Category Archives: Supplemental

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.

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.

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.

Category Archives: Supplemental

Supplemental: Conveying Non-Verbal Information Online

Supplemental: Online Morphosyntactic Innovations in Other Languages

Supplemental: Because-X

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