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.