December 20, 2022 · 11:32 am

Facilitating Internet Communication through Linguistic Innovations: A Final Analysis

Within the past few decades, the internet has grown exponentially as a way for people to communicate across both distance and time. Unlike a phone call, text messages and social media posts exist long after they are created. And unlike a letter in the mail, with its delay between sender and recipient, internet users can write to each other synchronously, allowing quick turnarounds in communication.

We might expect that language might shift or be adapted to better serve the users writing in this new context. Certainly, new vocabulary has been created to discuss this technology and how we use it, but new vocabulary is created with every change to technology, culture, or politics. Why would linguistic changes influenced by the internet be different than any other linguistic changes? The answer is that the internet is not only giving rise to new vocabulary, but to linguistic strategies and innovations that allow users to more successfully communicate through written text.

Limitations of Written Language

If we conceptualize written language as simply spoken language recorded visually, then by all accounts we should have no issues communicating online. But spoken language and written language are not simply the same thing in two different mediums. 

Written language cannot capture many features of spoken language, such as body language, facial expression, gestures, speed, tone, and volume (Crystal 23). We can say “yeah” in a hundred different ways with a hundred shades of meaning, but when written down these shades of meaning are lost. Standard written English does allow for some variation – “Yeah. Yeah! Yeah?” – but it’s far from comprehensive. Losing these nuances inhibits how clearly we’re able to communicate with each other in an informal conversation.

User-Created Solutions

The apparent solution to our problem, then, is to find a way to encode these non-lexical cues into written language so as to avoid miscommunications and misunderstandings. And internet users have slowly been doing just that. In some cases these encoded cues directly imitate speech, while in other cases they’re disconnected from spoken speech entirely (Haas 390, 395, Izazi 30). With this in mind, it is more accurate to describe language on the internet as “writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech rather than as speech which has been written down” (Crystal 21). 

Many of these cues help to facilitate communication by creating a sense of intimacy or familiarity between users. This is helpful, since the lack of verbal or nonverbal cues makes it difficult to establish rapport between users and to evaluate relationships between users. Establishing specific strategies to create intimacy then allows users to better evaluate whether an online correspondent is akin to a colleague, an acquaintance, or a friend. In turn, users then have some of the social context needed to determine the meaning of a message. 

Most if not all of these encoded cues buck the rules of formal written language. Informality, in general, conveys a sense of intimacy; informal language becomes disrespectful when it assumes a sense of intimacy that is inappropriate for the context (Darics 145). Additionally, the sometimes opaque rules surrounding the use of these various cues can create an in-group between those who understand and use these conventions and those who do not (McCulloch 148-149). This shared in-group identity can lead to further feelings of familiarity between users.

In short, these linguistic innovations are being used both to convey non-lexical information to readers and to create a shared sense of intimacy or camaraderie between users.

Typographical Innovations

Punctuation

Nonstandard use of punctuation to influence reader interpretations of messages has been recorded in English, Malay, Russian, and Slovene-speaking online communities (Crystal 63, Izazi 28, Novikova 77, 79, Šabec 7). These nonstandard uses are simply a broadening of punctuation’s standard function in written texts: to mark the flow of speech. In addition to showing readers where to pause or stop, punctuation can also be used to indicate information about the writer’s tone or intention. 

Periods may be the most infamous when it comes to punctuation being used in new, nonstandard ways. The ability to send multiple short messages rather than a single wall of text means periods are less needed as a stop between sentences. The intentional inclusion of an unnecessary period, then, indicates a sense of formality, which can be off putting in a conversation with someone the user has a fairly informal relationship with (McCulloch 113-114). On the other hand, a period in the middle of a sentence (“I would go but. I’m tired.”) is still nonstandard usage and does not carry this sense of formality. Rather, it functions to put emphasis on a certain word or to imitate a speech pattern. The reader is told how the utterance should be read and a feeling of informality or intimacy is affirmed. 

Using the exclamation mark in standard fashion, meanwhile, won’t send the wrong message to a reader. But in addition to its function of expressing excitement or emphasis, it is also used online to indicate warmth and sincerity; to be excited is to be sincere, after all (McCulloch 123-124). 

Other punctuation marks have also found new uses as markers of emphasis or tone. Ellipses (…) mark an author trailing off, while some users include a tilde (~) to mark sarcastic comments (McCulloch 112-113, 137). Asterisks (*), hashtags (#), and underscores (_) can emphasize text in both English and Russian-speaking contexts (Crystal 64, McCulloch 130, Novikova 71). Carrots (< >) and slashes (/) can be used to explicitly mark tone without including it in the main body of a message, as with  “<sarcasm>” or “/rant” (McCulloch 127). Although functions may differ slightly, we can see that these punctuation marks are used to provide the reader with information about the writer’s intentions, what they deem important, or their tone. 

Text Manipulation

Text manipulation (bolding, italics, underlining, color, size, etc) is often less accessible to online users. But that is not to say text manipulation is never used to convey non-lexical information. Russian users, for example, have used strikethrough text as a way to express their opinions while acknowledging these opinions are contrary to common societal views (Novikova 71). Strikethrough text is used for sections of opinions which are controversial, and users follow these sections with a milder form of the opinion. In the example “did the police readers recognize you…?” the user expresses self awareness of how ‘police’ might be reframed by other people as ‘readers’ (71). The author is thus able to express their opinion while acknowledging this opinion is controversial or otherwise not agreed upon. Although this does not perfectly reflect spoken speech, where such a sentiment might be conveyed through tone, an eye roll, or a gesture, the strikethrough text is able to perform the same discursive function.

Spelling

Abbreviations, shortened words, and other nonstandard spellings seem to be fairly common, having been found in data from Arabic, English, Malay, and Russian-speaking users (Fenianos 68, Haas 386, Izazi 22, Novikova 72). These spellings may be used to indicate informality, to cut down on keystrokes, or to “suggest pronunciation or…to draw attention to associations between…ways of pronouncing words and certain regional and cultural dialects” (Haas 386). 

Nonstandard spelling can also serve other uses; for example, English, Malay, and Russian-speaking users can use full capitalization or lengthened words with repeated letters to convey both emotion and emphasis (Crystal 63, Darics 142-143, Izazi 25, 27-28, McCulloch 115, Novikova 71). Meanwhile, Malay users misspell words to create a sense of playfulness; since Malay spelling is phonetic, these misspelled words invoke humorous sounding pronunciations (Izazi 26). 

Arabic-speaking users, meanwhile, can take nonstandard spelling a step further by using Arabizi, an informal way of writing Arabic with the Latin alphabet (Davies 75-76). There are no standard spellings in this user-created system (Vavichkina 204). Arabizi users in Morocco have expressed hesitation around using it with older people or peers whom they don’t know well. This suggests that the informality of Arabizi also carries a sense of intimacy or familiarity that would be impolite or uncomfortable to impose on strangers (Davies 76).

Word Choice

In addition to choices of how to type, users must also decide what to type. 

Sound words (like ‘haha’ to indicate laughter) are used by both English and Malay-speaking users to convey action or emotion to readers (Izazi 23, Tagliamonte 15). These sound words can express genuine amusement or be used in more sarcastic or ironic manners; in either case, they allow users to replicate an aspect of spoken language (or, more precisely, the function of those aspects) (Izazi 24). 

Some words convey emotion in a way that is much more disjointed from spoken language. One of these, the keysmash, is a nonsensical string of letters that serves as an expression of an emotion like excitement, shock, or confusion (Izazi 25). Unlike ‘haha’, ‘adjlklfojfl’ or the like is not meant to be an actual transcription of a sound people are making. Rather, the chaotic and disjointed visual of the keysmash refects the messiness of the emotion being conveyed. Alternatively, as the name suggests, the emotion being conveyed is so overwhelming that the sender could not focus enough on the keyboard to type out a lexically meaningful message.

Other words may communicate very little information. Response tokens, for instance, are filler messages or phatic words or phrases (‘lol’, ‘wow’) that appear fairly frequently in samples of text-messages (Fenianos 68-69, Haas 392, 395, Tagliamonte 15-16). Response tokens do not communicate new information, but simply acknowledge or display interest in messages sent by other participants in the conversation. The back and forth of a conversation can thereby be sustained.

Linguistic Identities

Language choice can also express identity, and in turn establish intimacy through a shared identity. Accents, after all, are clearly apparent in a face to face conversation and can allow speakers to quickly identify whether the speaker is part of a linguistic in-group or not. The use of a specific language or a change in spelling marks the user as bring from a specific geographic location and similarly allows them to find other individuals who speak their language or dialect (Ferguson 132, 138, 140). In turn, users develop a sense of intimacy based on their shared linguistic and regional identity (147).

For example, speakers of dialects from Northern England may choose to specifically encode features of their spoken speech into their tweets to assert their linguistic/regional identity (Nini 286-287). In one sample of tweets from Northern England, “clear geographical patterns” were detected for most of the dialectal spellings, despite these spellings being fairly infrequent (276). The overall infrequency of the spelling variants suggests that users who do use these variants are choosing to use them intentionally. 

Similarly, some Malay Twitter users use English as the primary language in their tweets but still may include makan, a Malay word used in informal greetings (Izazi 21). Makan is not being used because it has no English translation, but because it is tied to Malay identity for members of that linguistic in-group (31).

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Moroccan users of Arabizi only use it with other Moroccans, thus making it an inherent marker of Moroccan identity whose usage indicates a shared context with the reader (Davies 76). Similarly, Saudi youth have been found to view Arabizi as “a strong marker of Arab youth identity and group solidarity” (Vavichkina 199).

Sakha Spelling

The choice to use Sakha, a language spoken in  northeastern Russia, is itself an assertion of ethnic and linguistic identity, since many Sakha speakers are bilingual in Russian due to generations of attempted assimilation (Ferguson 134, 143). But some speakers of Sakha are also using nonstandard spellings online to indicate their particular dialectal identity (131, 134-135). Specifically, some dialects of Sakha will pronounce a word-initial ‘s’ as ‘h’ when it is following a word that ends with a vowel, so speakers of these dialects will spell words with an initial ‘h’ rather than an initial ‘s’. The Sakha ‘h’ is not present in Russian phonology, so this change in spelling also lets writers further distance themselves from the Russian language (141). This is also evidenced by the fact that some users will overcorrect their writing, using word-inital ‘h’ in place of ‘s’ where it would not actually occur in spoken speech (141). So, although on the surface the ‘h’ spellings are meant to imitate spoken speech, in actuality they function more as markers of ethnic and linguistic identity. 

But this spelling change is not used by all Sakha-speaking users. Not all dialects of Sakha include the ‘s’ to ‘h’ change, and its use in writing is not sanctioned by any official Sakha language groups (140). As a result, Sakha speakers without this dialectal difference may view these users as seeking their own unique identity rather than participating in a unified Sakha identity, which can lead to conflict (139). Ultimately, users must decide whether the potential intimacy with other speakers of their dialect is worth the bad feelings that might arise with other speakers outside of the dialect.

Emoji and Emoticon

Emoji and emoticons have been adopted as another means of clarifying communication in synchronous conversations for users writing in languages as different as English, Arabic, and Chinese (Dresner 261, Haas 396, McCulloch 188). They can allow writers to convey their intentions, body language, or add context to the written message. This additional information helps guide readers to the writer’s intended meaning, thus creating a sense of intimacy between the sender and receiver. (Al-Rashdi 125). 

The Emotion Function

On the most basic level, we could say that these symbols represent facial expressions, and thus emotion (Dresner 250). So, writers are then able to convey emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, or disgust to their readers (Al Rashdi 119). However, the “emoticon = emotion” reading doesn’t explain some uses of emoji or emoticon, like in “Stayed up all night working, I’m so tired right now :)”, which indicates that although emoji and emoticon may at times serve to convey emotion, this is not their only function.

The Intention Function

We can explain the above problematic example by recognizing that another function of emoji and emoticon is to convey a sender’s intentions (Al-Rashdi 120, Dresner 255-256). This is reflected by how the earliest emoticon, :-), was first used in 1982 to mark statements of humor (McCulloch 178). Over time, this emoticon would also come to be used as a marker of general positive sentiment or sincerity (178).

This early usage indicates that emoticons can be used to make utterances less threatening or serious (Dresner 258).  This is further illustrated by emoticons like the winking face, which, as in spoken conversation, can indicate some insincerity on behalf of the speaker, as with “I’m blaming you ;)” in contrast to “I’m blaming you”.

Emoji are also used to clarify intentions in non-English contexts, such as with the example of “doge”, an emoji depicting a shiba inu which is popular on Chinese social media site Weibo (Xiong 653). It can be used to indicate humor or irony, despite the emoji itself not having a clear visual connection to either (654). The emoji not only clarifies a writer’s intentions (ie, joking) but also changes the meaning of the message by indicating it is on some level insincere. Users will also add doge to messages to indicate that they are uninterested in debating a topic further, accompanied by the phrase “doge save my life” (655). Again, the combination of emoji and text clarifies the user’s intentions to state their opinion, and not to initiate an argument. Doge can be used not only to avoid conflict, but to soften it; accompanying an opinionated message with doge indicates the message is being sent in good faith, thus minimizing the possibility of the message being interpreted as aggressive (655). 

In general, doge is being used to indicate a kind of good-faith playfulness between users, although the exact meaning conveyed by the emoji depends on the specific context it appears in (657). Thus, as with other emoji and emoticons, it serves to facilitate communication between users by conveying their intentions and downplaying potentially threatening utterances.

The Gestural Function

Several authors have suggested that emoji and emoticon function as replacements for the gestures we use in face to face conversation (Dresner 260, Logi 4, McCulloch 157). Using this approach, we can categorize emoji in the same way we categorize gestures: as either emblems or illustrative (McCulloch 161-162, 166).

