The Linguistics of Social Media: An introduction [1 ed.] 1032330945, 9781032330945

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The Linguistics of Social Media This accessible textbook introduces concepts and frameworks from linguistics and uses them in the analysis of language on social media. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics and with examples drawn from 12 different social media platforms, including TikTok, Twitter (the book was written prior to the X rebrand), Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, The Linguistics of Social Media: An Introduction provides the tools to unpick how language is used to portray a particular identity, to persuade, to inform, to amuse and entertain, to vent and to complain. Analysing the language of social media highlights the strategies which operate in the messages and posts found on such platforms. Together, these strategies involve a wide variety of language registers, creativity and language play and a wealth of linguistic innovation. By evidencing the many nuanced ways in which people are engaging with social media, this book demonstrates how users of social media are linguistically savvy, strategic and skilled in navigating different genres and registers online. The book is divided into ten chapters, each comprising two parts: Part 1 introduces key linguistic theory and Part 2 consists of case studies with examples from different social media platforms to demonstrate a particular discourse purpose. Each chapter ends with a summary, references, suggested further readings and ideas for activities and discussions. There are multiple-​choice questions and a glossary available online as support material. This is the essential textbook for all courses on language and social media, linguistics and language and communication courses. Andreea S. Calude is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Waikato, in New Zealand. She is the Editor-​in-​Chief of Te Reo (the journal of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand) and author of Questions about Language (Routledge, 2019, edited with Laurie Bauer) and Mysteries of English Grammar (Routledge, 2020, written with Laurie Bauer).

The Linguistics of Social Media An Introduction

ANDREEA S. CALUDE

Designed cover image: © Getty Images | Urupong First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Andreea S. Calude The right of Andreea S. Calude to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-​holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Calude, Andreea S., author. Title: The linguistics of social media : an introduction / Andreea S. Calude. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2023016372 | ISBN 9781032343891 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781032330945 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003321873 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032563459 (ebook other) Subjects: LCSH: Language and the Internet–Textbooks. | Internet users–Language. | Online social networks. | LCGFT: Textbooks. Classification: LCC P120.I6 C35 2024 | DDC 302.23/1014–dc23/eng/20230612 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016372 ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​34389-​1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​33094-​5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​32187-​3 (ebk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​56345-​9 (eBook+​) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003321873 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK Access the Support Material: www.routle​dge.com/​978103​2343​891 Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions.

For Natalia and Daniel James

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements List of internet slang and abbreviations About this book Why the world needs a book about the linguistics of social media Who this book is intended for How to read this book

1

Language and social media 1.1 Introduction to linguistics: word sorcery and other magic tricks Linguistics as a discipline What linguistics is not Linguistics in practice Core areas of linguistics How linguistics might be useful in studying social media 1.2 Introduction to social media A very brief history of how we got talking online Communication on the internet is here to stay Generations of internet communicators What is social media? The good, the bad and the ugly: we are not here to judge References What to read next What to do next

2 Using social media for your purpose: exploring genre, register and style 2.1 What do we use language for? Spoken language, written language and the continuum between them How to organise language texts: genre, register and style Taking texts apart: the mechanics of characterising texts

xi xiii xv xvii xvii xix xix

1 1 1 2 4 5 11 12 13 14 15 17 19 21 22 22

23 23 25 30 32

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2.2 Using social media for your purpose Case study 2.2.1. Genre, register and style of instant messages Case study 2.2.2. Genre, register and style of Reddit posts Case study 2.2.3. Genre, register and style of Wikipedia articles In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next 3 Using social media to speak to your tribe: considering Audience Design, language choice and multilingualism 3.1 How do you speak to your tribe? Audience is key! I speak your language Juggling multiple languages Switching languages and language choice 3.2 Using social media to find and keep your tribe Case study 3.3.1. Tailoring Facebook updates to your audience Case study 3.3.2. Mixing languages on TikTok to increase prestige and appeal to your audience In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next 4 Using social media to get things done: analysing speech acts and politeness 4.1 How do we use language to get things done? Speech acts: a performance in three acts How to do things with words Meaning more than you say: indirect speech acts and politeness 4.2 Using social media to get things done Case study 4.4.1. Putting your best foot forward on LinkedIn Case study 4.4.2. Enhancing your company’s image on Twitter and Weibo Case study 4.4.3. Doing ‘collaboration’ in a virtual workplace In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next 5 Using social media to be yourself: examining indexing, gender and communities of practice 5.1 How to find your ‘self’ and what language has to do with it viii

35 35 38 40 43 44 45 46

47 47 48 50 51 53 56 56 62 64 65 67 67

69 69 72 73 75 78 78 82 85 88 89 91 92

93 93

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The presentation of the self in everyday life Indexing, speech communities and communities of practice Performing gender: girly girls and manly men Performing sexuality: coming on and coming out 5.2 Using social media to be yourself Case study 5.5.1. Presenting your ‘best day’ on Facebook Case study 5.5.2. From creating a sense of belonging to creating a hybrid identity on Instagram Case study 5.5.3. Expressing your sexuality on Twitter and TikTok In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next 6 Using social media to save the world: theorising metaphor 6.1 From linguistic signs to reality: conjuring up a picture Metaphors we live by: ubiquitous and systematic Metaphors from the body: directly experiential metaphors are primary Metaphors in the mind: an unsolved puzzle 6.2 Using social media to frame the world around us Case study 6.2.1. Promoting ‘green’ living journeys on personal blogs Case study 6.2.2. Playing the political game on Facebook and TikTok Case study 6.2.3. Using Twitter to declare war on a global pandemic In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next 7 Using social media to influence public opinion: surveying texts with Move Analysis and corpus linguistics 7.1 Beyond the sentence: how is discourse structured? Move Analysis: a top-​down discourse analysis approach Corpus linguistics-​driven discourse analysis: a bottom-​up approach 7.2 Using social media to influence public opinion Case study 7.2.1. Reviewing your experiences on TripAdvisor Case study 7.2.2. Evaluating perspectives on YouTube In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next

94 95 96 98 102 102 104 109 113 113 115 116 118 118 120 123 124 126 126 129 133 138 138 140 141

143 143 145 148 151 152 157 161 161 163 163 ix

Contents

8 Using social media to amuse and entertain: introducing word-​formation and grammatical constructions 8.1 The structured lexicon Words and how to find them Analogy in word-​formation processes Analogy in grammatical constructions 8.2 Using social media for humour and wordplay Case study 8.2.1. Using hashtags for creativity and wordplay Case study 8.2.2. Sharing a laugh with internet macro-​memes In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next 9 Using social media to rally for your language: measuring linguistic vitality and language endangerment 9.1 How to tell if your language is thriving Measures of linguistic vitality Language policies and planning Ticking the ‘other’ box: minoritized languages Could the native speaker please stand up? 9.2 Using social media to rally for your language Case study 9.2.1. Re-​evaluating minoritized languages on YouTube Case study 9.2.2. Creating ‘breathing spaces’ for minoritized languages on Facebook Case study 9.2.3. Expanding minoritized language classrooms to Twitter In a nutshell References What to read next What to do next 10 Epilogue: ethical considerations and language change The linguistics of social media: some common threads More research is needed: ethical considerations and avoiding harm Language never falls apart: language change and social media In a nutshell References What to read next Index Index of languages Index of social media platforms

x

165 165 166 168 172 174 175 178 186 186 189 189

191 191 192 194 197 198 199 199 207 210 212 213 215 215 216 216 217 219 222 222 224 225 228 230

Illustrations

Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 4.1 4.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 8.1 9.1 10.1

Basic blocks of grammar: word classes in English Checklist of features for classifying texts Features of the CMV forum genre Potential audience members Taxonomies of speech acts by Austin and Searle Summary of speaker choices in relation to linguistic politeness [love is food] mappings [‘green’ lifestyle is a journey] mappings The mechanics of the politics is football metaphor in Nigerian politics Negative consequences of the war metaphor in framing Covid-​19 BCU implementation of Move Analysis Moves found in responses to negative complaints, ordered from most to least frequent Summary of common word-​formation processes in English Summary of UNESCO factors of language vitality assessment Ethical considerations in data collection design

28 34 40 50 74 77 122 129 131 137 146 156 172 195 218

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

LINGUIST meme Spectrogram depicting various sounds This is also a text Dictionary entry Social media platforms Heavy use of mobile phones on an underground train Speech–​Writing Continuum Two different recipe styles Text message example Reddit logo

