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.