and in terms of their linguistic creativity attained the mean scores of 3.39, 3.82, 3.77, 4.23, 4.18, 2.92, and 3.57 with the SDs of 1.22, 0.99, 1.04, 0.79, 0.90, 1.33, and 0.99 respectively. The null hypothesis stating that there is no significant relationship between Gen ? Z?s characteristics to the level of Gen ? Z?s linguistic creativity in different social media platforms was rejected, which means there is a significant relationship between the Gen Zs characteristics and Gen Zs linguistic creativity and this call for an alternative hypothesis. This study recommends that there should be learning support for students learning through social media and online platforms to have their ethical standards in using social media. The teacher may teach the new generations about lexicology and word formation to make them aware of their language behavior. Also, teachers may use different platforms to cater to the needs of students in language learning, and they may not use or settle in using social media although social media is engaging for them. Lastly, future researchers may venture into more interviews and use a deeper approach in studying this kind of topic to have better and more accurate results.