2 6 8 9 18 19 29 32 35 39 xi

Illustrations

2.5 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 6.3

Wikipedia homepage Facebook icon Facebook news feed TikTok installation from New Delhi, 2020 Harry Potter characters: Hermione, Harry and Ron LinkedIn icon LinkedIn connection levels Example of tweet by HSBC bank Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence (1928) Instagram application Doctor Mike Varşavski Keala Settle at The Greatest Showman premiere René Magritte, La trahison des images (‘The treachery of images’) Excerpt from article posted on blog My zero waste Facebook news feed example in which other users’ activity is visible 6.4 Podemos march, Madrid, 2015 6.5 Tweet in relation to Covid-​19 containing the war metaphor 6.6 Tweet which sparked the #ReframeCovid initiative 6.7 The use of ‘lockdown’ and ‘bubbles’ to frame stay-​at-​home measures in New Zealand English 7.1 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563 7.2 Amanda Knox 7.3 TripAdvisor stand in Berlin, 2014 7.4 Greta Thunberg, speaking in Montreal, September 2019, shortly after addressing the UN Climate Change Summit 8.1 Calvin & Hobbes: ‘Verbing weirds language’ 8.2 First attested hashtag use on Twitter 8.3 Overview of hashtag types 8.4 Dawkins meme 8.5 ‘Most interesting man in the world’ meme 8.6 ‘In Soviet Russia’ meme 8.7 Romanian ‘When’ meme by Tom Memarul 8.8 PAGAN definition meme 8.9 LOL cat meme (1) 8.10 LOL cat meme (2) 8.11 ‘Success Kid’ meme 9.1 Scale of linguistic vitality proposed by UNESCO 9.2 First video uploaded to YouTube (April 2005) 9.3 St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Dublin, 2010 9.4 St David’s Day celebration in Cardiff, 2009 9.5 Sámi family at spring celebration 9.6 Traditional Frisian dancing in Oldsum, 2014 9.7 Indigenous people of Oaxaca xii

41 56 57 63 72 78 79 83 99 104 107 112 119 127 130 132 134 136 138 144 148 152 157 170 175 177 179 180 182 182 184 184 185 190 194 200 201 203 205 209 211

Acknowledgements

In March 2019, I was asked to introduce a new course on the linguistics of social media, a topic which was relatively new to me. By the time 2020 rolled in, it became clear that despite my best efforts, I could not locate a suitable textbook introducing both theoretical linguistics aspects and analyses of social media language. And so, a book was born: first out of need, and over time, out of interest. This book encapsulates my own journey of discovery, learning about what users are doing with language on social media. As I became engrossed in researching the topic, with new work coming out weekly, daily even, it became obvious that social media is so much more than the odd Twitter post and Facebook update. It is varied and dynamic. It has many different purposes. Its users can be strategic, skilled communicators leveraging the power of language to get things done online. (Of course, they can be careless communicators too.) This book provides a glimpse of my own curiosity and excitement as I became immersed in this topic, and my hope is that it will infect readers with the same feelings I share. I owe much gratitude to the people who carried me through the completion of this manuscript. My sincere thanks to people who read (and re-​read) drafts tirelessly, who provided inspiration and encouragement, who checked language and content, who fixed references and typos, who provided coffee (I see you, Coffee Culture Café!) and who sustained me emotionally through the writing process: Alison Annals, Laurie Bauer, Allan Bell, Ian Bruce, Nicola Daly, Gerry Delahunty, Ray Harlow, Shae Holcroft, Katie Levendis, Miriam Meyerhoff, Kim Schoofs, Joe Ulatowski, Eline Zenner. I am greatly indebted to Jessie Burnette and David Trye, who read the book cover to cover. My summer research students, Mitchell Williams and Amber Anderson, and students enrolled in the first class I taught using this book, LINGS204 of 2022, have also provided useful feedback. This book would have not seen the light of print without my wonderful editor Louisa Semlyen, who replied so positively, on that Saturday afternoon in late December 2021, to my tentative and hesitant email, and who proceeded to champion the book ever since. I am grateful to Talitha Duncan-​Todd for her support with illustrations and copyright issues and for her general advice and

xiii

Acknowledgements

efficiency, as I am to those who kindly gave me permission to reproduce their posts and memes. Writing is a solitary enterprise and I am, by nature, not a solitary person. I thank my husband Paul (who also read the book in its entirety) and my children Natalia and Daniel (to whom it is dedicated) for cheering me on and for making me feel less alone during the writing process, while still allowing me the quiet thinking space to complete it. Last but not least, I thank my parents for filling up our house and my world with books.

xiv

Internet slang and abbreviations

baeless person without a partner, single booling hanging out EMOJI or EMOTICON the use of a picture symbol of punctuation symbols to denote emotions, for example ;) (wink), :) (smiley face), size

> condition

> age

> colour

> origin

one, four > small, big > clean, dirty > old, new > blue, red > German, Irish

In speech, we do not tend to use many adjectives at the same time (the usual limit is three), but if we did want to use several adjectives, the pattern above holds remarkably well—​a bit like an unspoken contractual agreement among English speakers. Once we have put sounds together to form words, and words together to form phrases and sentences, we begin to form something that resembles a ‘text’. This is different to a text message (though, confusingly, that is also called a ‘text’) because it is a much wider notion. For linguists, the word text can refer to a spoken excerpt of conversation, a passage read on a news briefing, a written excerpt of a book or a chapter like the one you are reading right now or, in fact, a text message like the one in Figure 1.3. Basically, any collection of clauses and sentences which hang together in a coherent way is said to be a text. The discipline that considers how texts are put together is termed discourse analysis.

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Figure 1.3  This is also a text

8

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Discourse analysts aim to answer many different types of questions regarding the ingredients of texts (such as, which components are required for a wedding speech to sound like a wedding speech?) and the functions of particular texts (what was the main purpose of Obama’s presidential address and how does it differ from Trump’s presidential address?). Two salient concepts in discourse analysis are those of framing and power. How a particular event or happening is framed (or presented) greatly affects its interpretation (see Chapter 6). Surprisingly, even relatively short texts, such as tweets, can involve a great deal of variation and sophisticated linguistic framing, leading to very different interpretations and, sometimes, to misinterpretations. Power relations are also extremely important when analysing the function and interpretation of a text because they affect the likely outcome of the communication (see Chapter 5 for examples concerning gender and sexuality and Chapter 9 for examples concerning language marginalisation). For instance, if you were directing someone to do something, the relative power you might have over that person is crucial to their willingness and likelihood to act as instructed. When analysing and interpreting texts, two types of meaning can be distinguished: semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning. The discipline of semantics centres on the meaning of a given word, with respect to what is denoted. You can think of it as the word’s dictionary entry (see Figure 1.4). On the other hand, pragmatics focuses on the overarching ways in which a word or word combinations can be used to ‘get things done’ (more on this in Chapter 4), including the connotations and implications raised, as well as politeness concerns

Figure 1.4  Dictionary entry

9

Language and social media

and cultural norms. The sentence Can you open the window? can be parsed as ‘Are you physically able to open the window?’ or as ‘Do you mind opening the window?’ The former is the semantic meaning reached by stringing together the semantic content of the words uttered. The latter is the more likely intended interpretation, reached by inferring the speaker’s commitment towards basic politeness norms and their recognition of the imposition of their request. Common approaches to semantics invoke the notion of meaning components, which break down the various senses of a given word. For example, a woman involves the components [+​female], [+​adult], [+​human], whereas a man has [+​ male], [+​adult], [+​human]. Pragmatics, on the other hand, is more slippery and harder to constrain and determine. It is no coincidence that dictionaries focus on listing semantic meanings and only touch on pragmatics occasionally, in a much more superficial manner. What is especially interesting regarding pragmatics is that cross-​cultural research has shown speakers from different linguistic (say Niuean vs. Samoan) and cultural (American vs. British) backgrounds operate with different pragmatic norms. In other words, expectations of what is polite, appropriate and friendly differ from culture to culture. This goes some way towards explaining why cross-​cultural communication is not merely a matter of reading the dictionary and learning a few grammar rules. Communicating successfully across different languages requires intimate knowledge of cultural norms and community repertoires. What is appropriate in one culture may be wholly frowned upon in another. One of my American professors once told us how she made the mistake of complimenting her Indonesian host on the lovely dress she was wearing one evening. In Indonesia, compliments carry the expectation that the item receiving praise should be given to the person giving the praise. The following day, my professor was stunned to find her host’s dress freshly washed and neatly folded on her bed. In some cultures, appropriate norms dictate that compliments ought to be rejected (no, no, it’s just a cheap old thing) in keeping with a desirable modest attitude, whereas in other cultures, such a reaction would appear dismissive and bordering on offensive (your judgement is clearly misguided if you think my dress is nice). The previous example illustrates the tight connection between language, culture and people. After all, without people, there would be no language. The link between language (the linguistic realm) and people (the social realm) constitutes the core focus of another linguistics sub-​discipline: sociolinguistics. Sociolinguists study all manner of implications and patterns that arise when you move away from the purely theoretical aspect of language (how do we best describe a given language?) and consider the social aspect of language (what do speakers actually do?). Both within and across languages, the picture develops richness and complexity when people are thrown into the mix. How do multilingual speakers navigate the languages they use on a daily basis (see Chapters 3 and 9)? Why do people mix words from one language into another and what are the consequences of this use? Do men, women and non-​binary people speak in markedly different ways (Chapter 5)? Can you tell someone’s sexuality by the way they speak 10

Language and social media

(Chapter 5)? Can you lose your first language if you become highly proficient in another? How does one’s language change across one’s life-​span? Can you sound like a native speaker if you learn another language later in life?

