WhatsApp, textese, and moral panics: discourse features and habits across two generations (original) (raw)
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Communication via new media or social media, i.e. computer-mediated communication (CMC), is now omnipresent. The ‘CMC language’ that youngsters use in such media often diverges from the ‘official’ spelling and grammar rules of the standard language. Many parents and teachers are thus critical of CMC language, because they view Standard Dutch as a strict norm. Yet among youths it enjoys a certain status, and is regarded as playful, informal, and cool. So an interesting power conflict exists between the overt prestige of the standard language and the covert prestige of CMC language among youngsters. To determine how Dutch youths’ language use in computer-mediated messages differs from Standard Dutch, an extensive register analysis was conducted of about 400,000 tokens of digital texts, produced by youths of two age groups – adolescents (12-17 years old) and young adults (18-23 years old), in four social media – SMS text messages; instant messages, viz. MSN chats and WhatsApp messages; and microblogs, namely tweets. This corpus study focuses on various linguistic features of four writing dimensions: orthography (textisms, misspellings, typos), typography (emoticons, symbols), syntax (omissions), and lexis (borrowings, interjections). The results suggest that the variables of age and medium are of crucial importance for (Dutch) youths’ online language use.
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WhatsApp messages can be such a rich source for creative and spontaneous language geared toward more individual expression. WhatsApping provides us with a unique view into language and is an interesting prototype for thinking about language use, the various functions of this variety and how it is used to render different kinds of meanings. This study aims to explore the linguistic features of text messaging's communicative intent, content and context. Selected samples of messages were drawn from a high school student population in Canada who provided a corpus of 100 different texts already sent and/ or received for personal, educational and professional purposes. The collected data were analyzed using Biber and Conrad's qualitative approach to register, genre, and style analysis. The result is that people use clipped sentences in a free flow of casual speech and slang. While certain abbreviations have come into such common use, to the point of becoming standard, a wide array of individualistic variance in terms of style and language usage has emerged. It is concluded that avid texters, while appearing to greatly deviate from more traditional, standard written English, are a rich source for studying creative and spontaneous language adaptation of register, genre and text according to context and text users.
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Journal of Research in Reading, 2001
This article reports on a small-scale investigation into the use of Internet chatrooms by teenage girls. Based on interview and observational data, it illustrates how the use of popular electronic communication is resulting in linguistic innovation within new, virtual social networks in a way that reflects more wide-reaching changes in the communication landscape. The paper suggests that teenagers and young people are in the vanguard of these processes of change as they fluently exploit the possibilities of digital technology, radically changing the face of literacy. The study looks at teenagers' perceptions of chatroom encounters and their learning about new ways of social and linguistic interaction. Observations of teenagers online show how rapid written conversations which combine features of face-to-face talk with explorations in interactive writing and the exchange of additional digital information, such as image files and web addresses, are enabling these young people to develop sophisticated and marketable skills. These innovations are contrasted with recent media and educational criticism of the language use associated with new technology. This tension between change and conservatism is explored by applying Bourdieu's concept of`linguistic capital'.
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The impact of CMC on youths’ literacy goes beyond their traditional literacy skills: the entire concept of literacy has evolved because of new media. This chapter problematizes the seemingly straightforward notion of literacy, by focusing on how it has been reconceptualised in previous research, in light of the digital age which has emerged in recent decades. It discusses how the old literacies of reading and writing print-based texts have traditionally been defined and why many scholars felt that there was a need for a broader conceptualisation of literacy. The numerous ‘new literacies’ that have been coined as a response are examined, as well as definitions for these that have been proposed in the literature. Finally, we consider whether old and new, digital literacies can co-exist.
York Papers in Linguistics, PARLAY Proceedings, 2015
Recent decades have seen an explosive growth in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Since the language used in CMC can deviate from standard language conventions, concerns have been expressed that CMC may degrade youths’ reading, writing, or spelling skills. However, before studying the possible impact of CMC on traditional literacy, the ways in which ‘CMC language’ differs from the standard language need to be established. This article discusses the first findings of an ongoing large-scale corpus study examining the register of written CMC of Dutch youngsters between the ages of twelve and twenty-three, revealing how their CMC language differs from Standard Dutch in various dimensions of writing. The focus here is on a salient orthographic feature, namely the use of textisms (unconventional spellings). A range of CMC modes was investigated, including instant messages, text messages, and microblogs. It is shown that the extent to which CMC users deviate orthographically from the standard language and the degree to which they use particular textism types depends both on CMC mode and on individual user characteristics such as age.
Analysis of Online Texting among Bilingual Interlocutors
This study advances research on using language in online communication. It intended to analyze texting on WhatsApp in terms of linguistic and paralinguistic characteristics, the identity of interlocutors, and uses of emojis. Adopting a corpus-based approach to the study of language variation, data were collected from WhatsApp chat group of six male students enrolled in a Master"s program at a graduate school in the Midwestern region of the United States. A total of 195 messages were garnered over a period of three months. Results showed laudable features of online texting which are deviant of the formal English orthographically, morphologically, syntactically, and phonologically. This supports previous claims that texting has adversely affected the structure of formal language. It was also found that emojis were used to complement words, impose additional meaning that mere words cannot convey or supplant written forms. Additionally, the way interlocutors used text messages reveals information about their identities. It also gives clues about their cultural, religious, and educational backgrounds.