Emblem gestures have a fixed form and meaning (161-162). A thumbs up or down, the middle finger, and the ok symbol have a fixed form and standard meaning. These examples also all happen to have corresponding emoji, which can be used to symbolize these gestures in a written message (Al-Rashdi 122-123). The various flag emojis could also be called emblems, since they are representing a country or identity and their meaning doesn’t change in different contexts; people aren’t using a thumbs up to point to a previous message or using the Canadian flag to represent maple trees. Emblem emojis can also be repeated, representing a repeated or drawn-out action. Multiple thumbs-up could represent emphatic agreement or holding a thumbs-up for an extended period of time, while multiple kissing face emojis could symbolize blowing multiple kisses (McCulloch 171). 

 Illustrative emoji represent illustrative or co-speech gestures, which lack a fixed form or meaning and are used to support and reinforce speech (166). These are the undefined gestures we use to indicate size, place, direction of movement, and so on in our everyday conversations. Illustrative emoji do the same thing by reinforcing the subject and mood of a sentence; “Happy birthday!” becomes more celebratory when paired with the balloon emoji, cake emoji and present emoji, for example (Al-Rashdi 121, McCulloch 167). Unlike emblem emoji, the cake emoji or present emoji sent on its own or with different text would not necessarily convey the same celebratory tone (Logi 5). Illustrative emoji can also be used as response tokens to signify that the other participant is reading the conversation and continues to be interested in it, similarly to how eye contact, a nod, or a “hmm” might be used in spoken conversations to show active listening (Al-Rashdi 122, McCulloch 189).

Contextual Functions

In addition to conveying emotion, clarifying a user’s intentions, or appearing alongside words or phrases to reinforce their literal meaning, emoji can also be used to add additional contextual information to a message. This could be related to how a message is delivered, like pairing text with a microphone emoji to indicate a sense of loudness (Al-Rashdi 120). But they can also be used to give information about the referent or situation being discussed. The message “Me & my worst frenemy” paired with a heart emoji indicates a specific affectionate attitude towards the referent (‘frenemy’) that we could not necessarily obtain from just the text or emoji on their own (Logi 19). In a similar vein, the message “I can see how ‘interested’ everyone is”  gains additional meaning if it is paired with a cellphone, indicating that the mentioned disinterest involves people being distracted on their phones (18). Unlike the illustrative emoji mentioned above, these emoji are not reinforcing speech so much as contextualizing it; without the emoji, readers would come away with different interpretations of the text.

Syntactic Innovations

Some nonstandard syntax is being used online as a way to create intimacy between users. These structures play with the expectations of what interpersonal communication should look like by blurring the line between public and private expressions. Public expressions communicate something for a listener or audience (“I am in my room”), while private expressions are simply expressions of the speaker’s subjective experience (“in room”) (Kanetani 3). By making increased usage of private expressions, users invite their audience to adopt their perspective in order to fully understand the message they’re intending to convey (20).

These structures serve different purposes within sentences, from connecting cause and effect to making requests or expressing wishes. However, they all seem to be performing the same function within a larger discourse: creating intimacy between the author and their audience by inviting the audience into the author’s mind, thereby bridging both a gap in comprehension and a gap of literal distance between users (De Benito 32, Kanetani 22).

Because-X

Because-x is a nonstandard use of ‘because’ which allows it to directly precede interjections, bare nouns, adjectives, and verbs (Okada 719-720).  This can be illustrated in examples like “I’m studying because test” or “He agreed because yeah”. 

In standard use, ‘because’ links two clauses that describe an effect and that effect’s cause respectively (724). In “she went for a walk because the weather was nice,” the nice weather is the cause and going for a walk is the effect. We could also word this “she went for a walk because of the nice weather”, where we use ‘because of’ since our second clause is simply a noun phrase and lacks verbs.  

However, with because-x we can say “she went for a walk because weather” without using ‘of’, even though x (“weather”) is a noun phrase. We also see that “weather” is a bare noun; it has no determiners or adjectives attached to it (720). Why can we do this?

Kanetani argues that x allows for bare nouns and other categories of words because x is functioning as a private expression within the larger public expression of the complete sentence (3, 8). X doesn’t need to be specified with determiners or conjugation because the writer already knows what and who they are referring to. 

We can only understand the meaning of x by adopting the writer’s perspective and experience. Additionally, this private expression we are interpreting exists within a larger public expression; we know that we are meant to see this and we aren’t intruding on someone’s private thoughts. The author, by using this structure, is assuming that a reader can figure out what they’re intending to communicate (22). So the writer is creating a sense of intimacy both by using a private expression and by establishing they trust that the reader can correctly interpret the writer’s message.

X-siro+kudasai

X-siro+kudasai is an emerging syntactic structure among Japanese forum users (Naya 65). Kudasai is a Japanese politeness marker, somewhat equivalent to English ‘please’, and in standard Japanese follows verbs ending in -te (63). In X-siro+kudasai, kudasai follows the imperative (used to command or to order) form of a verb (-siro being the imperative ending). This creates a contrast between the polite kudasai and the more impolite imperative verbs. 

The structure itself is used to express indirect requests (65-66). Making requests is not something new – there are two ways to express requests in standard Japanese – but the standard request structures carry a sense of formality (67). Users decided these standard structures would be too formal for conversations on these online forums; since there is a sense of camaraderie between the users, writing formally would orient the author as more of an outsider (69). But using only the imperative form would feel rude. Users making requests didn’t want to make demands of someone who couldn’t fulfill their request; furthermore, imperative forms would again disrupt the camaraderie between users since they carry a connotation of authority or dominance (70). X-siro+kudasai acts as a compromise to avoid rudeness while maintaining the informal nature of the situation (69). 

The x in this structure, like the x of because-x, also functions as a private expression which “expresses the mental state of the writer”, while the addition of kudasai marks the expression as being a public expression for an audience (73). The structure as a whole serves as an expression of desire, while the request is an implied secondary meaning (73-75). In other private expressions in Japanese the imperative functions in a similar way, to express a desire or a wish rather than a command (74). Thus, it seems that the x-siro+kudasai structure is indeed another example of a private expression within a larger public expression, where readers must adopt the author’s perspective to understand the intended meaning and what interactions the author is hoping to initiate.

Ojalá

Another syntactic innovation can be seen with ojalá, a fixed Spanish expression which does not conjugate for person or tense, which roughly means “I wish” or “I hope”. It can be used on its own or can take a subordinate clause with a subjunctive verb, as in the example “Ojalá que lo del Madrid sea un mal sueño”, or “I hope that what’s happened with Real Madrid was a bad dream” (De Benito 21-22). But you could not say, for instance, “Ojalá un libro nuevo”, which would read like “I wish a new book”. 

But some Spanish Twitter users have started saying using the expression in that manner, as in the examples “Ojalá unas terceras elecciones”, ‘I wish [for] third eleccions’, and “Ojalá estar viajando constantemente”, ‘I wish [I] were constantly traveling’ (22-23).

Interestingly, we can explain some of these examples by viewing them as public or private utterances. A sentence like “Ojalá encerrada con Aston Kutcher en un ascensor”, “I wish [I were] locked with Ashton Kutcher in an elevator”, drops an explicit subject (27). Although ojalá takes a clause without any explicit subject, users successfully interpreted this message to mean the speaker wished they themself were locked in an elevator (28). As in because-x, the author does not need to specify a subject because this is a private expression expressing their own desires. Ojalá, then, may be acting similarly to kudasai in x-siro+kudasai, and making this private expression public. However, this explanation does not explain every nonstandard instance of ojalá, so further research and analysis is needed.

Final Thoughts

Although we recognize that online communities are excellent places to discover emerging vocabulary or grammatical errors, what has been overlooked is the pragmatic aspect of language on the internet, and how users are adapting standard linguistic features and creating new linguistic strategies to communicate more clearly with one another. As shown in the examples here, they have taken the formal and disembodied varieties of their respective languages and adapted them to convey all those verbal and nonverbal cues we find in spoken language: emotion, emphasis, tone, gesture, regional identity, feelings of familiarity, and more.

There is still plenty of research left to be done on this subject, especially with linguistic communities who speak languages other than English. But I hope that we are now beginning to move past lists of abbreviations found in text messages and tweets and towards deeper analyses of why people are making these linguistic choices and how these choices impact and function within a larger discourse.

 

References

Al Rashdi, Fathiya. “Functions of emojis in WhatsApp interaction among Omanis”, Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 117-126, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.07.001. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Darics, Erika. “Non-verbal signalling in digital discourse: The case of letter repetition.” Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 2, no. 3, 2013, pp. 141-148, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.07.002. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

Davies, Eirlys. “Colloquial Moroccan Arabic: Shifts in Usage and Attitudes in the Era of Computer-Mediated Communication.” Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Yasir Suleiman, edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2018, pp. 69–89. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1tqxb42.10.

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December 1, 2022 · 12:04 am

Supplemental: Conveying Non-Verbal Information Online

We have previously seen how different expressive features can help users to convey meaning in a message – be it literal meaning, tone or emphasis. But as we learned, emojis can help to express non-verbal information like facial expressions or gesture. But are emojis used in non-English contexts? Furthermore – are they being used in languages who are far removed from English in terms of language family and script? And are there other ways for people to convey non-verbal information in online contexts?

 

Emoji in a Chinese-speaking Context

To answer the first question: yes, emoji are being used in non-English contexts. Let’s take the example of the “doge” emoji, a popular emoji on Chinese social media site Weibo (Xiong 653). The “doge” emoji, likely inspired by the older “doge” internet meme, depicts a shiba inu looking sideways. This one little picture can be used in several different ways. 

Firstly, doge can be used to indicate humor. Unlike laughing face emoji, the doge emoji does not look particularly amused. But users have collectively decided that the presence of the doge emoji is a visual marker that the accompanying text is making a joke (654). In a similar vein, users will add doge to messages where they are expressing irony (654). So this emoji is not only used to clarify a writer’s intentions (ie, joking) but also to change the meaning of the message by indicating they are not speaking sincerely.

Adding on to this broad function of doge as being able to downplay utterances, users will also add doge to messages to indicate that they are uninterested in debating a topic further (655). This will often also be accompanied by the lexical phrase “doge save my life”. I find this usage interesting because I believe it’s the first example we’ve seen of an emoji being used to head off or prevent further communication with the writer. But, at the same time it could also be considered a variation of the clarification function. The writer is using doge to clarify their intentions as simply wanting to state their opinion, not to initiate an argument. Doge can be used not only to avoid conflict, but to soften it. Users disagreeing on which pudding they think tastes best can add the doge emoji to their messages to indicate their good faith intentions, and thus minimizing the possibility of their message coming across as aggressive (655). 

The example of doge shows us that emoji not only exist in non-English contexts, but seem to have similar functions to many English emoji. Far from being simply illustrative or having a narrow fixed meaning, doge’s meaning and exact purpose differ depending on context (657). But, crucially, these various functions help to facilitate communication between users by conveying intention and downplaying potentially threatening utterances. We can say, in general, that doge is being used to indicate a kind of good-faith playfulness between users. This kind of feeling would be accessible to people when they are speaking face to face, but is lost when the conversation is reduced to writing. The addition of doge helps to reestablish such an atmosphere for users.

 

Emoji in an Arabic-Speaking Context

Emoji are also being used by Arabic-speakers for a variety of functions. Al Rashdi’s 2018 study looks specifically at two WhatsApp groups being used by Omani Arabic speakers, which resulted in a sample of 42,037 words and 4369 emoji (when counting duplicate emoji as one) (117-118).

The first function of emoji Al Rashdi describes is the indication of emotion (119). Group participants used faces with various expressions to indicate their happiness, sadness, or frustration in relation to the written messages they were sending. This function is also found in English emoji usage.

Beyond indicating emotion, emoji could also be used to contextualize a message (120). Writers added emoji to their messages to clarify their intentions and make messages less threatening and more playful (20). One user, when pointing out another user’s grammatical errors, adding a emoji blowing a kiss to his message to clarify that he was not criticizing the other user so much as teasing him. This aligns with Herring’s analysis of emoticon, as discussed in Week 6. Emoji could also contextualize a message by illustrating volume via the use of the megaphone emoji (120). This specific use is infrequent in English, which may be explained by the fact that Arabic does not have capital/lower-case letters. Capitalization can be used by English-speaking users to indicate loudness, but Arabic-speaking users would need to find an alternative. 

Emoji can also carry a sense of action or gesture. In the context of a WhatsApp group welcoming a new member, a string of confetti emoji can act as a replacement for the excitement, enthusiasm or physical actions (hugs, handshakes, approaching the new member, applause, etc) that might take place in a similar situation in real life (121). More concrete gestures, like the thumbs-up/down to express approval or disapproval, can also be shown through emoji (122). Emoji can also be used to signal the opening or closing of a conversation via a waving emoji or a face blowing a kiss, both of which are literal depictions of gestures used in spoken conversation to greet or say goodbye to a person (123).

Users may also send emoji as a way to signal their actions or their presence in a conversation. In a spoken conversation we are aware of who our conversational partners are and whether they’re paying attention to what we’re saying. When communicating online we have no way of knowing whether someone is viewing the conversation while we are, and whether someone has seen a message and is choosing not to respond. At the same time, a person may not always have something they want to add to the conversation. Emoji are a happy medium by which a person can signal they have seen a message. Some of the studied users sent emoji as a way to respond to thanks or compliments, in the same way that a wordless smile or a nod might be used in spoken conversations (122). For the Omani users, emoji could be used to indicate that a group member had seen a message and followed what it had said (in this example, it was a challenge/request to repeat a certain prayer) (124). In these cases, the emoji themselves may not carry any meaning linked to their appearance. The sunflower emoji the Omani users sent to affirm they had completed the prayer challenge could have been replaced with any other emoji without changing the meaning (so long as the other group members were in agreement on the choice of emoji). 