The sub-​fields I have touched upon so far constitute only a snippet of the realm of linguistics as a field of inquiry. Each of these sub-​disciplines has many associated (text)books and hundreds of articles, written in a bid to increase human understanding of the astonishing trait we all share: language. Given the wide lens that linguistics adopts for exploring and documenting language, there are many more sub-​fields to discuss. However, I leave these for further reading (see What to read next).

How linguistics might be useful in studying social media If you are reading this, it is probably because you are interested in social media and in finding out about how language is used on social media platforms. So, what can linguistics offer you? As the previous section has demonstrated, language can be dissected in many different ways. Any message or utterance will involve considerations of various aspects, including word meaning (is this a valid word?), pragmatic meaning (is it appropriate to say/​write this, or do I need to somehow tone it down?) and sociolinguistic considerations (which language should I use?). As competent language users, we know how to express certain ideas but we can’t always explain the strategies we use in doing so. For example, we don’t usually plan which politeness strategy to adopt or explicitly choose a given synonym from a list of possible contenders. We know what to do but we don’t know how we are doing it or how others are doing it. What we need are the words to describe what we are doing and a framework to illuminate what is being communicated and how this is done. This is where linguistics comes in! The value of linguistic insights lies in bringing awareness and understanding of what it is that skilled communicators already do. Because language can be used in so many ways, for many functions, from informing to accusing, promising, praising, duping, entertaining, annoying, impressing and flirting, the ways 11

Language and social media

in which utterances and messages are put together is crucial. Dissecting the linguistic onion can provide insight into this process. Linguistics provides concepts (terminology) and a way of organising these concepts (a framework) to help us uncover the tools and strategies used in the successful communication of ideas.

1.2 Introduction to social media Let’s now turn our attention to the online world. Many people cannot remember a time when the internet was not present in their lives. Being ‘online’ is as commonplace and instinctive to many of us as being physically present in a room. In fact, many of the words we use to discuss online spaces (this phrase itself is one) reflect our understanding of the internet as an environment which is construed with reference to our physical lives. We talk about chat rooms, although there are no literal walls; we supposedly go on the internet, even though there is no travelling involved; we talk about opening up tabs or browsers, despite the fact that we are not literally opening anything. ‘Online’ is something we are (being online) and something we do (going online, connecting to the internet) and we treat it as a natural extension of what our bodies can achieve in a physical space. But it was not always so.

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A very brief history of how we got talking online Have you ever read a post on Twitter or Facebook informing you of some mundane aspect of someone’s life (Eating my breakfast–​thought you’d like to know), and then gone on to wonder why this person would deem such an item newsworthy? In an ironic twist of fate, the very first email ever sent was an equally mundane and unexciting communicative event (Campbell, 1998). In 1971, computer engineer Ray Tomlinson, then employed by Bolt, Beranek & Newman, was the first person in the world to send a (wholly unremarkable) message between two unconnected computers which also happened to be in the same room (as cited in Baron, 2008, p. 12). But it was not the communication itself that was noteworthy, rather the fact that it was successful in the first place. It was also Tomlinson who selected the @ symbol to encode the addressee’s location by separating the login name from the destination address (e.g. joeblogs@company. com), a convention which remains in place today. The actual birth of the internet is thought to have happened considerably before the first email was sent, namely sometime around the 1960s, amid a climate of political tension and fears of a possible nuclear attack following the launch of the Russian space satellite, Sputnik. Because computers in those days were large, clunky, immobile and not connected to one another, information had to be sent by postal services. As this was taking too long, a special group named ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was set up in a bid to send and receive information more speedily than snail mail would allow. This group was limited to academics and people connected to the US Department of Defense. The success of ARPANET soon became apparent, paving the way for other groups to follow in its footsteps, keen to exploit the possibility of sharing information faster than ever before. Fast-​forward to 1983, and a second milestone led to what we now know as the internet: a new communication method called the Transfer Control Protocol/​​ Internetwork Protocol, abbreviated to TCP/​IP. This method allowed the clunky computers of the time to ‘talk’ to each other and thus send information across a network of cables. Given our familiarity with the internet today, it would have been difficult at that time to anticipate the momentous transformation this new technology would bring about. From that day forward, communication—​ in general—​would expand and move down pathways that no one could have then foreseen! Today, as a result of the heavily networked grid of computers that we have created, people from all over the globe can communicate and send instant messages back and forth, with no knowledge of computing and little understanding of the components necessary to enable such transmission. What was born out of political tension and fears of world calamity has changed the lives of many societies and created a new way of communication, with both very positive and mind-​ soberingly devastating consequences.

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Language and social media

Communication on the internet is here to stay As mentioned previously, anything that involves language is of interest to linguists. Put another way, if it has to do with communication, you can bet that there are linguists tinkering with it, studying it, documenting it and trying to understand it. Online communication is no exception. Computer-​mediated communication, CMC for short, aims to study, document and understand online language. Linguists working on CMC want to know who uses which language on the internet and why, what kinds of language features they use, how often, and what effects this use might have on their language proficiency and sense of identity. They want to know how this use may influence the speed or direction of language change and how it might spill from the internet into other domains. One of the earliest collections of academic research focused specifically on CMC was compiled in 1996 by Susan Herring at the University of Indiana. In her book, Herring brings together various threads of interest to CMC researchers, grouped under four main themes: the linguistic features of CMC (what language is like in the virtual world), cross-​cultural perspectives of CMC (how multilingual people interact online), social and ethical implications of CMC (what implications of CMC arise for various social groups) and the nature and dynamics of group chat (how talking to a group online affects the language used). As interest in internet language moved from academic circles into the public sphere, more people started to wonder how the internet was affecting language. In response to such questions, David Crystal, one of the most prolific writers of popular linguistics books, wrote Language and the Internet in 2001. In his book, Crystal reassured readers that the internet was not likely to be the nemesis of language, despite the many warnings and speculation. Instead, the language we use online, or Netspeak, as he called it (a term which, sadly for Crystal, has not survived more widely), was just another type of language which we are learning to navigate. And just as with the other types we already use, speech, writing and everything in between (see Chapter 2), we would be able to shift between genres and styles without too much difficulty. But he also added that, like any new technology, the internet would inevitably change language. New forms of spelling, new words and even new grammar and pragmatic norms would arise in this space. It is fascinating to ponder the sheer variety of language styles that the internet presents us with. Far from being one homogeneous genre, the internet encompasses a rich array of linguistic diversity, from blogs and chat rooms to videos of various kinds and a range of social media platforms—​all of which vary in formality, regional appeal and engagement, jargon and general audience. Fast-​forward 20 years of research in CMC and 40 years of communicating online, and it is clear that online language has a historical trajectory of its own, and that, not unlike individual languages such as Swahili, German, Latin and Māori, it also exhibits change. Change is an inevitable ingredient of any viable human language in use for an extended period of time. Of course, with only a 40-​year history, online communication is much younger than languages with thousands of years of evolution. Nevertheless, its history is there. 14

Language and social media

And where there is change, there is also variation. Variation arises because some users are versed in older forms of online language, while others are frequent adopters of the newer forms, and still others employ a mix of these. For example, considering abbreviations, some users remember bulletin board systems (BBSes) and short forms such as HHOJ (‘ha ha only joking’), while others are familiar with acronyms LOL (‘laugh out loud’) and BRB (‘be right back’) or platforms like ICQ (‘I seek you’), MSN or GeoCities. Such variation in language features allows us to identify different varieties—​a bit like New Zealand English speakers using a different English from Australian English speakers; the two codes are mutually intelligible (most of the time), but they do not share exactly the same features.

Generations of internet communicators In her book Because Internet, blogger and podcaster Gretchen McCulloch identifies various dialects of online language speak, which she divides into three waves (2019, Chapter 3, pp. 63–​108). It is interesting to examine these waves, but the most important point here is not the characteristics of each generation of speakers but the fact that such distinct generations exist at all. Indeed, it may not be possible to neatly decide which generation a given user might represent, but it is possible to detect group tendencies. First, we have the oldest online communicators: Old Internet People. They form the very first wave of people to be online, back when the internet was accessible only to those with some computing knowledge, people who could code HTML websites without pre-​existing templates, and who used the UNIX command line rather than the user-​friendly graphical interfaces most of us use today. Some of the Old Internet People would frequent Usenet groups on specific topics; others were the first people to access the World Wide Web. Despite the adjective ‘old’, these individuals are probably not senior citizens but they are likely to be—​as a group—​the most technologically advanced of all online communicators. Old Internet People shared an interest in programming and general computer ‘geek’ knowledge, and it was this interest that often brought them online in the first place. They invented the first internet slang, initially circulated as a text file which would later become known as the Jargon File (or the FAQ file, a file containing important details for downloading a new piece of software). The first ever version of this initial text file was apparently dated August 12, 1976 and comprised 49 words (McCulloch, 2019, p. 71). These included terms like foo, bar, bug, feature, glitch, user. The original form is accessible from a website maintained by Paul Dourish, at the University of California, Irvine.1 The Jargon File eventually evolved into what was published as The Hacker’s Dictionary in 1983, by Guy Steele. However, once the old dictionary went out of print, Eric Raymond published an updated version of it as The New Hacker’s Dictionary (though not to everyone’s approval). 15

