1. Introduction
     What is Social Media?    What is Language?  

2. Classifying and Explaining forms of Social Media
     Herring’s medium and situation factors    Genre    Register  

3. Social Media & Online Communities

4. Research Methods and Ethics
     Discourse Analysis    Corpus Analysis    Ethics  

5. Studies and Findings relevant to Social Media and Language
     Parts of Speech    “Netspeak”    Gender    Politeness & Toxicity    Specialized Vocabulary    Figurative Speech  

6. References

Introduction

What is Social Media?

Social media are computer-mediated websites and technologies which enable communication and the sharing of information. These technologies arose in the late 1990’s and increasingly are gaining popularity amongst cohorts of all ages. Social media can take the form of photo-sharing sites (e.g. Flickr and Instagram), business and employment-oriented sites (e.g. LinkedIn) or news and social-networking sites (e.g. Facebook and Twitter). One defining feature of social media is that they are often interconnected. Other essential characteristics can be used to separate social media from other previous forms of media (e.g. Mass media). Social media are Web 2.0 Internet-based, which entails easier accessibility and usability for all. Therefore, users of these sites become more active participants than the Web 1.0 would have allowed. Social media operate on user-generated content which allows for more synchronous communication and sharing of knowledge and allows for collaborative potential. Social media’s predecessors featured communication which was often 2-way and private, such as email. Consider, for instance, mass media which involves one-to-many transmission of information. Social media can be more personal, public, opinionated, multimodal and collaborative depending on the users personal preferences for use. See Herring’s medium and situation factors to further classify and explain social media.

What is Language?

The definition of language is not a simple one. The word ‘language’ can be used in many ways- figuratively or technically.^[1]. To define it in broad linguistic terms- language is a means of communication and representation. It may be considered as transactional or interactional, as a product and/or a process, and as a semiotic system. Linguistics is the scientific study of language which can be broken down into many domains. From the individual sound units (see phonetics and phonology) to structure (see morphology, syntax and discourse) to meaning and interpretation (see semantics, pragmatics, and discourse). With the exception of sound structure, perhaps, all of the above-mentioned domains can be applied and analyzed in social media, especially the broader domains relating to meaning. Linguistic analysis of social media can focus on language and breaking it down to its constituent parts, or linguistic analysis can take a sociolinguistic perspective relying more on the participants than language use itself.

Classifying and Explaining forms of Social Media

Herring’s medium and situation factors

When analyzing social media, we can utilize Herring’s medium and situation factors^[2] as a useful guide. Medium (or technological) factors include synchronicity, message transmission, persistence, size, channel, privacy and anonymity. Situation (or social) factors comprise of participation structure, characteristics, purpose, topic, tone, norms and code. These all effectively contribute to how a social media website works and how its users will engage in the website accordingly.

Genre

The term ‘genre’ refers to a particular type or kind. We can use it to separate styles of music or movies- but in terms of linguistics and social media we can use ‘genre’ to separate and distinguish particular types and forms of social media. Online genres include, for instance, e-mails, tweets, or YouTube pages. The genre types develop in predictable stages where the stages have a purpose within its context; genres also have a particular community of practice, its own lexicogrammar and it also interacts with other ^[3]. For instance, the first stage of a tweet consists of the user’s profile picture and username, and date. It is then followed by some text, and can include a link to a video or a picture. At the bottom of the tweet are four ‘action buttons’, used to leave a comment on the tweet; retweet (repost); ‘like’ the tweet, or direct message the user. The purpose of a tweet is to share information, and the community of practice varies depending on the user and their demographic of followers (age, gender, location). For example, user [https://twitter.com/SFULing280?lang=en @SFULing280]'s community of practice are students of Linguistics 280 at SFU. Lexicogrammar of a tweet may include short, sometimes incomplete sentences, a URL, and hashtags.

Register

Another means of analysis involves considering register which is realized in three variables: field (topic), tenor (relationship between the involved participants), and mode (the function and medium of communication). Often these different aspects of register vary according to the individual user’s preferences rather than the social media platform itself. In the case of an Instagram post, for example, the field can range from selfies to landscape photos. The tenor varies according to privacy settings and the mode can be audio/visual but typically takes the form of a photo with a written caption.