The functions of emojis in this Omani sample seem to be similar to the ones we have seen for English and Chinese emoji. They often seem to be used to communicate non-verbal information such as facial expression and emotion, intention, gesture, or even simply presence. The motivation for using emoji, then, is likely the same as for other linguistic communities: it helps bridge the information gap between spoken conversation and written communication, as well as creating a sense of camaraderie, involvement, or intimacy between group members (125). 

 

Letter Repetition: Another Way to Convey Emotion

We’re moving back to English for this last piece. Specifically, we’re taking a more in depth look at letter repetition, to show that emoji are not the only way we can convey non-verbal information to one another.

Non-verbal cues like emoji and letter repetition are context dependent; their meaning is shaped by what has previously occurred in the exchange and what text or other media they are accompanying (Darics 142). Something like letter repetition is recognized as signaling something, but that something is not fixed (142). Gestures, body movement, and facial expression are also context-dependent and have their meaning shaped by the speech they accompany, so it’s not unreasonable to say that letter repetition could carry extralinguistic information in the same way those embodied signals do (143). 

What exactly counts as ‘context’? Context, according to Darics, can be defined from two perspectives. The first is that context is created via interaction, and the second is that context is “a set of a priori conditions that affect interactions” (143). In this case, these ‘a priori conditions’ are things like environmental factors or societal knowledge; things that people already have knowledge of when they enter into a conversation with another person (143). So we determine the meaning of a context-dependent factor by drawing on both our knowledge of what has been established in the interaction and our wider knowledge of the socio-cultural meanings such context-dependent factors might carry.

Letter repetition, as we’ve previously discussed, is an expression of non-standard orthography; it’s a way of writing that doesn’t conform to agreed-upon formal standards of writing (144). Traditionally, researchers have approached letter repetition as if it has a direct link to oral language; repeated letters indicate a drawn out pronunciation of those letters (144). But, as we’ve noted in previous posts, some repeated letters are physically impossible to pronounce, as with plosive consonants like ‘bbbbbbb’ or silent letters like the ‘e’ in ‘cuteeeeeee’. Thus, we must conclude that letter repetitions “do not necessarily correlate with the stress or elongation of the spoken versions of manipulated words” (144). Rather, we can now approach repetition through the function it is playing during interactions. 

Letter repetition seems to carry an element of “emotional involvement of affect” (145). Take, for instance, an interaction between two users who work together in which one is says she is excited about a new template she created, because now “every[th]ing should take alllllllllllllllloooooooooooootttttt less time” (144). The repetition emphasizes ‘a lot’ in the phrase “take a lot less time”, which we know from context is why she is excited about this new template. Thus, the repetition further expresses her excitement by emphasizing the cause for excitement. Darics agrees, saying the repetition is acting as “an aid for conversational partners about how the verbal messages should be interpreted” (145). 

Repetition, as a non-standard element, also invokes a sense of informality. Use of repetition, then, can indicate a desire for a less formal interaction, thus creating feelings of intimacy (145). In some cases, only one participant in an interaction may use repetition (145). In Darics’ example of a conversation between a boss and an employee, the boss uses letter repetition while the employee does not, maintaining a more formal writing style. Here, the boss’ use of repetition allows her to come across as less formal and therefore less threatening to her employee. At the same time, the employee is not downplaying her messages with informal elements like repetition. These two people are then able to invoke (although perhaps not create) a more equal relationship than they have in reality. This reflects work dynamics we may see in real life, where a boss may use a friendly tone or joke around in order to bridge the power gap between them and their employees. The boss/employee conversation further emphasizes to us the importance of viewing repetition in context; what looks like a mismatch of style is actually informed by the power dynamics between these individuals outside of their online communication. 

The invocation of informality and subsequent creation of intimacy via letter repetition appears to be a feature shared across the examples provided by Darics. So, although repetition may be used for slightly different purposes within different contexts, it does appear to be used to convey non-verbal information that users would obtain through embodied actions in a face to face conversation. However, Darics notes further study will be needed to better understand all the reasons users may choose to use repetition and what effects it has on interpersonal conversations.

 

Conclusion

These three pieces illustrate that English-speaking users are not the only ones trying to convey non-verbal information in their online conversations. More than that, using emoji for this function appears to be true across these three very different languages with very different scripts. But what English, Chinese, and Arabic have in common is that their written form cannot, on its own, capture the intricacies and nuances inherent to spoken speech. All three linguistic communities, then, need to find ways to convey these nuances in order to communicate successfully – and as we have seen, they have indeed found some (imperfect) ways to do so. 

 

References

Al Rashdi, Fathiya. “Functions of emojis in WhatsApp interaction among Omanis”, Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 117-126, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.07.001.

Darics, Erika. “Non-verbal signalling in digital discourse: The case of letter repetition.” Discourse, Context & Media, vol. 2, no. 3, 2013, pp. 141-148, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2013.07.002.

Xiong, Simin. “Pragmatic Function of the “Doge” Emoji on Weibo.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, vol. 637, 2022, https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220131.120.

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November 30, 2022 · 12:04 am

Supplemental: Online Morphosyntactic Innovations in Other Languages

After learning about Because-X, I was on the hunt to find more syntactic innovations that were unique to the internet. Specifically, I was looking for innovations in other languages. And I was able to find two articles for this week – one focusing on a Japanese structure, and one focusing on some innovations in Spanish. 

 

Kudasai & Making Requests

Kudasai is a Japanese politeness marker. We can consider it to be equivalent to English ‘please’. In standard Japanese it can follow verbs ending in -te (63). But people started to notice it being used in a new way online. In this nonstandard usage kudasai was following an imperative verb (A verb form used to command or to order, like “Sit!” or “Pass me the salt” in English). As in English, imperative verbs are used in specific situations, and are rude to use outside of those situations. A parent can tell a child “sit down!” but it’s not socially acceptable for a child to tell an adult “sit down”. So we have a very interesting context here of combining an imperative verb with ‘please’. 

This specific structure (called X-siro+kudasai, siro being the ending of an imperative verb) was being used to express indirect requests on various online forums (65). These requests could involve asking for someone to correct answers or give advice on buying a computer. A few examples were not indirect requests, but simply expressed the emotion of the speaker, such as the message “Please release a new game software rather than making the game into an anime” (66). Obviously, none of the forum users (as far as the poster was aware) were involved in developing video games, so this is more of a rhetorical request.

But why was this structure being used? After all, there are already two ways to express requests in standard Japanese (67). Naya suggests that these polite forms of making a request would be too formal for conversations on these online forums. There is a sense of camaraderie between the users, and using this formal form would feel out of place, and orient the speaker as more of an outsider (69). At the same time, the relationship between the speaker and the readers is ambiguous. The speaker doesn’t know which readers can fulfill their request, and going by general rules of conversation we should only make requests if we expect that the addressee can fulfill them (70). So using only the imperative form would feel rude, since it’s both flouting this social rule and it is placing the speaker in a position of authority where they are allowed to use such forms. X-siro+kudasai seems to be a compromise between the informality of the situation and the desire to still maintain some politeness (69). 

Within the x-siro+kudasai structure, Naya argues the imperative functions as a private expression which “expresses the mental state of the writer”, while the addition of kudasai makes the expression public (73). This aligns with the discussion from Supplemental: Because-X, where we explained that in Japanese expressions are private by default and require some sort of marking to become public expressions. However, kudasai is working slightly differently in this setting than addressee-oriented expressions normally do (73). Rather than marking the message as being intended for an audience which can fulfill the request, kudasai is marking that the message is being oriented toward readers (73). The sentence as a whole is meant to serve as an expression of desire, with the request being an implied secondary meaning (73-75). This lines up with how the imperative functions in other private expressions in Japanese – as a desire or a wish, rather than a command (74). Thus, it seems like the x-siro+kudasai structure is indeed another example of a private expression within a larger public expression. 

 

Spanish Innovations

The piece by De Benito Moreno covered three different types of new morphosyntactic (word construction and sentence construction) innovations within Spanish-speaking online context. 

The first is the extension of suffixes, specifically -í. In Standard Spanish, -í is a diminutive and affectionate prefix that can be added to proper names, common nouns, and adjectives (15). Examples include Marí (from María), papí (from papa, father) and rubí (from rubio, blond)(15). But some Twitter users are extending the -í suffix to other types of words, like greetings (‘holí’ from ‘hola’, hello) and verbs (‘te quieri muchi’, rather than the standard ‘te quiero mucho’, I love you) (17, 19). In standard usage, the -í suffix is used to connote a sense of affection for the referent (‘Marí’shows affection for María and so on) but ‘quieri’ isn’t showing affection toward the actual action of loving. Rather, it is giving the entire message an affectionate tone or showing affection for the object of that verb, ‘te’ (you) (19). 

The second innovation is the re-categorization of fuerte, ‘strong’,  as an adverb. In standard Spanish fuerte can only be used with a few categories of verbs, those being verbs describing speech and verbs describing movement/contact (“hablar fuerte”, speak loudly; “apretar fuerte”, press hard)(20). Twitter users are now extending fuerte to verbs of all types, including those describing abstract concepts like pensar, to think, and saber, to know (20-21).

The third innovation, which is perhaps the most interesting, regards how users have been using ojalá. Ojalá is a fixed Spanish expression, roughly meaning ‘I wish’ or ‘I hope’.  It does not conjugate for person or tense, and can be used on its own or it can take a subordinate clause with a subjunctive verb (21-22).  For example, you could say “Ojalá que lo del Madrid sea un mal sueño”, or ‘I hope that what’s happened with Real Madrid was a bad dream” (22). But you could not say ‘Ojalá un libro nuevo’, or ‘I wish a new book’. Well, at least you could not say that previously. Twitter users have been using ojalá in more innovative ways (22-23). Take the examples “Ojalá unas terceras elecciones”, ‘I wish [for] third eleccions’, or “Ojalá estar viajando constantemente”, ‘I wish I were constantly traveling’ (23). In this way, ojalá is acting similar to because-x in that we have a structure which is now being used to connect clauses in a non-standard way.

What I find especially interesting is how we can also explain some ojalá structures and their meanings by viewing them as public or private utterances. In some of these innovative ojalá uses, a subject can be omitted, as in the tweet “Ojalá encerrada con Aston Kutcher en un ascensor”, “I wish [I were] locked with Ashton Kutcher in an elevator” (27). Despite there being no verbs or other markers in the sentence indicating a first person reading, Twitter users interpret this message as expressing the desires of the speaker despite the subject not being explicitly noted (28). This is very similar to the argument that because-x functions as a private utterance expressing the perspective of the speaker. However, unlike because-x or kudasai, ojalá does not seem to be creating a private expression within a larger public expression here. I am also unsure whether the use of ojalá here is marking the message as a private expression, or whether the private nature of these tweets with dropped subjects is simply coincidental. 

De Benito Moreno suggests that users continue to use these innovations because they create a feeling of familiarity between users (32). Affectionate suffixes aren’t often used in formal writing, after all. And if we do think that ojalá involves a private expression, similar to that of because-x, we can also say that ojalá serves a similar function of creating a sense of intimacy between participants, because the reader must adopt the speaker’s perspective in order to understand the meaning of the sentence. But this may not be true of all cases of ojalá, so future analysis may be needed.

However, the argument that these innovations serve to create familiarity does not fully explain the extended usage of fuerte, which to my knowledge does not have any specific connotations indicating informality or friendliness. We could perhaps argue that abstract verbs can be emphasized in face to face conversations with tone, body language, and so on that aren’t available in digital dialogues. So the extension of fuerte to abstract verbs was a way to extend an already present strategy of emphasis. But this still doesn’t clearly link it to creation of familiarity. Again, future analysis is needed to determine whether fuerte is part of strategies of creating intimacy online, or if it is serving some other function. 

 

Conclusion

If these two pieces are any proof, we can see that new syntactic structures are arising in online contexts. Between kudasai, ojalá, and because-x, we can also see that these structures cover a variety of meanings and purposes, from connecting cause and effect to making requests to expressing wishes. But what all three have in common is that they are being used in interpersonal communication and they play with the intimacy being created or violated between the author and their audience. This further supports Kanetani’s suggestion that because-x and similar structures are arising due to a particular need to bridge the geographic and emotional distance involved with digital communication. 

 

References

De Benito Moreno, Carlota. “‘The Spanish of the Internet’: Is That a Thing?: Discursive and Morphosyntactic Innovations in Computer Mediated Communication.” English and Spanish: World Languages in Interaction, edited by Danae Perez et al., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. 258–286.

Naya, Ryohei. “An Innovative Use of Kudasai in Social Networking Services.”Annals of “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University: Linguistics,Literature and Methodology of Teaching, vol. 17, no. 1, 2017, pp. 62–78.

 

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November 29, 2022 · 7:13 pm

Supplemental: Because-X

If you’re a young person who is regularly on the internet, you’ve probably seen the because-x construction. Because reasons, because sleep, because language – there are a multitude of examples. On the surface, the structure looks like it’s just a simplification of how we usually use because. “I’m studying because of the test” becomes “I’m studying because test” (Okada 719). But there’s actually more to this construction than meets the eye. However, in order to explain what makes because-x so interesting, we’ll have to learn a bit about Japanese – but we’ll come back to that in a bit.