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According to McCulloch, the second wave involves two groups of communicators who came online between the 1990s and early 2000s: Full Internet People and Semi Internet People. As the internet was entering everyday homes, with more people using it for information sharing as well as for work purposes, it seeped out of academic and technological circles into the mainstream. Interestingly, while many of the Old Internet People were born before the internet existed and ‘migrated’ onto it, the second wave communicators are deemed internet natives—​being born into an internet-​world. This meant they had a different relationship with the internet and its language, as well as their attitude towards it: they took its existence for granted, as a widely available tool. Put simply, the difference between the first and second generations of internet inhabitants is that, while the first possessed technological skills that enabled them to come onto the internet and, in fact, had brought them there, the second generation came to the internet for social reasons: they wanted to meet like-​ minded people of diverse interests (not necessarily related to technology, hacking or programming) and they wanted information at their fingertips. Full Internet People joined sites like ICQ, MSN Messenger, Myspace, LiveJournal, GeoCities and eventually Facebook and Twitter. The Semi Internet People who were part of the second wave also joined these platforms looking for like-​minded individuals and meaningful connections. But there is a difference: while the Full Internet People were specifically looking to form social connections online, either brand new ones or to reconnect with people they already knew in their offline lives, the Semi Internet People went online in search of information, either for work or personal reasons, to book holidays or do online banking: in other words, for functional reasons, not social ones. The term ‘semi’ is meant to signal that, in general, these inhabitants of the internet are not as invested in their online lives as the Full Internet People are. One aspect common to both groups of users is that neither group is particularly technologically savvy, unlike the Old Internet People, who were capable of writing websites from scratch. And then there is the third wave of Internet communicators. These comprise people who have never known life without the internet, the Post Internet People, and people who had previously been reluctant to acknowledge the existence of the internet but, with time, became inevitably drawn onto it like everyone else, the Pre Internet People. According to McCulloch, one important criterion for distinguishing the second and third waves of Internet communicators is their relationship with email. For the second wave, email is an integral part of their internet communication. For the third-​wave generation, it is quite the opposite; they see emails as old-​fashioned and almost obsolete, preferring to communicate using just about any other online means available. It is interesting to consider that (many) Post Internet People may have excellent technological skills and be well versed with the latest apps and yet be unable to write emails effectively (as they have not immersed themselves in this activity). As regards language, McCulloch stipulates that there are differences in how the various generations use internet slang. Take for instance the well-​known 16

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word lol. Old Internet People use the capitalised version (LOL) and incorporate it in lists of jargon terms. Semi Internet People learnt this capitalised version from jargon lists, while Full Internet People learnt it from their peers and often use the lower-​case version (lol ). It seems that Old Internet People have the most diverse range of meanings for the word (which could be used for genuine laughter, amusement or ironic pseudo-​amusement). But, by the time Full Internet People got their (literal) hands on it, it appears to have lost two of the meanings and largely stabilised to meaning only real laughter (McCulloch, 2019). Whether you see yourself represented in these generational descriptions or not, it is important to note that an exact delineation between generations of internet communicators is impossible, as is often also the case for generations of speakers of any language variety. Individual speakers may fall in between generations or not fit the patterns identified perfectly. However, the point is that communication on the internet has a history, just like any other communicative repertoire, which can be traced, studied and documented.

What is social media? Finally, we turn to social media. Most people seem to own a mobile phone these days; chances are you own one yourself. But even though we still call them phones, we don’t seem to spend much time making actual phone calls on them. In 2018, the BBC’s technology reporter noted (for the first time) a fall in the number of phone calls being made on mobile phones despite their cost being lower than ever (Wakefield, 2018). Statistics (for instance, those compiled by Pew Research Centre in 2018) indicate that individuals make ample use of their smartphones’ capabilities to access the internet, emails and social media platforms of various kinds, preferring these activities to making actual calls (Poushter et al., 2018). My own phone has a feature that keeps track of the kinds of activities it is used for on a daily, monthly and even yearly basis. It is sobering to check these statistics because, for many of us, they speak to a great amount of time spent looking at a screen. Given the explosion of social media platforms, it is ironic how antisocial social media can be. So, what is social media? The main ingredient of social media (also called Web 2.0) seems to be its fluid, dynamic and constantly changing nature, which, crucially, allows both user content generation and user content consumption. Common examples include social networking sites (SNSes), such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, but also Wikipedia, Reddit, electronic forums and instant messaging apps, like Snapchat, Signal, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram and Skype (see Figure 1.5). Seargeant and Tagg explain that ‘the content of what is developed is shared on the internet and is as much a product of participation as it is of traditional creative and publishing/​ broadcasting processes’ (2014, p. 4). This joint participation in digesting and creating content, and, indeed, its ongoing cycle results in a blurring between author and reader, producer and consumer. 17

Language and social media

Figure 1.5  Social media platforms

It might seem odd to lump together platforms which are so different from one another and also distinct from traditional social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. For example, let’s consider Wikipedia. The content on Wikipedia is produced in real time, collaboratively, by several users, who are themselves consumers on the site, and who sometimes use Talk pages to debate information and engage in discussions related to the content they are producing. The platform is thus social, providing opportunities for users to connect and communicate with one another online. But what about Snapchat? This platform is purely used to message one or several individuals. In contrast to Wikipedia or Facebook, there is no ‘wall’ or widely shared website accessible to multiple users, and communication typically takes place between individuals who already know each other. However, like Wikipedia and Facebook, the site connects users online and thus presents opportunities for social networking, in which all parties can produce as well as consume content. As the examples above illustrate, the nature of content consumption and sharing differs across social media platforms. On some platforms, the sharing of information is instantaneous; on others it is slightly delayed. The terms synchronous and asynchronous capture this difference. Similarly, the audience on some platforms is large and undifferentiated (one-​ to-​many); on others, it is smaller and well-​defined (one-​to-​one). For example, the typical audience on 18

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Twitter is anyone on the internet registered with an account on the site, while on other platforms, such as Facebook, users can choose to allow only selected individuals to access the content they generate (but this too is always changing as platforms adjust their settings). Moreover, the nature of the permission can be bi-​directional, which means that if one user grants viewing permission to another, they can, in turn, see the other user’s content (e.g. Facebook), or uni-​directional, which means that allowing viewing access to another user does not in turn allow them access to that viewer’s posts (e.g. Instagram).

The good, the bad and the ugly: we are not here to judge Many are voicing concern in relation to social media platforms and their effects. One such concern shared widely, from university students to young working adults and even older people, is the impossible task of always being ‘on’. Because we are compelled to constantly check our phones, tablets or laptops in order to see if someone has sent us a photo or a message, or reacted to one of our posts, there is little room for switching off. The fear of missing out, FOMO as it is known in internet slang, is very real (though note also JOMO, ‘joy of missing out’, a term coined in opposition to it). Of course, in our day to day, we have to tend to other activities too: sleeping, eating, studying, exercising, relaxing and so on. So how do we cope with this constant demand to be online? According to Baron (2008), many are resorting to an extreme version of multitasking to manage the flow of information; that is, they are simultaneously eating and checking social media, simultaneously studying and checking various apps, simultaneously attending lectures and searching the internet (see Figure 1.6). Multitasking seems to be our general answer to what she

Figure 1.6  Heavy use of mobile phones on an underground train

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calls ‘volume control’ (2008). No wonder Robert Colvile’s book The Great Acceleration: How everything is getting faster and faster (2016) resonates so widely. The modern world is plagued by a desperate need to control the volume of information, or at least to turn it down. It is unclear what the long-​ term result of this kind of multitasking is, but the concern is that it is neither positive nor desirable. Yet social media also offers several advantages. It allows individuals to air their thoughts, which can have beneficial emotional effects (although it must be said that there are also a whole host of negative mental health effects flowing on from heavy use of social media). It can also enable contact with geographically remote friends and family and provide access to a wealth of information for those who seek it. That being said, this book is not concerned with arguing either in favour of or against the use of social media. I do not aim to prescribe what others should or should not do in relation to it, what they should or should not write online, or how much they should engage with social media platforms. The purpose of this book is to describe and document language use on social media platforms, and to investigate the linguistic strategies adopted by users to communicate online. While the primary focus remains tightly linked to language use, from time to time the multimodal affordances provided by such platforms interact with the language features employed (such as hyperlinks and video capabilities), so they are included in the discussion, as well. One important caution to add is that research on social media needs to ensure that it does not unwittingly cause harm to those whose social media data is analysed, by disseminating information (in presentations, articles, books or other outlets) about specific individuals and their language use. While it might be tempting to assume that publicly available social media posts can be lifted by anyone for analysis, this needs to be done with care and sensitivity. Ethical guidelines and processes should be followed when social media data is handled, regardless of whether accounts are private or not (see more in Chapter 10). In his book #digitalvertigo: How today’s world online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us, journalist Andrew Keen (2012) cautions that, as the internet ‘is becoming like home for all of us’ (2012, p. 193), we may be in danger of the ‘loss of the private person, the disappearance of secrecy and mystery, the primacy of like over love, […], and most of all, the collective amnesia about what it really means to be human’ (2012, p. 185). While I do not disagree with Keen and, in fact, share some of his concerns, this book arises from the desire to examine and document what happens linguistically on social media. Whether we like it or not, want it or not, social media has an increasing presence which is—​in all likelihood—​here to stay. It thus becomes important to investigate how new generations of users communicate online. Over the following nine chapters, I hope to explore and exemplify the many ways in which the language used on social media is (and remains) reflective of

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our human character, enlisted to serve our various communicative functions, forever changing and adapting to reveal the infinite capacity for creative human expression.

