History of English | 2015–2020 CE: Post-Truth, Disinformation and Online Literacy

Between 2015 and 2020 CE, the history of English entered a period of growing concern about the reliability of information circulating online. Oxford University Press selected post-truth as its Word of the Year for 2016; the Oxford English Dictionary recorded 19 additional Singapore English items in a 2016 update, including shiok and blur; UNESCO published a handbook on journalism, misinformation and disinformation in 2018; and Oxford chose climate emergency as its 2019 Word of the Year. These moments reveal two developments happening together: English was gaining more local voices, while readers were being asked to judge an increasingly crowded international information environment.

What changed in English between 2015 and 2020? Its basic grammar did not suddenly become unreliable. The challenge arose from the social conditions in which people encountered words. A confident headline, a cropped photograph or a repeated online claim might reach enormous audiences before its evidence was examined. At the same time, writers from many communities were expanding the visible range of English vocabulary and reminding dictionaries that a global language cannot be described adequately from one country.

The central principle is that fluency and repetition are not substitutes for evidence. A sentence can be grammatically correct and factually wrong. A local expression can be unfamiliar to overseas readers and still have a well-established meaning. A scientific finding may require careful qualifications even when a short social post rewards certainty. The learner’s job is to understand how confidence should be matched to what is actually known.

Follow the chronology: 2010–2015 CE: Emoji, Instagram, Selfies and Mobile Language · 2010–2020 CE: the decade overview · Master of English Language.

Begin with a sentence that everybody seems to know

Imagine opening your phone and seeing a short claim shared by several people. Each person presents the same sentence with confidence. After a while, it starts to feel familiar enough to be true.

But familiarity and verification are not the same event. All the posts may lead back to one unconfirmed story. The claim could have lost an essential date, an omitted condition or a statement that originally said ‘may’ rather than ‘will’.

A good reader asks where the words began, what the original source actually established and whether the different reposts offer genuinely independent evidence.

That critical skill is ancient in principle: historians comparing manuscripts also ask which copies depend on others. The modern difference is that the copies can circulate almost instantly and appear to come from an enormous number of voices.

2015: Images, short messages and global conversations

By 2015, smartphones and social platforms were familiar parts of communication for many people, though access varied. A public discussion might combine photographs, video, text, symbols and links. The intended audience could be local, yet the actual audience could extend internationally.

The more a message depends on shared context, the more vulnerable it becomes when detached from that context. A comment meant as a joke may look like a factual statement. A photograph may be interpreted as a record of today’s event even though it was taken years earlier.

English comprehension increasingly needed to include visual and contextual interpretation. The reader could not stop at understanding the literal sentence; they had to identify the relationship between that sentence and the media around it.

A language travels faster than cultural assumptions

Words and expressions used naturally in Singapore may be unfamiliar to someone reading in London, Lagos or Sydney. Conversely, a regional reference from an overseas article may make perfect sense locally and require explanation for a Singapore reader.

A global communication system creates opportunities for exchange. It also creates misunderstandings when everyone assumes their local meanings are universal.

This is not a reason to abandon regional English. It is a reason to become skilful at explaining context, choosing register and recognising that a word can carry different associations in different communities.

2016: Post-truth enters Oxford’s Word of the Year history

In 2016, Oxford University Press chose post-truth as a Word of the Year. Its later historical account explains that the choice reflected heightened public attention to situations in which appeals to emotion and personal belief could have greater influence than objective facts.

The term did not mean that the world had entered a period in which all claims were equally true. Nor did its selection imply that misinformation had suddenly appeared for the first time. Propaganda, rumour and deliberate deception have long histories.

Its usefulness was to name a concern in contemporary public discourse: when people judge a claim because it feels consistent with their identity or loyalties rather than because its evidence is strong, the normal tests of reliability can lose influence.

That is a human reasoning problem as well as a language problem. The careful response is not to replace one slogan with an opposing slogan. It is to examine the claim, the evidence, the uncertainty and the strongest alternative explanations.

The difference between a sincere error and an intentional falsehood

Suppose someone shares a misleading claim because they misunderstood an article. The information may be false, but the person’s intention might have been to help. Another person may know the claim is false and spread it deliberately.

Those cases are different. The words misinformation and disinformation are commonly used to distinguish false or misleading content shared without an intention to deceive from content deliberately created or distributed to mislead.

Intent can be difficult to establish. Readers should be cautious about declaring that an individual knowingly lied when the evidence proves only that the message was inaccurate.

This is why responsible English uses careful verbs. ‘The claim is unsupported’ describes an evidentiary problem. ‘The writer deliberately deceived readers’ adds a conclusion about intention that requires further proof.

2016: Oxford records more Singapore English vocabulary

The Oxford English Dictionary’s March 2016 update added 19 Singapore English items. Contemporary reports from CNA and The Straits Times documented entries including shiok, blur, ang moh and sabo, among others.

This development did not mean Singaporeans had begun saying those expressions only in 2016. A historical dictionary records usages that predate the moment an editor adds them. The process involves collecting examples of words in real contexts and deciding how the evidence supports a description.

Some expressions draw on Malay or Chinese languages. Others develop new senses from familiar English forms. Their histories show how linguistic contact can produce locally meaningful resources that do not fit neatly inside a narrow image of British or American English.

Recording a term in a dictionary also does not mean that the word is appropriate in every formal examination or professional letter. Lexical documentation and register guidance are different kinds of advice.

A dictionary becomes more accurate by learning from more communities

Consider the word shiok. An overseas reader may not know that it can express strong pleasure or describe an enjoyable experience. An explanatory dictionary entry provides that context and may trace historical connections with Malay usage.