 

Because vs Because-X

First, backing up, what makes because-x different from standard uses of because? In standard use because links two clauses that describe an effect and that effect’s cause respectively (724). “She went for a walk because the weather was nice,” involves two actions, one of which is causing the other: the nice weather causes her to go on a walk. Similarly, we can say “she went for a walk because of the nice weather”, although we need to use “because of” to link the two clauses, since our second clause is just a noun phrase (ie, it has no verbs). With because-x we can say “she went for a walk because weather” without using ‘of’, even though x (“weather”) is a noun phrase. Because-x can also introduce lone adjectives, adverbs, and verbs (719). Clearly something non-standard is occurring here.

 

Non-standard Historical Uses of Because

There are some historical cases where we see ‘because’ being used in seemingly nonstandard ways. Take an example from 1820: “This would at least be honest, though I think it would be unwise, because [it is] unnecessary” (727). The dropped ‘it’ from “because [it is] unnecessary” refers back to earlier referents in the sentence “this” and “it”. Because in these cases is able to take a lone adjective because the dropped subject of that adjective has been mentioned in a previous clause (727).  This is a similar process to what happens in sentences like “I visited Uncle Leonard while in Paris”, where “while in Paris” is an abbreviated form of  “while I was in Paris” which drops the duplicated subject “I” (727). Because can also take a noun or nominal phrase in a similar way, as in the 1596 example, “He is likewise called Sathan, because [he is] an adversary” (728). 

But because-x is weirder than these historical examples. An example like “She went for a walk because weather” is not dropping the previously mentioned subject from the because-clause. If anything, ‘weather’ would be the subject here  – “I went for a walk because [the] weather [was nice]”, or something to that effect. These historical examples also only involve dropping the verb ‘to be’ – “because [it is] unnecessary”, because [he is] an adversary” and so on. Because-x can involve other verbs, as in the example “we’re full because [we had] pie” or “she’s taking that class because [she needs the] credits”.  

Additionally, in cases where x is a noun, it is most often a bare noun – one without determiners or adjectives (720). “I went for a walk because the weather” or “I went for a walk because nice weather” are therefore both unacceptable constructions. But historical examples like “because [he is] an adversary” do not hold to the bare noun rule. And finally, x is not limited to the adjectives or nouns seen in the historical examples – x can also be filled by interjections, verbs, and more.

 

Similar structures

Although because-x is the most common by far, there are some other structures that follow the form ‘connector-x’. ‘In case-x’ is one example, where x can be filled by any number of bare nouns, adjectives, or verbs (733). In standard usage, we could say “The council has power to
suspend and cancel enrolment in case there is violation or misconduct”, whereas if we use in case-x such a sentence would be realized as “The council has power to suspend and cancel enrolment in case violation or misconduct” (733). This seems to be fairly similar to how because-x is realized, although x is here being filled by a nominal phrase rather than a lone noun. 

‘As a result-x’ is another example. However, ‘as a result’ is an interesting construction because its two standard forms (‘as a result of’, ‘and as a result’) actually have opposite meanings. In the example “Hurley…died as a result [of] a collision with a pickup truck”, the effect (Hurley’s death) precedes the cause (a collision) (738). On the other hand, in the example “Airports…mitigate the risks of bird strikes, [and] as a result serious incidents are…very rare”, the cause (Airports mitigating bird strikes) is preceding the effect (the rarity of serious incidents) (738). By dropping ‘of’ in ‘as a result of’ or ‘and’ in ‘and as a result’, the relationship between the two clauses can become more ambiguous. If because-x developed simply due to brevity, this may be why ‘as a result-x’ has not become as popular – the ambiguity it creates is not worth the brevity it allows for. Again, as with ‘in case-x’, ‘as a result-x’ allows for more robust phrases in the x-slot compared to because-x. 

Both of these similar structures, as well as others, are used much less frequently than because-x. On top of that, in case-x appeared more frequently in the sampled data than as a result-x, despite ‘as a result’ being used more frequently in general. Therefore, because these new forms do not appear to be used proportionally to their base forms, Okada suggests that frequency of the base form is not what is driving the creation of these new forms (735). Although there are some unanswered questions about these similar x structures, let’s leave them be for now. 

 

Public/Private Expressions in Japanese and English

Now we’re going to take a brief aside to look at one difference between Japanese and English. Trust me, we’ll loop back to because-x.

In English, an utterance is public by default. In Japanese, an utterance is private by default. Now, what does that mean? As English-speakers, when we construct an utterance we are describing a situation from an outsider perspective, as if we’re narrating it for anyone to hear (Kanetani 12). “I am sitting on the floor of my room” specifies who is speaking and what room they are sitting in. In Japanese, meanwhile, utterances are private by default, with speakers constructing an utterance around their own subjective perspective (12). Our example sentence would be something more like “Sitting on floor of room”, which would be ungrammatical in English. A public utterance seeks to communicate something to the listener, while a private utterance is an expression of thought (3). Something like “Sitting on floor of room” doesn’t really communicate anything to a listener – who is sitting? What room are they sitting in? But it does function as an expression of a subjective perspective – we know we can only express our own perspective, so there’s no need to specify ‘I’. The only room that is relevant is the one we’re currently perceiving, so there’s no need to specify what room it is. 

Similarly, when English speakers say a sentence like “today is Saturday,” it is functionally equivalent to explicitly declaring “I say to you, today is Saturday” (12). Although we don’t see sentences like the second example very frequently, there is no change in meaning. We assume that this unmarked statement – “Today is Saturday” is a declaration by the speaker, without having to specify such a thing. Therefore, the unmarked statement is a public expression. In Japanese, however, the unmarked “today is Saturday” is not functionally equivalent to “I say to you, today is Saturday” (12). The utterance only gains a declarative function when we add markers, like verbs with varying levels of politeness, to establish the speaker’s relationship to the audience (12). The unmarked statement is therefore a private expression. 

 

Public/Private Expressions and Because-X

Kanetani argues that in the because-x construction, x is functioning as a private expression within the larger public expression of the complete sentence (3, 8). In general, then, we are able to understand the meaning of the private expression within because-x by adopting the perspective of the writer as they move from a narration role to a subjective perspective within because-x (20).

Because-x has several traits in common with private expressions. For example, pronouns don’t occur in x (8). One of the few written examples we see of private utterances in English is diary entries, and the first person pronoun ‘I’ is often dropped in this context (16). As private utterances, there is no need to specify the speaker’s relationship to anyone, and hence pronouns are unneeded. This explains sentences like “I’m at home because sick”. “I’m at home” acts at the narrative public expression, and “because sick” as the private perspective of the writer. This same phenomenon can be expanded to other dropped pronouns in x, as in the example “Those moments when you choose to eat a salad not because you want salad … but because [you] want croutons” (16). The writer moves from a narration of a hypothetical situation they are experiencing to a private expression expressing their desire. Although the writer uses ‘you’ within the sentence, we recognize that this is a hypothetical ‘you’ that is in fact referring to the writer themself.

The explanation for dropped pronouns also explains why nouns in the x-slot are typically bare, without adjectives or articles and determiners like ‘that’ or ‘this’; these added words specify the noun’s relationship to the listener, and are thus unnecessary in a private expression. The only exception to this rule is if an adjective and noun combined create a specific lexical unit of meaning which becomes more than the sum of their parts (14). A red house is simply a house that is red, but ‘free speech’ is not simply speech that is free; it carries a specific meaning regarding a right to expression, and thus acts more like a single word than like an adjective and word combination. So ‘free speech’ could appear in the x-slot –  “He argued with them because free speech” – while something like ‘red house’, ‘my essay’, or ‘that box’ cannot (14). We can apply a similar logic to explain why verbs in the x-slot are typically not conjugated for person or tense, as in the example “I reset an alarm for 9:30 because sleep” (15). 

Another feature because-x has in common with private expressions is the categories of words that can appear within them. Interjections, for instance, may be used in the x-slot (“because ugh”). Interjections don’t communicate meaning; they express an emotion (13). To understand what an interjection means in general, or what an interjection means in the x of because-x, we need external context (13). “Ugh”, for example, tells us how a speaker is feeling but not why they are feeling that way. Similarly to dropped pronouns, we must adopt the perspective of the writer in order to figure out what is being represented by the given interjection. Agreement words can appear in the x-slot (“because yeah”) and function in a similar manner, where the actual meaning behind ‘yeah’, ‘no’, or other agreement words can only be recovered by adopting the perspective of the speaker to determine what they are agreeing or disagreeing with (15-16).

With all these similarities in mind, it seems we can say with some confidence that the x in because-x is functioning as a private expression.

 

Significance of Because-X

Kanetani suggests that this structure functions as a way to bridge the emotional gap between the online writer and reader by creating a sense of intimacy between the participants. Markers of intimacy in real life, like body language, physical closeness, gesture, and so on cannot be directly translated to the written word. In response, alternate forms and structures like because-x have arisen as a way to mitigate the gap in non-verbal communication. If we accept this argument, because-x is not simply a structure being used online, but a structure that arose specifically due to online pressures. 

How does this structure create intimacy between participants in a conversation? As noted earlier, private expressions require the reader to take on the perspective of the writer in order to understand the meaning of an utterance. In that sense, intimacy is created by the reader stepping into the writer’s perspective. But because-x exists within a larger public expression, so readers know that the writer is seeking to communicate information to an audience; ie, we aren’t just stumbling upon someone’s private thoughts. By using a private expression within the public expression, the author is also assuming that a reader will be able to figure out what they mean (22). They’re sending a sort of ‘I know this is cryptic but I trust you to figure this out’ message (22). So the writer is also creating a sense of intimacy by establishing they trust that the reader can correctly interpret the writer’s message. 

Kanetani’s explanation also provides an explanation for why some of the other x constructions Okada provides, like ‘in case x’ or ‘as a result x’ feel more incorrect than because-x. Most of the provided  examples for these x constructions are informative statements dealing with third parties, not expressions of the author about their own experiences or feelings. On top of that, the x-slot is filled by entire phrases rather than the bare nouns or other lone words we see in the because-x examples. These other structures, then, are not introducing private expressions. Despite seeming to be somewhat similar, in that all of these structures introduce adjunct clauses and have a base form which uses ‘of’, they are not fulfilling the same function. When reading these examples, many of them feel like typos, and that may be all they are. It’s certainly possible that in case-x or as a result-x could be used similarly to because-x to create private expressions within larger public expressions, but for the time being that doesn’t seem to be the case. 

 

Conclusion

Because-x is a novel syntactic structure largely found in online contexts of interpersonal communication. If Kanetani’s argument is correct, this structure arose due to the pressures of online communication and the need to create connections or intimacy between conversation participants without having access to the ways we do this in spoken conversation. Furthermore, this suggests that there may be other novel structures with similar functions, both in English and in languages besides English. If we can find these examples, we can further justify Kanetani’s reading of the function of because-x and why because-x exists.

 

References

Kanetani, Masaru. “A grammatico-pragmatic analysis of the  because X construction: Private expression within public expression.” F1000Research, vol. 10, 28 Feb. 2022, doi:10.12688/f1000research.72971.2.

Okada, Sadayuki. “Category-Free Complement Selection in Causal Adjunct Phrases.” English Language and Linguistics, vol. 25, no. 4, 2021, pp. 719–741. doi:10.1017/S1360674320000295.

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November 27, 2022 · 11:42 pm

Week 10: A Case Study of Internet Arabic

Much of the analysis of Arabic language usage on the internet has focused on Arabizi, the non-standardized system of writing Arabic with the Latin script (Davies 70). Although these papers largely focus on orthographic features of this system, they still can provide us with some insight as to how Arabic is being used in online contexts and what routes future researchers can take to dig into the questions surrounding these uses and Arabizi in general.  

 

Some Background on Arabic Dialect

Arabic is distinct from English in that it has a very standardized formal form, called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Fusha, but this form is not used by native speakers in daily speech. Every Arabic speaker speaks in dialectal Arabic. MSA is also the form of the language that has been most often used for formal writing. Writing dialectal Arabic is not new – it has historically appeared in some private contexts, like handwritten letters (71). But there are no standards for writing in dialect, and writing in dialect has been stigmatized for most of the Middle East’s modern history. Using the formal variety of Arabic indicated that someone was educated; conversely, writing in dialect because one was unable to write in formal Arabic marked that person as backwards or ignorant. As such, dialectal Arabic has remained a language largely only spoken, while formal Arabic has been a largely written language, spoken only in highly formal contexts. 

 

Rise of Arabizi

Writing Arabic with the Latin script is not a 21st century innovation. French colonialism in Morocco and other parts of northern Africa led to a bilingual administration system which used both the Arabic script and the Latin script (both for French and to transliterate Arabic) (71). But Arabizi as it exists today was shaped by technological advances and limitations. Case in point: early computers and phones couldn’t display or input the Arabic script. The only choice for people who wanted to use these devices to communicate in Arabic was to write in the Latin script (71). 

Arabizi has challenged the traditional views of writing in dialect. Today, people of all educational levels and classes are texting in Arabizi. Its use online makes it highly visible and public, as opposed to older forms of dialect writing, which were largely private (71). Not only is it being used on personal social media profiles, but also on official company webpages (74). Arabizi is also moving into offline contexts, being seen in graffiti, flyers, and print ads on billboards or in magazines (74). And although ads which use Arabizi are often advertising everyday products, some companies are now using Arabizi in advertisements for luxury products as well (75). It seems, then, that Arabizi may be allowing for writing in dialect to shed some of its long-held stigma. 