Note 1 www.dour​ish.com/​good​ies/​jar​gon.html

References Baron, N. S. (2008). Always on: Language in an online and mobile world. Oxford University Press. Bauer, L. (2007). Linguistics student’s handbook. Edinburgh University Press. Burridge, K., & Stebbins, T. N. (2019). For the love of language (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Campbell, T. (1998). The first email message. PreText Magazine. http://​pret​ext. com/​mar98/​featu​res/​sto​ry2.htm Colvile, R. (2016). The Great Acceleration: How everything is getting faster and faster. Bloomsbury. Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the internet. Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. (2007). How language works: How babies babble, words change meaning, and languages live or die. Penguin. Denham, K., & Lobeck, A. (2018). Why study linguistics. Routledge. Herring, S. C. (1996). Computer-​mediated communication: Linguistic, social, and cross-​cultural perspectives. John Benjamins. Hilpert, M. (Sept 2021). What makes a language … a language? [Video]. TED-​Ed Animations. www.ted.com/​talks/​martin_​hilpert_​what_​make​s_​a_​lang​uage​_​ a_​l​angu​age/​tra​nscr​ipt Keen, A. (2012). #digitalvertigo: How today’s world online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us. Macmillan. McCulloch, G. (2019). Because Internet: Understanding the new rules of language. Riverhead. Poushter, J., Bishop, C., & Chwe, H. (2018). Social media use continues to rise in developing countries but plateaus across developed ones. Pew Research Center. https://​med​ieno​rge.uib.no/​files/​Ekste​rne_​pub/​Pew-​Resea​rch-​Center​_​ Glo​bal-​Tech-​Soc​ial-​Media-​Use_​2​018.06.19.pdf Seargeant, P., & Tagg, C. (Eds.) (2014). The language of social media: Identity and community on the internet. Springer. Wakefield, J. (2018). Phone and internet use: Number of mobile calls drops for first time. BBC News. www.bbc.com/​news/​tec​hnol​ogy-​45033​302

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What to read next Part 1. Burridge and Stebbins (2019) offer a readable introduction to the field of linguistics and to linguistics research, as does Crystal (2007). Denham and Lobeck (2018) offer a more practical treatment of the field. Part 2. For more information about language on the internet, see Crystal’s 2001 book. For a detailed interpretation of the various generations of internet users, see Chapter 3 of McCulloch (2019). Seargeant and Tagg (2014) and Baron (2008, particularly Chapters 2 and 3) are excellent introductions to social media platforms, from a language-​oriented approach.

What to do next Information gathering. Which language(s) and language variety/​varieties can you currently conduct an everyday conversation in? Which language(s) or language variety/​varieties are spoken widely in your country and in your community? Which national language(s) are currently legislated by your country? Why are some languages in one list but not in another? What are some of the circumstances which might have led to these differences? Data collection. Can you think of any words or phrases you use with your family or close friends that may might need further explanation for those outside your close circle? What kinds of words or phrases are they (formal/​ informal, standard/​non-​standard, are they specific to your region or language variety or simply words which have acquired new meanings amongst your close circle)? (If you have trouble thinking of any, you may wish to keep a piece of paper handy or a device for taking notes during the next family meeting or meal.) Now think of one social media platform that you are familiar with. Can you think of any similar words or phrases whose meanings and use are familiar to you and your followers/​friends online but would perhaps need explaining to others? What kinds of words or phrases are these and how do they differ from the first group of words (discussed in relation to family and close friends)?

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2

Using social media for your purpose Exploring genre, register and style

TLDR. One of the most difficult questions to answer about language is this: what is language really used for? Most people assume it’s used to transfer information from one person or group to another. But in using language, we do so much more than content transfer. Depending on whether we are writing or speaking, and on precisely what we are writing or saying, the purpose of our communication can vary widely. In this chapter, we consider different channels of communication, speaking and writing and components of the Spoken–​Written Continuum, and we disentangle the various layers that are involved in classifying different genres, different registers and different elements of style. These notions are exemplified with case studies from three social media platforms: Messenger, Reddit and Wikipedia.

2.1 What do we use language for? In 1797, an astonishing discovery was made in the French area of Tarn. A 9-​year old boy with chaotic movements, no language ability and clearly accustomed to living in the wild, was sighted in the nearby woods by a group of hunters. This boy would become known to the world as Victor of Aveyron, a name given to him by physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard. Itard worked with him for 5 years in a bid to understand the human condition and, in particular, to study the effects of delayed development (Benzaquén, 2006, Chapters 5 & 6). Victor was found by local French citizens who tried to take him into French society, and subsequently ran away three times before eventually being taken to the National Institute of the Deaf in Paris, despite having no hearing difficulties. His lack of language ability was baffling and he soon became an object of curiosity and study. Various rumours began to circulate regarding his origin and likely parentage. Itard, a young student of medicine at the time, ended up virtually adopting the boy. Victor was thought to have lived alone in the wild for about seven years. He lacked basic socialisation and was unable to speak. Itard tried to teach him, among other things, some basic language skills, mostly words DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-2

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and their meanings, but, despite his very progressive pedagogical methods, especially given the general ideas of the time, the boy made little progress linguistically. He fared better in learning how to relate to other people; it seems he was able to grasp the concept of empathy and, eventually, he learnt how to show it in appropriate ways. As for language, that remained a mystery to him to the very end. Victor died of pneumonia in the house of Itard’s housekeeper when he was about 40 years old. Despite his short and tumultuous life, Victor has become an iconic figure of the ‘feral child’, captured on film, and in novels, poems and documentaries.1 His language skills—​or lack thereof—​contributed to one of the longest-​standing arguments in linguistics history: the nature–​nurture debate regarding language acquisition. For centuries, language researchers have been trying to reach some consensus on whether our language learning predispositions are purely genetically endowed or wholly dependent on the environment and context in which we are socialised. Victor’s case seems to suggest the latter, with his inability to acquire language pointing to the crucial role played by the initial solitude he experienced in his formative years. However, his likely difficult and traumatic past would also have undoubtedly affected his cognitive abilities and interfered with the acquisition process. Part of the problem with work which tries to shed light on the nature–​nurture debate is the difficulty in separating out that which comes from genes alone (from ‘nature’), versus that which arises through socialisation and upbringing (from ‘nurture’). This stumbling block makes it impossible to ascertain which ‘bit’ is crucial in enabling us to acquire language. The most plausible answer is that both are needed, but the exact nature of the combination is still a mystery, which is why the nature–​nurture debate continues today. Most people do not remember learning their first language (or languages, if learning multiple languages at the same time). This is just as well, given it takes substantial time and effort to acquire the necessary knowledge and physical skill to produce and parse one’s first language: usually 3 to 5 years, sometimes a little longer (Clark & Casillas, 2015). Of course, it is not straightforward to pinpoint exactly when the acquisition process is complete. In strict terms, it never is, but there is definitely a point at which communication becomes much easier. If you think about the different acquisition stages required to arrive at this point, it really is a wonder that the process happens as quickly as it does. From the babbling stage during which we learn to skilfully control our articulators, that is, the organs required to produce a range of different sounds (ba-​ba, ma-​ma, na-​na, da-​da), to the one-​ word phase, when utterances are produced as run-​on single words (teddy-​is-​tired ) to the multi-​word stage when words are beginning to be treated as separate, re-​combinable blocks of language (daddy is tired, doggy is tired, doggy is happy, daddy is happy), the life of a toddler learning their first language is a very busy one indeed. And given that toddlers are not just acquiring language at that time, but many additional skills, such as walking, it soon becomes evident why young infants need all that sleep. That said, since we do not remember our own early language acquisition stage, 24

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when things go well, language acquisition seems to just happen and we seldom stop to marvel at this remarkable ability of the human species. Acquiring literacy skills, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. Many of us do remember having to learn to read and write: forming letters, deciphering odd phonological rules (white and walk both have superfluous letters) and strange-​looking punctuation signs. But even when basic literacy emerges in early schooling, the process is, for many, still not complete. For students lucky enough to enter higher education levels, the academic language which they are faced with by the time they begin secondary school or tertiary institutions presents yet another acquisition challenge. Organising words into phrases and phrases into tightly packed sentences, the flow of information, the dense packaging of ideas, and the arrangement of paragraphs in longer texts are all new mysteries to grasp, and, for many students, a real struggle. What all of this demonstrates is that language is not one thing. Language comes in many ‘flavours’ and, throughout our existence, as socialised human beings living in complex societies, we are constantly faced with different types of language, all the way from the early-​acquired spoken, informal and unplanned conversational language to the various types of written, formal and highly edited language, including legal contracts, such as rental agreements and employer contracts, and academic prose, (text)books and research articles, such as the text you are reading now. In this chapter, we consider the linguistics notions of genre and register and look at how these can be used to distinguish a Spoken–​Written Continuum of language types, as well as learn how to characterise different types of texts based on their properties, which in turn will help us tease apart different language registers and different language genres.