As exemplified, both register and genre can be considered in terms of labelling and understanding social media forms. While genre is a more general classification, register is more particular, therefore, two texts belonging to a common genre may differ in register features. Genre takes into consideration the context of culture, whereas register takes into consideration the particular situation in which the text was produced.

Social Media & Online Communities

By sociolinguistic definition, communities can be interpreted in two ways. A speech community is a group of people who share particular language features (certain words, vocabulary or a particular accent). A community of practice, is a group of people who come together for a common purpose but inadvertently form a unified linguistic community (for example, a group of colleagues). Online communities do not clearly fit into either definition but may be more consistent with the concept of community of practice. Online communities are different in some aspects when compared to physical communities- they lack long-term commitment and stable membership for instance. There is a different kind of relationship developed than the relationship acquired in the real world. Nevertheless, some features of online communities include: group specific vocabulary, forms of non-verbal communication, genres, and humour.^[4]

Research Methods and Ethics

Discourse Analysis

One field of research involves discourse analysis which is relating to the context of language use. According to Deborah Cameron, discourse can be described in three ways: discourse is language ‘above the sentence’, discourse is language in ‘use’, and discourse is a form of social practice in which language is central.^[5] A linguist studying social media, therefore, may consider sociolinguistic factors which are relevant in online discourse. How does online discourse compare to real life, in-person discourse? How does discourse differ between online social media platforms?

Corpus Analysis

Another approach to study relies on utilizing corpora (or large bodies of texts). This approach is more functional but its status as a theory or method is unestablished. In order to study corpus linguistics a machine-readable corpus and a computer program to process the data from the corpus is required. Common corpora analysis procedures involve establishing word frequencies, type-token ratios, and lexical density and diversity to name a few. Analyzing corpora can be useful to generalize data and look at the data from a new perspective.

Ethics

Because social media involves utilizing human produced data- there are certain implications which are legal, ethical and privacy-related. Research should follow copyright laws, international jurisdictions and general principles of ethical behaviour in research. In some instances, informed consent is required and corpus data collection entails anonymizing the data and respecting the (knowing or unknowing) participants privacy (e.g. proper storage and distribution of the data).

Studies and Findings relevant to Social Media and Language

Parts of Speech

One way linguists classify words is by separating them into two classes- open and closed. Open class words consist of nouns, verbs and adjectives, for instance; they are ‘open’ because these parts of speech can accept new members (e.g. through borrowing and invention). Closed class words, on the other hand, consist of determiners, pronouns and conjunctions, for example. These kinds of words serve a grammatical function or meaning, therefore, are not ‘open’ to new members.

Open class and closed class words are used in a unique way on the internet. New internet slang usually appears as open class words (see doggo and meme). In the social media platform Twitter, users may use more (closed class) pronouns to talk about personal experience but more often than not, closed class words will often be dropped to try and fit a message into a 140-character limit. Users may choose content words (open class words) over function words (closed class words which generally does not convey a lot of meaning) to express what they are trying to say. Sometimes closed class words can have different forms when used in online speech communities. The word “because” is one such example; traditionally it can be followed by a finite clause or a prepositional phrase. The new internet improvised form is referred to as the “because-noun” or the “prepositional-because” where the closed class preposition is dropped after the ‘because’ to immediately use a noun.^[6]

“Netspeak”

According to Androutsopoulos (2006), the term netspeak (also known as internet slang) was introduced by Crystal in 2001 as a type of language that consisted of features unique to online domains or computer mediated communication (CMC). Referring to much of Crystal’s work, Androutsopoulos (2006) claims that this variety of language can be categorized into more specific forms; saying that there is a language for texting, emails, and other forms of online communication. Each of these forms/registers have their own unique set of features that make it distinct from another form. In terms of texting for example, there could be a heavy use of acronyms, slang, and emojis. In some cases, there may be no text at all, but images, videos, and GIFs instead. All of these features are mostly specific to texting and online chat domains and are not commonly found in forms such as formal emails. In previous studies of CMC and netspeak, registers were observed in terms of being synchronous or asynchronous (instant messaging compared to emails), mode of communication, and a focus on unusual features. These unusual features include emojis, images, videos, combinations of letters with numbers (such as “g2g” for got to go), and acronyms (such as “lol” for laugh out loud), which are all commonly seen in text messaging. However, studies later turned to a more sociolinguistic approach, focusing on the user(s) rather than the medium of communication. Netspeak was viewed in a different perspective as different communities of practice, where the members involved participate in their online community due to a shared interest. Androutsopoulos (2006) describes that these online communities function like many others in society; capable of creating social roles, having its own social hierarchy, and its own norms. Baym (2003) lists four specific characteristics of these online communities, as referred by Androutsopoulos (2006). Each online community has its own genres, humour, group-specific vocabulary, and methods of non-verbal or non-textual communication.^[7]