That entry helps the reader understand a Singapore sentence rather than insisting that the local speaker must replace the expression before the sentence deserves attention.

The wider lesson is that a living dictionary should be willing to add evidence from regions and communities previously underrepresented. Standard English remains useful for communication across audiences, but the historical record of English is broader than any one formal standard.

2017: The reader must distinguish popularity from evidence

During the later 2010s, social platforms and video services could accelerate the circulation of messages, including those involving public affairs, consumer advice, health or science. Some messages were well supported; others combined a real event with an exaggerated or incorrect explanation.

The reader’s task was to avoid treating the number of shares as a vote on factual truth. A useful claim might spread widely because it answered an important question. A false claim might spread because it was surprising, emotional or easy to repeat.

To evaluate an online statement, begin at its earliest traceable source. Does it contain direct observation, a quotation, a study or merely another link repeating the same sentence? If it refers to research, is the interpretation faithful to the actual finding?

2018: UNESCO publishes a handbook for information disorder

In June 2018, UNESCO published Journalism, ‘Fake News’ & Disinformation, a handbook for journalism education and training edited by Cherilyn Ireton and Julie Posetti. It offered approaches to media and information literacy, fact-checking, social media verification and the different kinds of misleading information readers may encounter.

The publication is important because it turns a broad complaint about the internet into practical skills that people can learn. It does not assume that every reader must become a professional reporter. It shows that checking a source, understanding a claim and examining evidence are repeatable actions.

UNESCO also warned about treating the phrase ‘fake news’ as a precise technical category. It can be used so loosely that it obscures whether a claim involves inaccuracy, deliberate deception, satire or a disagreement over interpretation.

A precise student should therefore describe the actual problem instead of relying on a label that may mean different things to different audiences.

Fact-checking is not the same as finding a sentence that agrees with you

Imagine searching the internet for proof of a claim you already believe. You may find a page that repeats it. That page may copy another website, which copied a social post. The appearance of agreement tells us little unless the sources have independent evidence.

Better research asks what would make the claim false, what observation could test it and which source is best placed to know. For a historical date, a contemporary record may be valuable. For a scientific claim, research methods and findings matter. For a legal requirement, the actual current law is generally more useful than a casual summary.

One source is not ideal for every kind of question. Source selection is part of comprehension.

A photograph needs provenance, not just a caption

Suppose a picture circulates with the caption ‘This happened today’. It may show a real event while being misdated. Or the image may be from a different location, used to illustrate a similar situation.

The right reading response is to distinguish what the image depicts from what the caption asserts about time, place and cause. Those claims may need independent checking.

This is equally true of older historical photographs. A printed caption can be mistaken; a museum date may be a carefully supported estimate; a family recollection may need contextual corroboration. Digital speed has amplified the problem rather than invented it.

2019: Climate emergency becomes a Word of the Year

In 2019, Oxford University Press selected climate emergency as its Word of the Year. The publisher’s retrospective account describes heightened public attention to climate science, political response and environmental consequences.

The linguistic point is not that a dictionary alone settled scientific questions. It is that changing public concerns affect which expressions become prominent, how institutions frame their responses and what readers expect a term to mean.

Words such as risk, forecast, scenario and emergency carry different kinds of information. A forecast makes a claim about possible future conditions. An emergency label can also communicate urgency and prompt action. A reader should recognise both the evidentiary and rhetorical roles.

Accurate science communication requires clear description of the relevant evidence, qualifications and time frames. Emotional seriousness cannot replace those details, and technical accuracy need not require a needlessly difficult explanation.

How this changed the work of Singapore English learners

Students in Singapore were increasingly encountering English explanations across textbooks, social media, search results, videos and digital libraries. They needed to interpret local language alongside international sources while fulfilling formal curriculum expectations.

It is not enough to read fluently in one register and assume all information is equally credible. A student should know how to select suitable vocabulary for a composition, understand the evidentiary structure of a science explanation and judge whether a digital source can support a school research claim.

This is a connected capability. The same learner may practise comprehension, grammar, vocabulary, argument and source evaluation in one research task. Treating these as completely separate subjects can make learning harder than it needs to be.

Five practical habits for reading in the late 2010s

Distinguish: Is the sentence an observation, inference, opinion, prediction or instruction?
Attribute: Who actually originated the claim, and is the source identifiable?
Verify: What relevant records or independent evidence support it?
Calibrate: Does the writer express the correct level of certainty?
Communicate: Can I explain the result fairly without exaggerating or concealing its limits?

These habits are not designed to make readers suspicious of everything. They make trust more intelligent by matching confidence to the quality of the available evidence.

Questions readers often ask

Did misinformation begin in 2016? No. Rumours and deliberately misleading messages have long histories; the digital environment changed how rapidly they could spread.

Is post-truth the same as every statement being false? No. The term concerns situations where emotion and belief can outweigh objective evidence in shaping public opinion.

Did Singlish words become real only when Oxford recorded them? No. Dictionaries document established usage; they do not create a community’s language retroactively.

Are misinformation and disinformation identical? Both concern misleading information, but disinformation generally involves an intention to deceive.

Can a photograph serve as complete proof of a complex claim? Usually not. The image may need context, provenance and additional evidence.

Next: Fluency enters the machine-generated age

The next detailed chapter is 2020–2021 CE: Pandemic Words, Home-Based Learning and the New Classroom. For the wider period, see 2020–2026 CE: Pandemic Words, Generative AI and the Question of Trust. Continue the chronology through the Master of English Language.