 

Features of Arabizi

This alternative system of writing has not been standardized and was not imposed by a government or organization, but has been created by individual users (Davies 71, Vavichkina 198, 207). The lack of official writing rules may make Arabizi feel more accessible to people who do not feel confident in their ability to write in MSA or formal English or French (Davies 73). The frequency of Arabizi use versus Arabic script use depends on several factors, including where the user is located (its popularity may differ between regions), the user’s personal preferences, and whether the user is frequently incorporating other languages into their messages (72). This is a fairly common occurrence, as in a survey of 248 Moroccan university students 97.1% mixed French and Moroccan Arabic, 77.7% mixed English and Moroccan Arabic, and 67.4% used all three languages (79). If a user is frequently including French or English words in their messages, then it may be easier to write everything with the Latin script rather than switch between keyboards and writing/reading directions. 

The orthographic choices users make tend to differ from the official transliteration standards of the French colonial era (71-72). However, individual users may be influenced by French or English spelling standards. For example, someone who speaks English may write the Arabic word for ‘thanks’ as ‘shukran’, while someone who speaks French might write it ‘chokran’ (Davies 72, Vavichkina 203).

The most prominent new orthographic feature in Arabizi may be the use of numbers to represent Arabic letters (72). Early phones combined the keyboard with the number pad. Using numbers to represent letters thus allowed users to type more quickly, since they had to push buttons fewer times (72). And it made sense to use numbers to stand in for some Arabic letters, because the numbers themselves had a visual resemblance to some letters. Numbers do not appear to be used for rebuses or other phonetic replacements, as sometimes occurs in English-speaking online contexts (‘gr8’ for ‘great’, or ‘4’ for ‘for’) (Vavichkina 202). However, use of numbers may be becoming less common with time; Vavichkina’s 2021 study of 372 Arabizi comments on news videos found that users tended to use consonant clusters to represent sounds rather than their associated numeral (201-202). This may be due to technological shifts; smartphones now host numerals on a different keyboard than letters, requiring users to shift between the two.  

Arabizi is essentially a transliteration of dialectal speech (198). As such, it preserves many of the features of Arabic dialect that differ from MSA. The case markers of MSA are dropped in Arabizi, as they are in Arabic dialects (203). Morphological elements, like the b-/ba- prefix used in dialect for present tense verbs, are also used in Arabizi (205). 

Spelling is not standardized and largely phonetic (204). This can lead to a disconnect between related words, as MSA has highly formulaic ways of deriving words, meaning that readers can intuit a word’s meaning by knowing the formula being used and the meaning associated with the root letters. Latinized spellings, in all their variety, can easily obscure these formulaic structures, potentially making it harder for readers to make connections between related words (204). 

Standard Arabic writing conventions are also disrupted by how Arabizi users treat glottal stops. Traditionally, no word in Arabic can start with a vowel; rather, words that start with a vowel actually start with a glottal stop. This is marked in the Arabic script. In Arabizi, however, users drop the glottal stop altogether and just start words with vowels (204). This phonetic spelling also allows users to add letters to words – specifically, the short vowels that usually go unmarked in texts written with the Arabic script (202). 

 

Factors Determining Arabizi Use

Arabizi is considered to be an informal system of writing. The survey of Moroccan students found that it was most commonly used to communicate with friends or classmates, with texting and instant messaging being the most common contexts it was found in (Davies 75-76). Only 22% of the students used Arabizi in emails and, interestingly, only 31.5% used it for writing notes in class (76). Arabizi is therefore not simply for informal writing, but for informal writing in digital contexts. 

Additionally, Arabizi use can depend on age, familiarity, and nationality. The surveyed students largely did not use Arabizi when communicating with people of their parents’ generation or older (of the 36.4% who did, most used it to communicate with older family members) (76). This could be either due to gaps in comprehension – older people might not be as familiar with Arabizi – or because users see Arabizi as too informal (and therefore disrespectful) to use with older people. Considering that most of the students who did use Arabizi with older people were communicating with family members, whom they are more likely to be close with and therefore able to more easily flout expectations of respect with, I think this latter interpretation might make more sense. 

69% of students said they used Arabizi with peers whom they didn’t know personally, with some students saying that using Arabizi with strangers would be impolite or disrespectful (76). Again, this points to the idea that Arabizi is not only informal but also may carry a sense of intimacy or familiarity that would be impolite or uncomfortable to impose on strangers. 

Finally, 92.5% of the students reported using Arabizi only with other Moroccans, with the explanation that other Arabic speakers would not understand them (76). Considering that dialect can vary widely from country to country, and Moroccan Arabic is considered to be especially distinct, this explanation does make some sense. The use of Moroccan Arabic in general, whether written in the Arabic or Latin script, thus functions as a marker of identity. Just as with other dialectal writing online, using words specific to Moroccan dialect can also establish a sense of intimacy or familiarity with other users. 

Why do individuals choose to use Arabizi? When the Moroccan students were asked about their motivations for using Arabizi, they listed several reasons. 85% of the students thought it allowed them to write more quickly, and 84% thought it was easier to write (77). Some thought it was easier to express their feelings in Arabizi (77). This is seemingly backed up by data from Vivichkina’s study, which found that Arabizi comments tended “to express appreciation or emotion” (201). The Moroccan students also said using Arabizi made it easier to communicate – 79% of students thought Moroccan dialect was easier to read when it was written in the Latin script (Davies 78). It is easier to fully vocalize a text in the Latin script, after all (77-78). In fact, a fairly large percentage (61.3%) said they never wrote Moroccan Arabic with the Arabic script because “the result was incomprehensible”(79). 

Of the Moroccan students, only 36.5% thought it largely was cool or fashionable, and only 32.5% saw it as a marker of identity (78). I assume that by ‘marker of identity’ they mean a marker of youth culture or of some other subculture. As I said above, the use of Arabizi with Moroccan dialect does most definitely invoke a Moroccan identity, since it is almost entirely being used only with other Moroccans. On the other hand, a 2018 study of Saudi youth found that they viewed Arabizi as “cool and stylish” and thus “a strong marker of Arab youth identity and group solidarity” (Vavichkina 199). The same study found that youths thought using Arabizi made them stand out and allowed them to show off their knowledge of a foreign language like English (197). The ability to use non-standard orthography also shielded them from the embarrassment of making spelling mistakes (197). Clearly, motivations for using Arabizi differ depending on region.

 

Arabizi versus Standard Arabic

Arabic language media and the general public tend to view Arabizi negatively (Davies 80). They fear that it represents a loss of proficiency in or a simplification of MSA. But the Moroccan students voiced support for MSA (79). And, despite the fact that dialect and MSA tend to mix in daily speech, only 26.9% of the students said they mixed Moroccan Arabic and MSA in online communications (79). There seems to be a cultural resistance to using the Latin script to write MSA. Davies argues that rather than blurring the distinction between dialect and MSA, thus threatening MSA, the use of Arabizi actually makes a clear distinction between the two varieties through the use of two different scripts (79). In doing so, it can shield MSA from becoming simplified or being further influenced by English (Vavichkina 208). Arabizi can also act as an important tool for those of Middle Eastern heritage who live outside the region. They may be familiar with an Arabic dialect due to hearing family members speak it, but may not have received a formal Arabic education (Davies 81). Arabizi allows them to communicate with other Arabic-speakers despite this fact.

 

Final Thoughts

Arabizi, as with other phenomena I’ve looked at, is an informal writing system being used for interpersonal communication. Said system is largely influenced by spoken language rather than formal written varieties of language. However, further analysis will need to be done to better determine whether there are features of spoken language missing from Arabizi and other forms of Arabic used online and whether there are features specific to Standard Arabic present within Arabizi. Regional analysis might also be interesting to see if Arabizi differs dramatically from region to region (beyond the dialectal differences we expect). In any case, it’s clear that analyzing Arabic as it exists in online contexts would make for some interesting results.

 

References

Davies, Eirlys. “Colloquial Moroccan Arabic: Shifts in Usage and Attitudes in the Era of Computer-Mediated Communication.” Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Yasir Suleiman, edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2018, pp. 69–89. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1tqxb42.10.

Vavichkina, Tatiana, Yulia Vlasova, and Elena Paymakova. “Present and Future of the Arabic Language Transliteration on the Internet (linguistic features of Arabizi).” LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021, pp. 195-213.

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November 26, 2022 · 2:03 pm

Week 9: Non-English Internet Language

Up until now we’ve looked at a lot of English-related content. But this week we’re looking specifically at what ‘internet language’ looks like for speakers of other languages.

 

Malay Netspeak

Izazi’s article on Malay Twitter users describes several different features found in a sample of Malay tweets (17). To find these tweets they used makan, ‘to eat’, as a keyword. Makan is commonly used in Malay informal greetings, so researchers thought this word could help them find a variety of tweets specifically coming from a Malay context (21). Interestingly, in some of the tweets makan was the only Malay word the users wrote (30). Since users made the intentional choice to include a Malay word, makan functioned as a marker of Malay identity (31). English appeared frequently in the sample (22). Some slang found in the sample is derived or borrowed from English, including words like ‘yup’, ‘baby’, and ‘cool’ (20). Similarly, abbreviations like ‘omg’ ‘lol’ and ‘idk’ were the three most common abbreviations found in the sampled corpus (23). We could argue, considering the frequency of English, that the choice to use Malay words may be driven by similar motivations to those users from week 7, who chose to include specific features from their dialect in their tweets in order to invoke a specific regional or cultural identity. 

There are other ‘netspeak’ features which are not directly based on English words. One feature found in the dataset were shortened words, which often dropped vowels (22). Yang(a preposition) became yg, orang(‘man’)became org, and so on. Other words were shortened by dropping their first letter (rumah, ‘house’, becoming umah) or their first syllable (macam, ‘like, such as’, becoming cam) (22). 

Another feature related to spellings is onomatopoeic spellings. Examples from the sampled tweets include ‘haha’, representing laughter and ‘huhu’ to represent crying (23). These spellings allow users to bring sounds present in spoken speech into the written medium. As in English usage, laughter may be used to express genuine amusement or to express a more sarcastic or ironic attitude (24). 

Phonetic replacements of words are also fairly common (24). Interestingly, Malay users also incorporate English pronunciations of numbers into these phonetic constructions, like in the example 21ku, which represents the word tuanku (24). Users must use the English pronunciations of ‘two’ and ‘one’ in order to decipher the construction. 

Users also, at least in one instance, use a non-phonetic symbol to represent a word – that of x to mean tidak, or ‘no’ (24). X, in this case, does not represent any of the sounds in the word, but could be interpreted as a visual representation of the word’s meaning. X can also be combined with other words to create phrases. Xkisah, for example, is equivalent to tidak kisah, ‘I don’t mind’ (24). 

One feature that English and Malay users of Twitter seem to share is that of the keysmash: a nonsensical string of letters that carries no informational meaning, but does convey a sense of emotion (25). The idea here, of course, is that the user is so overcome with emotion that they aren’t able to focus enough to type actual words to describe how they’re feeling. Another feature shared across both these communities of users is that of letter repetition (25). Users can repeat letters within the word – in this example, the final letters of words – to emphasize the message and the emotion behind the message (25, 27).  Finally, capitalization and superfluous punctuation (!!!) are used similarly across the two groups to add emphasis to words or phrases (28)

Malay users also play with creative spellings of words. English words might be subjected to Malay grammatical conventions (‘I’ becomes iolls, ‘we’ becomes weolls) (25). Users might change the spelling of words slightly to allow for wordplay (26). Since Malay spelling is phonetic, users can also misspell words in order to intentionally invoke a humorous sounding pronunciation (26). Changes in spelling also occur with foreign loanwords or names (McDonald’s, Starbucks), which users can choose to spell phonetically according to local pronunciation (Mekdonel, Setabak) (27). In this case, the spelling change seems to be used less for humorous effect and more to localize the word. 

Finally, Izazi touches on the use of emoji in the dataset (29). However, this analysis is fairly limited to one function of emoji: that of illustrative emoji that support and re-inforce the literal meaning of the text and the emotion behind it. For example, one of the tweets for this section has text that says the user can’t stop eating cookies, paired with the cookie emoji. Further research or analysis would need to be done to see if Malay users use emoji for other functions, like to clarify intent or to collaboratively make meaning with the literal text. 

As we can see, Malay users take advantage of a variety of features in their tweets. Some allow for dropped letters, enabling brevity, while others add characters to a message (30). Some borrow from English vocabulary, while others focus on native Malay words. Some of these features allow users to invoke spoken speech, while others are not connected to spoken speech (30). As with English features, these features allow Malay users to write informally and indicate emotion or enthusiasm.  

 

Japanese Honorifics

Japanese honorifics are a grammatical feature that doesn’t really have an English equivalent. They allow for speakers to clarify their relationship to the addressee or a third party (2). But this gets a bit tricky when users are communicating online. Users may not have information on who others are or what respect they are demanded (Liu 2). Online communication also tends towards the informal anyway. What results are some interesting and creative uses of honorifics in regards to honorifics that refer to third parties. 

Japanese honorifics used for third parties (‘referents’) can be roughly categorized into two types: respect form and humble forms (2). Respect forms allow users to express their deference by elevating the prestige of the referent. Humble forms allow users to downgrade themselves, thus showing respect to the referent (2). These honorifics are expressed through different verbs forms and affixes that can be attached to nouns, adjectives, or adverbs (3). 

So if these honorifics are used to indicate politeness, how do we indicate impoliteness? There are two ways impoliteness can occur in online communication: when a speaker intentionally communicates impoliteness, and when the audience perceives or constructs the speaker’s behavior as impolite (6). So a speaker could indicate impoliteness through the insincere use of honorifics (5). Using extremely polite honorifics or using honorifics where they aren’t required may read as sarcastic or ironic (5). Although previous studies looking at the insincere use of honorifics focused on spoken speech, there is no reason why this cannot also be used in online contexts. 

In online contexts, impoliteness can be constructed in several ways. It could be directly marked on a word (or be implied by not marking polite forms) (6). It could also be marked through mismatches of the content of a message and its grammatical forms (ie, speaking negatively about a person but referring to them with polite forms) (6).