Gender

Studies by Susan Herring found some interesting generalizations to be made about male and female language use in social media. Male discourse was found to have more strong assertions, disagreement and less politeness. Female discourse, on the other hand had more support, agreement, and expression of personal feelings. Particular to synchronous discourse, they found males to use more violent verbs and profanity while females used more emoticons and laughter.^[8] Another study found that men say my wife/girlfriend more than women say my husband/boyfriend^[9].

Overall, there are many studies on the topic of gender and language, but in some cases the claims and findings may better correlate with power than gender.

Politeness & Toxicity

Politeness is a socio-cultural convention which may be expressed linguistically through words (e.g. ‘please’ or ‘thank-you’), however politeness can be expressed through manners and actions and is very universally different depending on socio-cultural norms and societal expectations.

Toxicity, however, is more easily identified and can manifest in many forms. Trolling is one form of toxic behaviour which is prevalent in social media, Hardaker describes it as the “deliberate use of impoliteness/aggression, deception and or manipulation in CMC to create a context conducive to triggering or antagonizing conflict, typically for amusements sake”.^[10]

Hateful speech or abusive, toxic language is one dominant form of toxicity online and certain API’s have been developed in attempt to detect it (see https://www.perspectiveapi.com/#/). Detecting hateful speech is more complicated than just extracting negative, toxic words. Linguistic analysis beyond the lexical level is required to successfully detect toxicity and also politeness (see http://politeness.cornell.edu/). One reason is that negative toxic language makes use of sophisticated rhetorical structures (such as irony) which can be particularly difficult to detect.

Specialized Vocabulary

Each generation has their own set of unique vocabulary and ways to express themselves, especially amongst teens and young adults. Many modern-day youths spend their time on the internet engaging and creating jargon or slang with the use of unique words, images, and video. Like how people use jargon in their day to day life for professional, cultural, or geographical matters- the internet has a variety of platforms with their own unique jargon, and within those platforms there are subgroups that create their own jargon. Usually new words are added into open-class words. Some platform-specific jargon include "hashtag" and "tweet" for Twitter, “reblog” on Tumblr, or “upvote” on Reddit. “Doggo” is studied as it has many variations (with diminutive suffixes: “pupper” or using onomatopoeia: “woofer”) and it also has its own unique “dog grammar” usually beginning with a modifier/intensifier, followed by a noun or verb.^[11]

Figurative Speech

Use of figurative speech is very prevalent online. Use of metaphor, metonymy, irony and sarcasm, for example are quite common in user posts and content. But metaphors too, are often used in conceptualizing social media; ‘going viral’ for instance, is a way of equating social media to the spread of diseases. Since the creation of the internet, metaphors such as ‘surfing the web’ and ‘net neutrality’ have existed. Sarcasm is one form of figurative language which is not always easy to convey- as there is a lack of face-to-face interaction which normally conveys sarcasm through intonation and facial expression. Grice’s Maxims explains that people are assumed to be cooperative and truthful and by clashing it with mismatching use of things such as tone, body language, and sincerity, it gives the message to the listener or viewer not to take words at face value. Social media instead uses things like punctuation, capitalization, spelling, internet slang, and being entirely deadpan (as seen on articles from on The Onion) to help convey sarcasm. Other solutions have arisen such as the “/s” or (/sarcasm) which can be found on social media platforms such as Reddit where they are seen added at the end of remarks to express sarcasm.

References

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• 2007–08 Texas Tech Red Raiders men's basketball team