Spoken language, written language and the continuum between them The first major technological invention concerning language, beyond language itself, was the invention of writing. So important is writing to our civilisation that humans invented this technology multiple times and in separate places. We do not know how many for sure, but depending on how we define writing, we can come up with at least four places: Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and Mesoamerica, with the earliest forms being clay tablets discovered in parts of the Middle East (Crystal, 1987, p. 196). Being able to capture thoughts and ideas in a lasting format, and communicating these in the exact manner that a given writer envisaged to people who were not present or even alive at the time of writing was an enormous achievement. It is little wonder that written language and those able to produce it acquired, in due course, high status among societies that had this type of technology. The field of linguistics is no exception in its preoccupation with written language. The written language bias in linguistics (1982), by Peter Linell, tells the story of how written, not spoken, language absorbed the full attention of scholars interested in language. For centuries, it was believed that written language 25

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constituted the better-​formed and thus superior representation of the language of the time, free of the errors, disfluencies, repetitions and awkward pauses which characterise spoken language. This bias was not really a bias about language per se but more about the people producing the language. Everyone could produce speech, but writing was the skill of the revered and privileged few. There was also a practical element to the study of written language: words on a page were not in the habit of easily disappearing (particularly following the invention of the printing press) and a written text could be consulted over and over again. Speech, on the other hand, was impossible to preserve intact and our memory of the words we heard could not faithfully reproduce what was needed for reliable analysis. But, with the advent of increased recording power (just think how much and how easily our tiny mobile phones are able to record these days) and higher computational storage (my current phone has more than ten times the RAM capability of the laptop I wrote my doctoral thesis on), we are now in a position to analyse spoken language more accurately and easily than ever before. Such progress in technology affords us access to speech as well as writing. So, let’s look at the two side by side. As mentioned earlier, all being well, we learn to speak (or sign) early in life, with seemingly little time and effort, or at least without remembering the effort and time required. We use speech (or sign) every day of our lives and, for most of us, it holds true that we are exposed to more spoken language than written language (though this is changing). If you compare spontaneous, unplanned conversation as a proxy for spoken language with, say, formal academic written English as a representative example of written language, a number of other key differences emerge. Speech is effortless, writing is effortful. Most of us remember learning to read and write and, for those of us continuing higher education into tertiary levels, the process of learning to write continues beyond formal schooling. It is hard, it is arduous and sometimes downright frustrating. Speaking remains easier and we do it instinctively, unless we are giving a formal speech in front of an audience. Despite literacy levels increasing in many societies, speech is democratic: it is for everyone, whereas writing remains elusive to many. Speech is impermanent, writing is recorded. There is a reason why people advise you to be careful what you write on your Facebook wall or in your work emails. Anything we write, especially on the internet, will be next to impossible to delete because someone, somewhere will have a copy or screenshot of it (or can find one). Speech can also be recorded, but that is harder to hide, and, generally speaking, unlike Facebook posts or emails, it cannot easily be used as evidence in court, nor can it be sent to your mother. The impermanence of speech equates to a more casual and relaxed attitude to what is being said. Speech is produced off the cuff with little planning and no editing, writing is planned and edited. When we ring up a friend for a chat or organise to have a coffee with an auntie, we tend not to plan out exactly what we will talk about. With close companions, conversation is said to ‘flow’ precisely because of its unplanned, spontaneous nature. Writing is something we typically (should) plan, especially if it 26

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concerns formal writing whose outcome matters, such as academic essays, business reports or client letters. People judge the writers and the business they represent on the quality of the writing they produce, and, as such, from punctuation to wording and grammar, an impression is formed of the person behind the prose. But writers have time on their side (at least in certain circumstances), so they can draft, edit and re-​write texts. This option is not available in spontaneous conversation, beyond a sentence or two ahead. Think before you speak applies to the ideas mentioned, and to a lesser extent to the packaging in which these are delivered. Speech is more often used for affective content, writing is more often used for informational content. Most of the conversation in our lives is idle chit-​chat, and I am not just referring to stereotypical teenage conversations, but water-​ cooler office chats (in the days when people still went to the office), supermarket interactions with checkout operators, chats with neighbours, family and friends, and awkward chats in lifts. The emphasis is often on bonding and reconnecting, not on off-​loading the latest content you have just been reading in your linguistics course. Formal written language, on the other hand, is often used to communicate information, for example letters informing customers of changes in their insurance policy, letters of complaint, rental property agreements, book chapters, employment contracts. Speech is lexically and grammatically less complex, writing is grammatically and lexically more complex. In light of the circumstances in which it is produced, off the cuff, with little or no planning, and no editing, as well as its affective function, the language we observe in speech is different from that found in writing. Speech is expressed with simpler elements. The words used are often repeated and short. For example, there is frequent use of pronouns (I, you, she, they) and a restricted set of commonly used verbs (be, have, go, say)—​see Table 2.1 for guidance on identifying various word classes in English. In contrast, written language contains more complex and varied vocabulary, words that are not so common, and comparatively little repetition. Grammar is also different across the two types of language. Written language is typically organised in readily identifiable sentences containing phrases (a red book, read late into the night, on the dining table) nested inside clauses (units with a verb and accompanying arguments, such as because I read late into the night, while on the dining table, or I read a red book late into the night). We can identify sentences by the initial capital letter at the beginning and the full stop placed at the end. Speech is very different. There are no capital letters or other obvious ways to identify something which might correspond to a sentence in speech. A much-​cited study by Wackernagel-​Jolles (1971) showed that, when faced with a transcribed portion of speech, even highly trained syntacticians could not agree where sentence boundaries should be placed. Analysts of the grammar of speech argue that spoken language does not have sentences at all. Instead, the best unit of analysis for speech is the clause, and combinations of clauses, termed clause complexes (Miller & Weinert, 1998). In speech, clauses are organised like beads on a string, not tightly linked by conjunctions of various sorts, as they are in 27

newgenrtpdf

Table 2.1  Basic blocks of grammar: word classes in English What they do

What they look like in English

Common English sub-​types

Examples from English

nouns

Denote objects, people or places

Common noun, proper noun (capitalised)

book, love, jar, phone, England, Avon, Maria

verbs

Denote events, actions or states

Main verb, auxiliary verb, modal verb

love, sit, exist, die, go, have, be, must, can, may

adjectives

Denote characteristics of objects, people or places

Denote characteristics of events, actions or states

Predicative, attributive (note that the same words could be used in either category) General adverb, degree adverb

big, small, large, caring, sweet, bitter, dead

adverbs

prepositions

Denote relationships between objects, people or places Stand for words which denote objects, people or places Point out objects, people or places, either as being specific (or not), or definite (or not), or quantities of these Denote relationships between phrases or clauses

Some can take -​s for plural (car-​cars), -​’s for possessive (Mary-​Mary’s) Some can take -​ing for gerund form (look-​looking), -​ed for past (look-​looked ) and -​s for third-​person singular present (look-​looks) Some can take -​er for comparative and -​est for superlative (large-​larger-​largest) Some are formed by attaching the suffix -​ly (speedily, helpfully, nicely) Mostly single syllables, short, do not change their form Single syllables, short, do not change their form

Personal pronoun, possessive pronoun etc.

Single syllables, short, do not change their form

Articles, numerals, demonstrative, possessive demonstratives

I, you, he, she, it, we, they, mine, yours, his, him, her, theirs the, a, some, all, any, four, five, this, that, those, these, my, your

Often single syllables, short, do not change their form

Coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions

and, or, that, when, why, how many, how, because, therefore

pronouns

determiners

conjunctions

Simple, complex

beautifully, lovingly, horribly, boastfully, fast, slow, well on, at, under, for, in, out, of, out of

Using social media for your purpose

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writing. Speakers are already doing so much on the fly that organising ideas in densely packed units is neither possible, given the cognitive load required to do so, nor desirable, given the need for listeners to unpack the message, similarly, on the fly. The ‘beads on the string’ strategy serves the purposes of the channel of communication for both parties (producer and consumer) and any ambiguity can be resolved in real time (if necessary, the listener can ask for clarification on the spot). Writers have to anticipate and resolve any ambiguity ahead of time given the separation between them and their reader(s). The patterns discussed so far outline just some of the main differences that we observe between speech and writing in how they are produced and consumed, and also differences in their respective functions. But you may object at this point that not all speech is produced spontaneously, nor is all writing planned and edited. And of course, you would be correct! Some spoken language is indeed highly planned and edited, such as scheduled news bulletins on television or radio. But that speech is very different to spontaneous conversation. The person saying it aloud is usually not even the person who wrote it in the first place. In such cases, the newsreader does place their own emphasis and pronunciation on the ‘text’ but the choice of words and grammar is not theirs. In this chapter (and the remainder of the book), the term text (see Chapter 1) will be used to refer to any portion of discourse which holds together in a coherent manner, regardless of whether it is spoken or written (conversations also count as texts). At the other extreme, we can also think of some written language that is spontaneous, unplanned, unedited and perhaps comprising very simple lexis and grammar: informal text messages sent across Facebook Messenger or other instant messaging services. Most of us do not deliberate for hours, agonising over the language used to express a simple message to tell someone we are running five minutes late or asking them if it is ok to call later. While that text is produced and consumed as written language (unless dictation software is involved), the circumstances in which it arises and its function are very different from the kind of text you are reading right now for example (an academic book chapter). What all this amounts to is that speech and writing are not two distinct, dichotomous types of language but, instead, they form a continuum on which different types of language might be placed, whose production, consumption and function differ incrementally; see Figure 2.1 for some (non-​exhaustive) examples. While