So, having considered all of this, how are Japanese speakers using referent honorifics online? Liu collected and analyzed 13,855 comments from four Yahoo Japan News articles, all published in the first week of July, 2018 (7-8). Referent honorifics were actually fairly rare, appearing in 2.5% of all comments (for the individual articles, referent honorifics appeared in 1-5% of the comments) (8). The article with the highest percentage (5%) of comments with referent honorifics was about then Japanese prime minister Abe (8). The social expectation of referring to Abe with honorifics was carried over to this online context (8). The other articles were not centered around high-ranking politicians or other celebrity figures, which may account for the low frequency of referent honorifics in the comments on those articles (7). 

Most of the referent honorifics were respect forms, rather than humble forms (9). Referent forms also had higher rates of non-normative usage (9). In general humble forms are rarer than respect forms in face to face communication, which may explain the gap in use between respect and humble forms (9). However, we may also be able to attribute this fact to the idea that commenters tend to be anonymous. As such, a reader has no way of knowing what the commenter’s relationship to a referent actually looks like in terms of social standing. They have no reference point against which to compare the humble form of an honorific. On the other hand, when speaking about a referent the audience has an idea of what that referent’s social standing is, either because they are a public figure (like Abe) or because the article provides readers with information about the referents (such as their occupation, their behavior, or their character). A reader then has a reference point to compare a respect form honorific to. 

Honorifics had several different functions within the data. They could be used to show respect or admiration, as in comments praising students at the University of Tokyo, the country’s most prestigious school (10). Sometimes they were used to conform to professional standards, as when a commenter who worked at a senior boarding house referred to clients (10). Commenters also used honorifics when they were expressing agreement with other users in the comment section, although these honorifics were generally limited to one or two verbs and were not used throughout the message (10). Other usages were less sincere. As mentioned above, users can mismatch honorifics with message content to create a sense of sarcasm. One user criticized the work of journalists, and referred to commenters who supported the work of journalists as having ‘valuable opinions’, with this phrase being preceded by a polite honorific (10-11). Mock politeness is created by the contrast between the user’s negative opinion of these journalists and their supporters and the respectful form attached to ‘valuable opinions’. Mismatches can also occur when referents are referred to both with insults and with overly respectful honorifics (12-13). In these non-standard uses “there are always co-occurring linguistic features in the text signposting the poster’s negative attitude and hence their intended message”, thus preventing other readers from misinterpreting their use of honorifics as sincere (13).

In short, the move to online contexts has not displaced referent honorifics entirely. However, they are used at much lower rates than in spoken language. Honorific usage is driven both by politeness and by genuine respect. Those commenters who criticize other commenters for not using referent honorifics when discussing respected public figures see honorific usage as a polite thing to do. But the data also shows that sincere honorific usage generally only appears when the commenter has a favorable view of the referent, suggesting that honorific usage is also dependent on the user having genuine respect for the referent (14). The findings also show that honorifics can be used to construct impoliteness and sarcasm by mismatching these polite forms with impolite adjectives, descriptions, or criticisms (14).

 

Russian Netspeak

Expressive features used by Russian users on Instagram, Twitter, and LiveJournal have many things in common with English and Malay features, at least if we can take the 145 respondents in Olga Novikova’s 2021 study as representative of the general Russian-speaking internet user population (69). 

Users use graphical features like bolding or capitalization to emphasize words (71). Unlike users in previously referenced studies, however, the surveyed users here also used underscores around words as a way to emphasize. Russian users also used strikethrough text in interesting and innovative ways. The studied users used strikethrough text to express their opinions while also acknowledging said opinions might be viewed negatively by society in general or other users (71). This strikethrough text would then be followed by a milder form of the opinion. For example, one user asked (translated) “did the police readers recognize you…?”; here, the user expresses self awareness of how their opinion (‘police’) might be reframed by outsiders (‘readers’) (71). 

As with some other linguistic communities, the surveyed users used letter repetition to evoke sounds of emotion (‘Mmmm’, ‘Aaaaah’) or to emphasize words (Даааа, ‘yessss’) (71). Users may violate spelling or punctuation rules, although it is unclear whether there are any patterns to these violations and whether they are meant to elicit any specific effect on the reader (72, 77). Ellipses, as in some English examples, can be used to indicate pauses in the text (79). In the provided example, the ellipses follow a question the author rhetorically asks of the readers; Novikova suggests that these pauses can be used to create a sense of back-and-forth with the reader, giving them a chance to stop and consider the author’s words.

English does make an appearance in the data. Some English words are directly borrowed, Latin script and all (76). Others are borrowed from English or other languages like German, Japanese, or Korean, with their spellings adjusted for the Cyrillic script and Russian pronunciation (76). Other new words are created from native Russian words by merging words together, although whether these new words are limited to online contexts or not is unclear (77).

 

Final Thoughts

Although these three papers do not represent all linguistic communities, or even all speakers of a certain language, we can see some common threads throughout all three. Malay and Russian both make use of English loanwords as well as features shared with English, such as letter repetition or intentional use of nonstandard spellings. Now, whether these features arose through contact with English-speaking users or whether they developed on their own is unclear. But these features must have some sort of crosslinguistic usefulness if speakers of other languages are continuing to use them, even in contexts which are not necessarily aimed toward English-speaking audiences or native English speakers. 

The Japanese paper focuses on honorifics, which do not have an equivalent in English or the Malay and  Russian papers. But it does show us that linguistic communities besides English-speaking ones (or, at least, Japanese-speaking users) are using and adjusting native linguistic elements to communicate their ideas online. That is, using language online which does not directly reflect formal writing standards is not something that is unique to English-based contexts. 

Finally, these three papers show that investigating other linguistic communities and seeing how they use language in online contexts is a viable exercise and, more than that, a necessary exercise if we wish to see which elements of ‘netspeak’ are useful crosslinguistically, which elements are unique to English, which elements are unique to other languages, and which elements may have influenced or been imported to other linguistic online communities. 

 

References

Izazi, Zulkifli Zulfati, and Tengku Mahadi Tengku-Sepora. “Slangs on Social Media: Variations among Malay Language Users on Twitter.” Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, vol. 28, no. 1, 2020.

Liu, Xiangdong. “Japanese referent honorifics in computer-mediated communication.” Language@Internet, vol 19, 2021. https://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2021/liu.

Novikova, Olga, et al. “Linguistic Analysis of Insta, Twit Posts and LJ Blogs in the Context of Their Functions (Based on the Russian Language).” International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, vol. 15, no. 5, May 2021, pp. 66–86.

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November 25, 2022 · 5:13 pm

Week 8: Multilingualism and the Influence of English

One inescapable fact is that English is used a lot on the internet. As of 2010 it was the most used language online (Crystal 79). As such, many platforms, websites, and programs are more accessible to English-speaking users. Although people would often prefer to use their first language online, the unfortunate reality is that many websites and software simply are not set up to support all languages (81-82). Technology is now able to support more scripts and more platforms have made an effort to create interfaces in languages other than English. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are simply fewer resources in languages other than English when it comes to information hubs like Wikipedia, sites on specific and niche topics, and availability of academic articles and papers (85). With all this in mind, it’s fairly inevitable that English would have an influence on how other languages are used. Additionally, these imbalances of resources can play into already existing relationships between dominant and minority languages. As you might guess from all of this, how frequently a language is used offline does not always directly correlate to how often that language is used online (87).

So, with that context out of the way, let’s take a look at how power imbalances between languages might influence user’s linguistic choices online. 

 

Linguistic Choices of Bilingual Welsh/English Teenagers

Daniel Cunliffe and his colleagues set out to examine how bilingual Welsh/English students used language online, and how those linguistic choices compared to their usage of the languages in daily life. They surveyed 200 students total, ages 13-18, and also had 64 of the students participate in more intensive focus groups (Cunliffe 342). They ensured that half of the participants spoke Welsh as their first language, and the other half spoke English as their first language (343). However, the students still viewed English as the dominant language, and many of the students struggled with their Welsh reading comprehension skills (343-344). As per the nature of the study, all of the participating students had access to broadband internet, and the majority of the students used at least one social networking site (343-344).

Audience, although not the sole factor which goes into language choice, did seem to have an effect on the students’ linguistic choices.  In general, they were more likely to use Welsh if their in-person support system frequently spoke it in person, especially if they were communicating with those in-person friends online (345). But students who spoke both Welsh and English with their friends were more likely to use English online. If students are mainly communicating with friends from their in-person network, it makes sense that their linguistic habits from in-person conversations would carry over. 

On the other hand, students were more likely to use English in more public online settings, like Facebook updates. Most Welsh speakers can speak English, but not all English speakers can speak Welsh, so it seems that users tended toward the language that was most likely to be understood. Some users used both Welsh and English in their posts, especially if they had separate friend groups that used Welsh or English predominantly. In these cases, the language of choice depended on which of their Facebook Friends they were writing for: their Welsh-speaking friends or their English-speaking friends (355). On the other hand, the researchers found that Welsh was rarely the only language students used on Facebook (352). This is likely due to the dominance of English; it’s unlikely that all of a student’s friends could speak Welsh. 

Larger community factors also seem to play a role. The dominant language spoken in the user’s community tended to correlate with the language they most frequently used on Facebook (348). But, then again, the researchers suggested that positive attitudes around learning and speaking Welsh might push some users to try to use Welsh more (350-351).

Students’ individual confidence with writing Welsh did not appear to have a direct effect on how often they used it (351). Similarly, researchers found no direct correlation between confidence in writing English and English usage (352). 

One factor that surprisingly did not appear to influence language choice was the language of the social media interface (in this case, Facebook). Although the site does support a Welsh interface, users express discomfort with it due to its use of unfamiliar words or clunky language (356). The interface did not appear to positively influence Welsh use, but the English interface did not appear to consciously discourage Welsh use (356). As such, the researchers concluded that Welsh currently has a limited use in digital contexts, but also that Facebook is still a viable context in which to use Welsh, even if English is still the more dominant language (358). The surveyed students seem open to increasing Welsh use online, saying they would use Welsh language resources if they were available (344). Continuing to build spaces where Welsh can be read and used and refining those current spaces where Welsh interfaces are still clunky may result in such interfaces having a direct correlation with Welsh language use. 

 

Linguistic choices of Bilingual Frisian/Dutch Teenagers

Looking a bit farther afield, we see that bilingual or multilingual speakers in the Netherlands also tend to use the regional dominant language – Dutch – when communicating online. The author of a study looking at the linguistic choices of teenagers who speak both Frisian and Dutch says this isn’t surprising; linguistic power imbalances in the real world tend to carry over into digital contexts (Jongbloed-Faber 29). 

Frisian is a language from the Fryslân region of the Netherlands; both it and Dutch are official languages, but Dutch tends to be more dominant (30). Frisian is also largely a spoken language, rather than a written one (30). When analyzing 6,000 tweets from 50 Frisian teens, researchers found “frequent phonetic writing as well as the incorporation of lexical and syntactic Dutchisms…in Frisian tweets” (30). Although there is Dutch influence, the researchers suggest that because writing on social media tends to be informal, teenagers feel more comfortable with using the language because they are not being held to formal written standards (30). Jongbloed-Faber and her colleagues decided to expand this research by collecting linguistic data from 2,367 multilingual students, aged 14-18 years old, about their in-person and online language use (32).  

Generally speaking, the students were more proficient at understanding and speaking Frisian than they were at reading and writing in it (33). Dutch was the most common language the students used on social media, with Frisian or English being used less frequently (34). However, Frisian and English were used at different rates depending on the platform. Frisian was used more often on WhatsApp and in private Facebook messages, while English was more used on Twitter and in Facebook updates (35). This seems to indicate that Frisian tends to be used more in more private, one-on-one settings, while English is used more frequently in public settings (and, again, Dutch is used far more frequently than either Frisian or English). 

The language students spoke offline did appear to impact what language they chose to use online. 87% of students who spoke Frisian as their first language used it online to some extent, although even these first language speakers used Dutch as their primary language online (35). In general, the results found that the more Dutch students used in daily life, the less Frisian they used online (35).

When they did use Frisian online, most of the participants (55%) reported using phonetic spellings; 52% of participants thought writing diacritics was too much work, and 47% didn’t know where to put diacritics (37). Although social media may not be helping these students develop the writing skills to write formal Frisian, the informal standards of social media are giving these students a place to use the language, at least to an extent. The researchers found that online Frisian use was strongly influenced by the language students used with their friends, as well as their attitude toward Frisian (37). Perhaps students who use the language informally online will gain confidence in their language, develop more positive attitudes towards it, and eventually develop stronger writing skills (or motivation to develop these skills) to be able to use Frisian in more formal or academic contexts. On the other hand, the desire to communicate with a wider audience beyond their in-person friend groups may cause students to neglect Frisian in favor of Dutch or English. Only time will tell. 

 

Slovene-English Bloggers

For communities who don’t use English as frequently in everyday life, English may still be used in online contents. In an analysis of Slovene-English blogs, one author found that English words were used to create a feeling of trendiness or prestigiousness (Šabec 10). As expected, English loanwords were also common to fill lexical gaps for subjects related to technology and the internet (5). Users can also use English alongside Slovenian for playful functions like wordplay (6). Code-switching (switching between using English or using Slovenian) happens both between sentences and within individual sentences (8). 

The most interesting impact of English on these Slovenian blogs, however, might be some changes in syntax, although these changes are fairly minor. In English, if we’re using a noun to describe another noun, the describing noun comes before the described noun – ie, ‘Post-it note’, ‘water bottle’, ‘apple pie’, However, it seems that in Slovenian the describing noun is placed after the describing noun. But some of these code-mixing bloggers have been adopting the English order, especially when one of the nouns involved is an English word or loanword (9). These changes don’t impact the meaning of the sentences, as far as I can tell, but they’re certainly nonstandard.

