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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.

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.

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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 20 Dec 2022.

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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 20 Dec 2022.

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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. Accessed 20 Dec 2022.

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

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