Figure 2.1  Speech–​Writing Continuum

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the figure provides an overview of prototypical language types and their relation to others on the Spoken–​Written Continuum, within each language type we can think of particular sub-​types that can be placed further to the left or further to the right on the continuum. For example, while newspaper articles belong towards the more written end of the continuum, within this type of language, we can imagine that more informal newspapers aimed at a lower socio-​economic demographic (less educated, less wealthy readers) and lighter in content would contain different language than a more formal newspaper, aimed at a higher socio-​economic demographic (more educated, wealthier readers) and be more informationally dense. So, even within the intermediary categories of language identified, we can make finer distinctions, depending on who is producing the text, who is consuming it, and for what purpose. Moreover, these distinctions can cross the speech–​writing dimension. Let’s consider one final example. A personal diary may be written down, but who is it intended for? Maybe the writer, maybe no one at all. The function of the diary entry is to allow the writer to use writing to tap into their thinking. Added to that, despite the fact that the text is written down, there is likely no planning involved in writing a personal diary, nor is there any opportunity for revising or editing. So, while diaries technically belong to the written end of the continuum, functionally they should be placed closer to the spoken end. Looking at the distinction between speech and writing in these terms shows that just thinking about whether the message will be spoken or written is not enough to give us a good idea of the kind of language that we might encounter in it. The speech vs. writing dimension does not capture everything we want to know about the text. So how else might we go about it? This question was what inspired a large part of the work American linguist Doug Biber became known for, as we discover in the following section.

How to organise language texts: genre, register and style Owing to a lack of talent for learning languages and scraping passes in French, Doug Biber never saw himself as a linguist, choosing a career in geophysics instead. But after he was made redundant, a remarkable discovery made during a technical writing course which he had taken earlier proved instrumental in shaping his future career in linguistics. This discovery was the fact that texts were meant to impart information, not prove how smart the writer was. This was nothing short of a revelation for Biber, whose brush with university writing had led him to believe the exact opposite. As a student, his writing efforts served one sole purpose: given that whoever was grading his essays was already in possession of ‘the answer’ and thus not in need of information, the only point of writing was surely to impress them into thinking the writer was a clever know-​it-​all.2 As Biber’s career shifted into linguistics, he set out to analyse language and investigate what texts are actually used for. This desire eventually led to a highly prolific linguistic career dedicated to text analysis. One important result of his work, though by no means the only or best-​known one, was the fleshing out of 30

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three notions that Biber and his colleague, Susan Conrad, contrast in their recent book: Language register, language genre and language style (2019). Let’s look at each one in turn. Language register treats texts from a similar perspective to the Speech–​Writing Continuum. The register of a text is a set of linguistic properties observed to hold for a particular use of language in a broader situational context, highly influenced by the situation in which the text is used. For example, we might observe that face-​to-​face conversations have certain linguistic features which hold as a result of the circumstances in which such conversations occur: use of pronouns, use of short words and simple structures. But even within the register of conversation, there might be different sub-​registers whose linguistic characteristics differ. Compare workplace conversations conducted among work colleagues in a professional environment (an office) with family dinner conversations, conducted in the home, among people who know each other intimately and are interacting informally. The language of these conversations and the norms of what is appropriate in each case will inevitably differ. A second notion, language genre, considers a text from the perspective of the conventional linguistic features which are used to construct it. These features are crucial in structuring the text and it is through these features that we recognise its genre in the first place. Genre is also highly influenced by the situation and context, but in a different way. For example, a recipe can be recognised as such from the two important types of elements it necessarily contains: the ingredients required and the method for combining them. Without these elements, a text would not qualify as an adequate (or complete) recipe. Similarly, a joke would not be a joke without a punchline. We define language genres in terms of conventional linguistic features because these are, in part, culturally specific. The language and layout of recipes varies across cultures, though of course, for functional reasons, there will be overlap in the components required. The language and structure of job application cover letters will vary across cultures also, as does the format of jokes. Genres are specialised texts which have a particular function, and whose features allow us to recognise the pairing of the two (a given genre and a given function). Language registers help us to identify the ways in which we tend to communicate in a particular setting. In other words, a register refers to typical linguistic characteristics, for example the use of pronouns, simple clauses and frequent verbs in conversation. Because we are looking for typical features, it is not crucial to have access to the entire text, that is, the whole conversation, when characterising register. We only need a sufficiently large sample of conversational excerpts to understand the gist of what that register is like. In contrast, characterising a specific genre, for example cover letters for job applications, recipes, jokes, requires access to the entire text (the whole cover letter, not just excerpts from it) so that fundamental linguistic components (such as the opening greeting, the first paragraph, the closing paragraph, closing greeting and so on) can be extracted. So, rather than talking about typical features of a text, when considering language genre we identify necessary features that occur in the text, 31

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Figure 2.2  Two different recipe styles

despite the fact that these may only occur once throughout it (for example, the opening greeting of a letter, which nevertheless crucially characterises what a letter might look like). Thirdly, Biber and Conrad (2019) also distinguish language style. Texts sometimes also differ in their use of distinctive linguistic features for aesthetic reasons. Consider the layout and organisation of recipes. One common way to organise recipes is by listing all the ingredients required first, and then listing the steps of the method for combining these next. Ingredients are listed on separate lines, using Arabic numbers for quantities, and these are given in either metric or imperial systems, or both, but never an inconsistent mixing of the two. The method steps are also listed in (typically) separate numbered stages. A different recipe style involves pictorial flow charts in which each step of the method is given in separate circles (or other similar shapes), connected by arrows which show the progression of steps. This time, ingredients are listed within the step in which they are required. Figure 2.2 shows examples of these side by side.

Taking texts apart: the mechanics of characterising texts So how might we go about characterising texts in practice? There are four major components which can help distinguish the register, genre and style of a text: situational aspects, register aspects, genre aspects and style aspects. Bringing these different threads together will lead to a principled, technical understanding of the mechanics of any given text. 32

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Situational aspects concern the practical terms under which a given text is produced, such as who is speaking/​writing, and why/​how the communication is produced and consumed. A recipe is usually written by a single author, the channel of communication is writing and the intended audience is any person wishing to cook that particular dish. A cover letter for a job application is also written but the intended audience is a person or a committee who will be making decisions as to which candidates may be suitable to be short-​listed for a specific position. In contrast, a family dinner will involve two or more participants, who are speaking, off the cuff, often without any particular purpose beyond informal chit-​chat. Register aspects concern typical linguistic elements that might be used in the text. Recipes will contain many nouns denoting ingredients, and a list of directives that provide instructions, for example blend butter and sugar until smooth, cook for 5 min on low heat. A cover letter will almost certainly not contain any such directives. Instead, there might be high use of the first-​person pronoun (I, me, my) indicating skills, abilities and experience of the applicant, and several verbs in past tense form, denoting past achievements or previous jobs. Single occurrences of particular features which are not typical of the text are not of interest here. In his earlier work on register, Biber (1988) showed that typical linguistic features often co-​occur, giving rise to distinct types of spoken and written registers. As such, some registers are involved (that is, showing emotion and affect) while others are informational, some are narrative while others are not, some are elaborated and some are more situational. And texts can be placed along continua between each of these ‘dimensions’. Biber pioneered a statistical method for quantifying differences between registers on the basis of presence or absence of certain grammatical and lexical features (e.g. verbs depicting mental states like think, love, hate, use of past tense verbs, use of stance adverbs). As discussed, genre aspects do not focus on what is typical in the text, but rather on what is expected in it. All expected features, even those occurring only once in the text, are of interest. Recipes will likely contain two lists: a list of ingredients and a list of instructions; cover letters will usually contain a date, an opening greeting, a sentence outlining the purpose of the cover letter, a sentence thanking the person reading the letter for their consideration, and a closing greeting followed by a signature. It would be very odd for there to be any greetings or signatures in a recipe! Finally, stylistic features may or may not be relevant, but where relevant, their use will be helpful in placing the text within the appropriate and expected format, and increasing its readability. It would be odd to read a cover letter containing emojis, or a recipe which runs ingredients and instructions together rather than listing them on separate lines. Table 2.2 provides a non-​exhaustive checklist of features to consider when analysing texts (see Biber & Conrad, 2019, Chapters 2 & 3, especially p. 40 and pp. 78–​82).