Some of these blogs are also using expressive features that are not specifically tied to the English language. Expressive punctuation, like ellipsis and frequent/combined use of exclamation and question marks is not tied to the English language (although it could have made its way into these blogs via exposure to English-speaking users) (7).  

Šabec suggests that the mixing of Slovenian and English functions “as a social marker indicating the users’ belonging to a particular online community” (9). English is both a way to appeal to a wider online audience and a way for the users to access English’s linguistic prestige (10). Users also seem to use English when they are expressing more intimate thoughts and feelings; in this case, English may allow them to maintain a sense of distance, whereas using Slovenian might feel too vulnerable (10).

 

English Loanwords in Indonesian Contexts

Indonesian students, like the Solvenian bloggers, use English loanwords to discuss social media and online activities. At least, that’s what researchers found when they surveyed the Facebook and Instagram activity of 336 undergraduate students (Tarihoran 60). Interestingly, the English loanwords they found were not being used to fill lexical gaps. Many of the words – friend/unfriend, follow/unfollow, friends, followers, share, tag, wall, and so on – have native Indonesian counterparts (63). And these counterparts are not obscure – after all, following, sharing, and friends are not uncommon concepts. So why were these students using English loanwords? Was it for prestige, as seemed to be a factor for the Slovenian bloggers? 

Motivations for using these loanwords were varied, but one common motivation seemed to be that using these English loanwords allowed them to specifically refer to online actions (63). This might be due to the fact that, as previously noted, many popular online platforms were initially created with English interfaces. Indonesian users were likely exposed first to the English versions of these websites and apps (or at least to English users of these sites), and adopted these English loanwords as a result. Alternatively, we could argue that there is a usefulness in being able to refer specifically to online actions without having to use more words to do it. Regardless, English clearly impacts how these users discuss their online activities.

 

References

Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics : A Student Guide, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/detail.action?docID=801579.

Cunliffe, Daniel et al. “Young Bilinguals’ Language Behaviour in Social Networking Sites: The Use of Welsh on Facebook.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol 18, no. 3, 2013, pp. 339–361. doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12010.

Jongbloed-Faber, Lysbeth et al. “Language use of Frisian bilingual teenagers on social media” Treballs de Sociolingüística Catalana, no. 26, 2916, pp. 27-54. doi: 10.2436/20.2504.01.107.

Šabec, Nada. “Slovene-English Netspeak: Linguistic and socio-cultural aspects.” 2009, http://oddelki. ff. uni-mb. si/filozofija/files/Festschrift/Dunjas_festschrift/sabec. pdf.

Tarihoran, N., E. Fachriyah, Tressyalina, and I. R. Sumirat. “The Impact of Social Media on the Use of Code Mixing by Generation Z”. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), vol. 16, no. 07, Apr. 2022, pp. 54-69, doi:10.3991/ijim.v16i07.27659.

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· 3:27 pm

Week 7: The Use of Dialects Online

This week’s readings involve dialect and how users translate dialect to online written contexts. If we assume that the informal language people use online is influenced by their informal spoken speech, then it would make sense to see dialectal differences being codified through non-standard spellings or other orthographic or grammatical changes.

 

Sakha

Sakha, also known as Yakut, is a language spoken by about 450,000 people in Yakutia/the Republic of Sakha, a region in northeastern Russia. One researcher, Jenanne Ferguson, looked at how Sakha was being used online and found that some users were carrying over dialectal differences into their informal writing (131). She specifically looked at the use of word-initial ‘h’. In some dialects of Sakha, words which begin with an ‘s’ will instead be pronounced as if they begin with an ‘h’ if they are following a word that ends with a vowel. 

For users who write this dialectal difference into their online writing, the feature functions as a marker of local identity (134-135). Even the choice to use Sakha itself reflects this, since many Sakha speakers are bilingual in Russian (134). Since online identity is mainly created through language, the use of a specific language or a change in spelling marks the user as from a specific geographic location and similarly allows them to find other individuals who speak their dialect (132, 138, 140). 

At the same time, this close link between language use and identity opens up users to discourse surrounding cultural preservation through ‘correct’ language (132). Not all dialects of Sakha include this ‘s’ to ‘h’ change, and its use in writing is not sanctioned by any official Sakha language groups (140). Those who don’t have this dialectal difference view users with this spelling difference as seeking their own unique identity, which is only heightened by the contentious relationships between the different regions of Sakha speakers (139). As a result, users from different dialects argue over whether this dialectal difference should be used in writing. 

These arguments are also further complicated by the larger history of Yakutia. Sakha speakers have long faced pressures to assimilate into a larger Russian culture, so modern-day speakers want to push back against this assimilation (143). However, they are split on the best route forward. For ‘h’ users, writing their dialectal difference further separates them from Russia, since Russian phonology does not use the Sakha ‘h’ (141). In fact, these users will even overuse ‘h’ in words where it wouldn’t occur in spoken speech, so their choice to include it in writing is definitely not solely about imitating their own spoken speech (141). Non-’h’ users, meanwhile,fear that nonstandard spellings will further separate Sakha speakers into distinct regional groups, thus splintering a unified Sakha identity and making it more difficult for Sakha speakers to stand up against assimilationist attitudes and actions (143-144). 

As we can see here, the choice to include a specific dialectal feature is not simply driven by the desire to write down oral speech, but is also used to convey specific meaning outside of the content of any given message. For Sakha ‘h’ users, it’s a choice that conveys their specific geographic region and emphasizes their Sakha identity. In some cases this can help to create intimacy between users of the same dialect (147). At other times it leads to arguments with other speakers. Speakers must decide for themselves whether the potential intimacy with other speakers is worth the fallout they might encounter.

 

Dialects in Northern England

Do users in other places who speak other languages also choose to use dialect in their writing? Andrea Nini would say yes, at least in regards to dialects in northern England on Twitter. Nini was able to collect tweets with geographic data attached to them, allowing for researchers to find out what elements of northern dialects were appearing in tweets and at what frequency. 

Researchers had to consider two criteria as they chose what features to focus on within the data. The first was that the features must be “socially salient enough to be used orthographically as an index of local dialects”; in other words, they must be recognized by the speakers as being a feature of the dialect (271). Secondly was that the chosen features “must be plausibly encoded in orthographic representations”; the features needed to translate from spoken language to the written word (271). So researchers would not be able to study features like the dark /l/ , since it can’t easily be represented in writing. 

For this study, researchers chose eleven features that could be represented in writing, which included variations in both consonants and vowels (271). For example, one feature in Northern dialects is TH-stopping and TH-fronting, where the dental fricative represented by ‘th’ is instead realized by another consonant. Written examples would include “tink” instead of “think” or “wiv” instead of “with” (273). They were then able to match tweets with these features to the geographic location of the user. 

Nini and her team found that although these non-standard spellings of dialectal difference were fairly infrequent, “for most of [the features] clear geographical patterns can be detected and this suggests that the geographical signal contained in these frequencies is also relatively strong” (276). So these non-standard spellings did seem, in general, to be reflective of phonetic differences in dialect (288). Because these variants are overall infrequent, this suggests that users who do use these variants are choosing to use them intentionally. So although these variants may sometimes result in shortened words, brevity is not the driving factor here. Rather, these users are trying to “convey a particular identity or stance” through their linguistic choices (286-287). These features also are not usually appearing in isolation, which Nini suggests indicates interplay between these various features (290). In some cases, users may be using these dialectal features “as part of a wider linguistic style tailored to a user’s own dialectal identity” (290). In other cases, these variants may be used to imitate certain accents and thus invoke certain regional identities (278, 280).  

Due to Twitter’s setup, there is no way for researchers to determine whether the features someone uses in online discourse are the same features they use in spoken language (290). However, researchers may be able to determine the salience of a feature – that is, the extent to which that feature is noticed and linked to a regional identity – by examining how frequently it is being used and where the users employing it are based (289). Researchers may even be able to make solid guesses about which features are seen by outsiders as being emblematic of a particular dialect, versus which features speakers of that dialect recognize as being emblematic of their own dialect (290). 

 

Conclusion

As shown in these two examples, linguistic choices in online communication can allow users to assert regional identities. This both allows users to express pride in their identity, but it also impacts interpersonal interactions by allowing users to find common ground with other users who speak their dialect. Although I can’t make generalizations on how common of a phenomenon this is for other dialects or other minority languages, users of Sakha and Northern English dialects are unlikely to interact frequently due to the geographic distance between the two regions and the fact that Sakha speakers are more likely to use Russian as a lingua franca rather than English. So I think it is unlikely that Sakha users were influenced by Northern English users to use their dialect online, or vice versa. If these separate communities are choosing to use dialect online to assert their identity, I think it’s likely that this is also occurring in other communities as well. 

 

References

Ferguson, Jenanne. “Don’t Write It With ‘h’! Standardization, Responsibility and Territorialization When Writing Sakha Online.” Responsibility and Language Practices in Place, edited by Laura Siragusa and Jenanne K. Ferguson, vol. 5, Finnish Literature Society, 2020, pp. 131–52, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv199tdgh.10. Accessed 25 Nov. 2022.

Nini, Andrea, et al. “The Graphical Representation of Phonological Dialect Features of the North of England on Social Media.” Dialect Writing and the North of England, edited by Patrick Honeybone and Warren Maguire, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, pp. 266–96, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv182jrdf.16. Accessed 25 Nov. 2022.

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· 3:00 pm

Week 6: Emoji and Emoticon

Emoji and emoticon: the fun and playful little pictures you can add to text messages. But that’s not all they are. As it turns out, these little pictures can be used to convey additional meaning and may actually be fulfilling an important function within digital communications.

 

Emoji and Emoticons – What’s the Difference?

Although the two terms look like they should be interchangeable, emoji and emoticon actually are different things. 

Emoticon is a portmanteau of ‘emotion’ and ‘icon’ (McCulloch 178.) They are the little pictures we make by combining keyboard symbols – things like 🙂 and 🙁 and <3, to type a few. They first arose in 1982 on Carnegie Mellon University’s computer message system (177). Emoticons allowed users to integrate these little icons into their texts, as opposed to having a picture attached to the end of a post. 

Emoji originated in Japan in the late 1990s, and the term is a combination of ‘e’, picture, and ‘moji’, character (180). These are the premade illustrations that people often add to texts – things like a thumbs up, a tree, a laughing face, and so on.   

Emoji were actually preceded in Japan by kaomoji, which were more similar to American emoticons in that they used keyboard symbols to make faces or pictures (179). The ‘kao’ in kaomoji means face. Unlike American emoticons and their sideways faces, kaomoji tended to be face on: 0.o and  ^_^ are two examples. 

But what’s interesting is that we have emoticon and kaomoji developing around the same time in two separate environments (although the two would come into contact later, leading some American users to use both kaomoji and emoticon). This could be a coincidence, or it could suggest that both were fulfilling some communication need that users had. 

 

Where do Emoji & Emoticons show up?

Emoji & emoticon tend to appear in synchronous contexts, like texts or instant messages, rather than in more asynchronous contexts like emails or blogs (Herring 261). They also show up less often in conversations that are more serious or work-focused, suggesting that they may carry a sense of informality, light-heartedness, or playfulness (259, 261). With these context, we can guess that their function is likely related to the needs of speech-like interpersonal writing. Within a conversation itself, they’re more likely to appear at the end of sentences or utterances than mid-thought. They can appear paired with text or by themselves.

 

Analyzing Emoji & Emoticon

There are several ways we can approach emoji and emoticon. On the most basic level, they seem to represent facial expressions. Early researchers took this to mean that emoji and emoticon illustrate emotion. Hence, by using emoticon or emoji, we’re conveying information about our emotions that would otherwise be unavailable to our audience (250). However, the “emoticon = emotion” reading breaks down when we examine it further. The 😛 face or 😉 face, for instance, represent facial expressions but don’t represent specific emotions (252). Furthermore, emoticon are sometimes used in contexts where the content of its surrounding text don’t necessarily match the emotion of the face – like in “Stayed up all night working, I’m so tired right now :)”. So to get to the bottom of what these little faces and pictures are doing, we’ll have to look into more complex explanations. 

Some people have described emoji as their own language. But this is clearly not true, since we cannot communicate solely in emoji (McCulloch 157-158). This is for two reasons. First, emoji do not always have singular, fixed meanings, but can have their meaning shaped by the text surrounding them and vice versa (Logi 5). As such, emoji become less and less intelligible as they are disconnected from language (4). Secondly, emoji and emoticon are very bad at illustrating abstract concepts; things like tense, mental faculties, and so on. They also don’t allow us to easily specify through the use of determiners (this, that, these, etc) or proper names (New York, IKEA, etc). So if emoji and emoticon aren’t emotional icons, and they are a language, what are they?

 

The Illocutionary Force Approach

By returning to the first emoticons from 1982, we can see that they were assigned a specific function from the beginning. Amidst joking discussion of speculative situations at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, 🙂 was suggested as a way to mark statements of humor so as not to confuse or concern other users (McCulloch 178). Over time, this narrow usage would expand, and 🙂 would be used as a marker of general positive sentiment or sincerity (178). So, emoticons were being used not to illustrate facial expressions, but to convey the intention of the author to readers (Herring 255-256). Herring describes emoticons as “indicators of illocutionary force”. Illocutionary acts are acts that are carried out through their being spoken: promises, threats, joking, and so on. Emoticons can clarify what sort of illocutionary act a writer is performing – a joke, a promise, a request, and so on.

If we accept that emoticon and emoji convey intention, many of their uses in context make more sense. A wink in spoken conversation denotes some double meaning or inside joke, and a winking face like 😉 can add an attitude of humor to a message (“I’m blaming you” versus “I’m blaming you ;)”). So emoticons can be used to make utterances less threatening or serious (258). Emoticons that appear by themselves function in very similar ways, and either modify previous messages or express a general sentiment (259). 

This approach also gets around another issue with the emoticon = emotion hypothesis: facial expressions tend to be unconscious or unintentional, while typing is very much intentional (261). But a 🙂 in a message doesn’t feel like a forced smile, because it’s not; it’s a statement of intention (257). Although Herring focuses on emoticon, we can see how this approach can also work for emoji, seeing as how they also include pictures of facial expressions. The variety of emoji available may also allow users to further specify or clarify their intentions (for instance, a simple smiling face and a face with a wide grin might be used to indicate different amounts of humor or excitement).

 

The Gestural Approach

Several authors have suggested that emoji and emoticon function as replacements for the gestures we use in face to face conversation (Herring 260, Logi 4, McCulloch 157). Obviously, gestures and other body language are absent in written texts. In formal texts, this may not present much issue, as they often call for a neutral tone, disembodied from the actual writer. But if users are trying to write text that has speech-like qualities, they might want the ability to write gestures into their messages as well.

McCulloch specifically divides emoji into two categories with two different corresponding types of gesture. First there are emblematic emoji, which function like emblematic gesture (161-162). Secondly, there are more illustrative emoji that function as co-speech or illustrative gestures (166).

Emblematic gestures are those that have a fixed form and meaning. They also often can be named, as with giving a thumbs up/down, flipping someone off, the ok symbol, zipping the lips, and so on. Some emoji are also emblematic; the thumbs up/down emoji, of course, but also the eggplant (which by itself has sexual connotations) and the various flag emoji (which represent a country or identity). They have been given some intrinsic and fairly fixed meaning; people aren’t using a thumbs down as a way to point down, and they aren’t using the Canadian flag to represent maple trees. Emblematic emojis can be repeated, perhaps representing a repeated or drawn-out action. Multiple thumbs-up could represent holding a thumbs-up for a while, while multiple kissing face emojis could symbolize blowing multiple kisses (171). These fixed gestures, like emoji, are used intentionally in conversation (187). 

Illustrative or co-speech gestures are much more fluid. They’re difficult to describe in writing, but we use them all the time to illustrate size, shape, direction, and so on; they reinforce and support what we’re saying (166). The same gesture could mean two different things depending on the context: swiping one’s hand could indicate direction (come here/go away), size (this big/this small), emotion (dismissiveness, surrender, excitement), and so on. Illustrative emoji do the same thing in re-inforcing the subject and perhaps adding to the mood (“Happy birthday!” versus “Happy birthday!” paired with the balloon emoji, cake emoji and present emoji) (167). They also can be used simply to signify that the other participant is reading the conversation and continues to be interested in it, similarly to how body language or meaningless vocalization might be used in spoken conversations to show active listening (189). For the most part, researchers have not found that people use long strings of illustrative emoji to tell complex stories. The vast majority of emojis, in general, appear by themselves or in short strings, and they usually appear alongside words or are short replies to previous messages (169). When illustrative emoji do appear in sets, they are usually simply repeated or placed with matching emoji (snowman/snowflake, different colored hearts, and so on) and the order they appear in doesn’t appear to change their meaning (170). Again, this points toward an illustrative/clarifying function rather than a communicative function. 

 

The Social Semiotic Approach

Both of the aforementioned approaches focus more on the function of emoticons and emoji in a text; the social semiotic approach is a closer analysis of how they can be used to create meaning, and what sort of meanings they can create (Logi 2). Meaning is created through users’ choices and the interactions between those choices within a text (5-6). So, researchers need to consider the literal text, the literal emoji/emoticon (specifically emoji in this paper), and how those two interact to create a full meaning (6-7). 

Emoji can interact with text in several ways; they can appear alongside words or phrases to reinforce their literal meaning, they can replace a word or words, or they can reinforce an attitude or judgment found in the literal text (14). In some cases, text gives emoji meaning, while emoji don’t add much to the meaning of the text. The reinforcement of literal meaning can be seen in the example of “Incheon Airport” paired with an airplane emoji (7). Additionally, this example shows us that in some cases the text assigns meaning to the emoji, while the emoji itself does not assign a meaning to its accompanying words. The airplane emoji could refer to a literal airplane, or to any number of related concepts like a pilot, flying, a trip, or an airport. When paired with the text, the user assigns the “airport” meaning to the airplane emoji (7). However, the emoji only has this fixed meaning temporarily, and later responses within the same conversation could assign it a different meaning (ie, “Hope you enjoy your trip!” paired with the airplane emoji would give the emoji the meaning of “trip” rather than the previously assigned meaning of “airport”) (14-15). 

Emoji paired with text can create a number of kinds of meanings beyond reinforcing the literal meaning of a text. To further study this, Logi and other researchers collected texts from students and interviewed them about how they used emoji (8). They were then able to analyze the types of meaning created by the collected texts. Some of these categories of meaning included attitude (the user’s positive or negative feelings towards something), graduation (intensity of attitude), involvement (identification with a group) and so on (8, 11-12). Emoji, then, are definitely not limited to literal or emotional meaning only. 

Emoji and text can also interact in a more collaborative way (17). The message “Me & My worst frenemy” paired with the heart emoji indicates a specific type of attitude towards the referent (‘frenemy’) that we could not obtain from just the text or emoji on their own (19). Similarly, emoji can act to add information about a situation described in text. Adding a cellphone emoji to the message “I can see how ‘interested’ everyone is” lets us know that the disinterest that the user is actually referring to likely involves people being on their phones rather than paying attention to whatever the event is (18). 

In short, emoji appear to be able to support and help express a variety of different meanings within a text. In some cases they are superfluous, while at other times their inclusion clarifies or adds to the literal meaning of the surrounding text.

 

The Popularity of Emoji & Emoticon

Humans have liked adding images to our texts for a long time, from the illustrations on medieval manuscripts to the little doodles we add to cards or letters (McCulloch 174-175). In that sense, emoji and emoticons are simply the most recent incarnation of textual adornment. But, as shown above, emoji & emoticons are also serving to clarify communication (188). They also tend to coexist with other expressive textual features, like nonstandard spellings and letter repetition (185). So in a sense, we could say that emoji and emoticons are popular and widespread for the same reason these other expressive features are widespread: because they’re providing some layer of additional meaning that the words by themselves do not (192). 

Despite the fact that they are being used for similar, if not identical, purposes, emoji and emoticon don’t seem to be in competition with each other (185). This could be due to user preference – some people just prefer the look of a 🙂 over an emoji face – or it may be due to other factors, like technological support of emoji (Herring 260). Further research would be needed to determine whether there are specific linguistic, demographic, or environmental factors that influence the choice between emoticon and emoji. 

 

References

Dresner, Eli, and Herring, Susan C. “Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force.” Communication Theory, vol. 20, no. 3, 2010, pp. 249-268. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01362.x

Logi, Lorenzo, and Michele Zappavigna. “A Social Semiotic Perspective on Emoji: How Emoji and Language Interact to Make Meaning in Digital Messages.” New Media & Society, Sept. 2021, doi:14614448211032965.

McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=nlebk&AN=1617183&site=ehost-live.

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November 6, 2022 · 2:31 pm

Week 5: ‘Textspeak’

Now we can get into the idea of textspeak/textisms. What words and spellings are people using when they are texting or messaging? Do these hold true across different populations? And do these usages have any impact on users’ abilities to use more formal registers of a language?

 

Features of ‘Textspeak’

On a general level, it seems like the same categories of (English) textisms appear in samples both from native speakers and from non-native speakers. Abbreviations and omitted words tend to be common (Fenianos 68, Haas 386). Non standard spellings may be used to indicate informality, to cut down on keystrokes, or to “suggest pronunciation or, more precisely, to draw attention to associations between…ways of pronouncing words and certain regional and cultural dialects” (Haas 386). This latter function would include spelling differences like ‘partay’ for ‘party’ and ‘goin’ for ‘going’. Meanwhile, acronyms (‘lol’, ‘omg’) and alphabetisms (‘c’ for ‘see’, and similar examples) seem to be used less frequently by non-native speakers. This may be because extracting the meaning of these forms requires another step of coding/decoding which non-native speakers may find to be more labor-intensive (Fenianos 70-71).

Message content tended to include vague references – although this is more likely a reflection of the informal register, rather than a reflection of the message format itself (68). Pronouns were frequent, and determiners were used when discussing time (specifically future plans), shared experiences, or when referring to the conversation itself (67-68).  Users also made frequent use of “response tokens”, which are messages which are not communicating new information but are simply acknowledging and displaying interest in what a user has said (68-69). My guess these response tokens occur frequently because we lack the simultaneous feedback we usually receive in face-to-face conversations (check out Week 2 for more discussion of simultaneous feedback).

Some features added to a message, rather than abbreviating words. Users used emoticons “meant to mimic the human face and capture what is communicated…in face-to-face communication” (Haas 396) – in other words, to convey expression and tone. In a similar vein, sound words (like ‘haha’ to indicate laughter) showed up in multiple samples (Tagliamonte 15). Phatic words or phrases, like ‘lol’ or ‘wow’, also appeared frequently, and usually acted more to show participant engagement or to move the conversation along than to communicate actual information (15-16, Haas 392, 395). In Tagliamonte’s sample, for instance, ‘lol’ occurred more often at transitions in the conversation, in a final position, or by itself than at the beginning or middle of a message (16). 

Some things were generally left out of messages. Determiners referring to a location tended to be rare, since conversation participants do not have a shared experience of space and location (Fenianos 67). Sign-offs or goodbyes were less frequent than greetings (69). This may be because conversations can take place over an extended period of time, making it difficult to partition where one conversation ends and another begins. Greetings, on the other hand, could be used to draw a user’s attention back to the ongoing conversation in a polite way (“Good morning! Are we still planning to meet up later?”).

In terms of structure, the sampled messages tended to be limited in the number of clauses included per message. In the sample of non-native speakers, most utterances tended to include a single clause; there were no utterances which contained more than three clauses (67). When there were multiple clauses, they tended to be connected via a comma or simply forgo an explicit connector, like ‘and’, altogether.  

 

Why Nonstandard Features?

Why are we seeing some of these nonstandard features? Fenianos says “The participants have seemingly resorted to this writing style because it is easy, fast, and time-saving” (70). Haas disagrees with this assessment, saying that “brevity and speed are not of primary importance for these writers”, because if this were the case we would not be seeing “tensions between abbreviated and elaborated forms” (389). These elaborated or additive forms made up 67% of the features of her corpus of instant messages (389). Haas points out that these additive features “inscribe… oral features of language use into the written conversation” (390).  So Haas argues that users are adding features to their messages in order to evoke some elements of oral speech that would otherwise be unmarked. But these users are not marking every element of oral speech or their exact pronunciation (394). So the goal of these users is not to transcribe their own speech, but to use these nonstandard features strategically in order to convey the meaning they wish to convey. 

But it does seem like brevity does play some sort of role when it comes to choosing how to convey a message. Take the use of ‘so’ and ‘going to’; in both cases, these phrases are becoming more frequent in spoken language in the Toronto region, where Tagliamonte’s study was based. In the SMS portion of her data she did find that ‘so’ was being used at roughly the same rate as it was in face-to-face conversations (20). On the other hand we have ‘going to’, which has been displacing ‘will’ in the Toronto region (23). But in the SMS data, ‘will’ and its contracted forms were much more frequently used than ‘going to’ (24). If texting language is solely influenced by a texters’ spoken speech, then ‘going to’ should be overtaking ‘will’ in the data sample. Because we see this is not the case, we might guess that ‘will’ has remained in common usage because it is much briefer than ‘going to’ and that ‘so’ is appearing more frequently because it is shorter than other intensifiers such as ‘very’. 

In short, it seems that neither brevity nor spoken language are the sole drivers of what word choice and features people are using when they communicate through means like texting or instant messaging. 

 

Impact on Formal Writing Skills

The formal language skills of young adults, at least according to Tagliamonte’s 2016 study, do not appear to be negatively influenced by their texting habits (27). This study was unique in that it collected formal writing samples from each of the 45 college-aged participants (7). Their writing samples had intact standard grammar, and did not have nonstandard word forms (13). It is possible that there might be more confusion of registers among younger students, but this study seems to indicate that young adults who text or message in nonstandard English are not doing so due to lack of education or knowledge about standard English. 

 

Remaining Questions

One thing that does need to be considered is all of the studies cited drew from populations of teenagers or young adults. Studies looking at a different or wider age bracket could give us some insight as to whether these features tend to be retained by users as they age, and whether there is any divide between the habits of older and younger texters. Ensuring that these samples also come from populations who are diverse in other ways (race, class, etc) would help to provide an even better picture of how common these forms are across different groups. 

 

Citations

Fenianos, Christelle Frangieh. “Internet Language: An Investigation into the Features of Textisms in an ESL/EFL Context.” Journal of Arts and Humanities, vol. 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 63-74. https://theartsjournal.org/index.php/site/article/view/1848/835. Accessed 6 Nov 2022.

Haas, Christina, et al. “Young People’s Everyday Literacies: The Language Features of Instant Messaging.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 45, no. 4, 2011, pp. 378–404. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050580. Accessed 6 Nov 2022.

Tagliamonte, Sali A. “So Sick or so Cool? The Language of Youth on the Internet.” Language in Society, vol. 45, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43904632. Accessed 6 Nov 2022.

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