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Table 2.2  Checklist of features for classifying texts Situational aspects Channel Spoken ↔ written Formality Formal ↔ informal Participants One person speaking, two, more, … Communication Informational ↔ affective, narrative, directive, purpose descriptive, … Setting Private ↔ public Production Planned ↔ unplanned Register aspects (typical elements) Vocabulary features Are there specific types of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs used? Is there jargon or specialised words? Affective vs. Are there many pronouns (and if so, which ones)? Is informational there repetition? Are there many situational terms features (here, this, there, tomorrow)? Are there vague words (and stuff, and things, what’s-​her-​name)? Are there many adjectives (and if so, what type)? Standard vs. non-​ Are there features associated with standard grammar or standard forms regional features? Are there contractions? Are there full and complete sentences or simple, incomplete ones? Grammatical features Are verbs in present, past or future tense form? Is the text (largely) in passive voice or active voice? Are there identifiable sentences? Are clauses tightly linked to one another by conjunctions (because, that, where, when) or loosely given like ‘beads on a string’? Conversational Are there pauses and fillers (aha, you know, like)? Are features there other features, such as gestures? Genre aspects (expected elements) Greetings Are there greetings? Standard openings Are there expectations regarding how the text starts? Expected elements Are there expectations of certain types of elements within the body of the text? Closings Are there expectations regarding how the text winds down to a close? Farewells Are there closing greetings or signatures? Style aspects Ordering of Is there a particular order expected? components Punctuation Are there particular norms with respect to the use of punctuation? Capitalisation Are there particular norms with respect to the use of capital letters? Abbreviations and Are there particular norms or expectations with regard contractions to the use of abbreviations and contractions? Graphical elements Are there particular stylistic elements expected, e.g. emojis, hashtags, links?

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2.2 Using social media for your purpose Having taken a tour around the typical ways in which linguists classify texts in general, how might we classify the kind of language we find on social media platforms, namely social media texts? In Part 2 of this chapter, we consider three case studies of text analysis of instant messages, Reddit posts and Wikipedia articles.

Case study 2.2.1. Genre, register and style of instant messages Instant messaging apps invaded the online space in the late 1990s, when many young users, teenagers and university students swapped out email communication for instant messaging. The first such app was ICQ, which took off in 1996, attracting a whopping 100 million registered users before being absorbed by AOL two years later. Today, there are many different instant messaging services to choose from, including Microsoft MSN Messenger, Facebook messenger, Apple iChat, Google Chat, Jabber, Myspace messenger, Signal, WhatsApp, as well as Skype and Zoom, alongside traditional text messaging services offered by the various mobile companies available. These apps incorporate different features and functionality, but one key characteristic they all share is their ability to transmit messages from one user to another in real time. The instantaneous and often informal aspect of communication they involve has earned these apps the reputation of being speech-​ like: users might suggest ‘talking on messenger’, or they might refer to previous ‘messenger conversations’. This wording indicates that users mentally associate

Figure 2.3  Text message example

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instant messages with speech, perhaps owing to their instantaneous communication affordability. Yet, clearly, they are not actual speech, because we receive and send messages in written form. So, is it fair to say that instant messenger texts are closer to speech than they are to writing? The situational context of instant messaging communication involves two or more participants taking turns in exchanging messages, a process which resembles conversational turns. Users send such instant messages to a variety of people, from close friends, family members, spouses and partners, to classmates and work colleagues. But, regardless of the exact nature of the relationship between participants, messaging involves at least some degree of informality. Baron (2008) suggests that typical features of the instant messenger register include informal language, abbreviations and internet slang, and short, incomplete sentences. The language style is generally relaxed, containing emojis and other emotive symbols, such as animated GIFs. These features are indeed in line with spoken language characteristics. But there’s a twist! First, let’s look at a short transcript from Baron’s data, illustrating an exchange between Gale and Sally (names have been changed to protect personal identities). (1)  Gale: hey, I gotta run Sally: Okay Sally: I’ll ttyl? Gale: gotta do errands Gale: yep! Sally: Okay. Sally: :) Gale: talk to you soon Sally: Alrighty. (Baron, 2008, pp. 58–​59) Two interesting observations should be noted in the above excerpt. First, the turns consist of short, simple phrases, and the overlap between them causes a double thread to briefly emerge. Sally’s turn-​seeking confirmation that the girls should talk later is met with a continuation of Gale’s own earlier turn, detailing her need to run in order to do errands. Gale then quickly catches up the conversation to Sally’s question and replies: yep. This falling out of sync with each other is different from typical face-​to-​face spoken conversations because the time needed to type out replies in messaging apps produces a delay which would normally not take place in face-​to-​face conversation, unless people were speaking over each other. The second observation is that the closing sequence used to end the conversation is drawn out over roughly five turns (yep → Okay → :) → talk to you soon → Alrighty). For comparison, here is an excerpt from the same body of data, detailing an exchange between two male participants (conversation is reproduced exactly as originally typed). 36

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(2)  Mark: i’ve got this thing that logs all convos [=​conversations] now Jim: really? Jim: why’s tha Mark: i have ever [=​every] conversation i’ve had with anybody since the 16th Mark: i got a mod [=​module] for aim [=​AIM], and it just does it Mark: i’m not sure why Jim: lol Jim: cool (Baron, 2008, p. 60) The twist that Baron found in her data relates to gender differences. Male and female participants constructed their instant messages slightly differently. The females tended to engage in more affective (or involved) communication, discussing feelings and facilitating solidarity between participants, whereas the males oriented their messages towards informational exchanges. In general, females also used more turns to close conversations and were overall more ‘chatty’, with longer interactions. But males used more clause chunks and more conjunctions to link these, possibly induced by the informational content of their messages. Females adhered to standard features of English comparatively more than males; for example, using fewer contracted forms (though admittedly both genders use various non-​standard features to some extent), as well as more emoticons. An earlier study, conducted by Ling (2005), also found that Norwegian females tended to use more capital letters and standard punctuation than their male counterparts. So, what is the connection between females and standard features in instant messenger? Previous research on gendered language use has consistently shown that, all things being equal, the language used by females is geared towards establishing solidarity and is in line with standard usage (see Meyerhoff, 2018, for an overview). In contrast, the language used by males is less oriented towards affective communication and less likely to use standard forms (Meyerhoff, 2018). Females are also observed to be more polite than males, with male language exhibiting more slang and taboo terms, and less concern with politeness norms or standard features. An important point to be made here is that the patterns of use observed of males and females are not deterministic, but they are acquired through socialisation and norms. There is nothing which biologically conditions individuals to follow these patterns, but their use is performative, being learned by living in cultures where gender roles are associated with specific ways of speaking (see more on that in Chapter 4). What this all points to is that females tend to follow the same general tendencies online as they do in other language exchanges, namely orienting towards standard forms and affective communication, while males also follow the same patterns they exhibit in other mediums of communication. The only possible surprise is the longer online exchanges noted for female interactions compared to 37

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male ones. Baron (2008, p. 67) suggests that this difference might be attributed to the possibility that females are treating instant messages like written language, while males are treating them more like speech. (She cites research by Mulac & Lundell, 1994, which finds essays written by females to be generally longer than those by males.) In sum, early research into the language used on instant messaging apps indicates that text messages align well with the medium of spoken conversation. Typical features of this register include turn-​taking, use of informal and non-​standard features, such as contractions, abbreviations, emoticons, animated GIFs and speech-​like clausal structures, and general opening and closing formulae associated with conversation. While these typical features characterise most text messages, there is considerable variation, too, which awaits further study. For example, it is not clear to what extent instant messages require an opening greeting. One factor which leads to such variation is gender, with males placing text messages closer to the spoken end of the continuum compared to females. It remains unclear just how closely the turn-​taking in instant messaging apps resembles the mechanics of turn-​taking in face-​to-​face conversations, especially regarding openings and closings. As discussed above, there is an indication that gender differences exist in how users sign off in instant messaging apps, and even the extent to which this happens at all. Especially relevant here is the length of time over which such exchanges take place. Because some exchanges can take place over several days, they lack a natural end point. Another question is how different users handle interruptions. Although instant messages can be instantaneous, some people do not treat them differently to emails, taking a long time to respond. So, how do users regard these interruptions and pauses in communication? It is clear that some users explicitly excuse themselves from an exchange (sorry gotta go X’s here), while others simply leave the exchange without a closing turn, or only acknowledge the delay on their return (sorry had to answer the door). Future work is needed to delve into these matters and a wealth of other related questions.

Case study 2.2.2. Genre, register and style of Reddit posts In 2005, two US college room-​mates, Steve Huffman and Alex Ohanian, launched one of the most successful online collaborative platforms for news and information dissemination: Reddit (www.reddit.com). Fast-​forward nearly two decades and the site remains extremely popular, ranking third after Facebook and Twitter (Liimatta, 2019), with more than 430 million users worldwide (Global Social Media Stats, 2021) and, interestingly, it also shows one of the most pronounced gender skews (toward male users) observed of any dominant social media platform (Barthel et al., 2016). Reddit users can ask questions, propose their own discussion forums (subreddits), and contribute answers to existing discussions by sharing text, photos, links and videos. 38

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Figure 2.4  Reddit logo

One key distinguishing feature of Reddit is its voting system. Reddit involves an open-​access system where anyone can sign up to read or contribute, but there is one peculiarity: all posts and comments attract positive or negative votes. The voting system allows users to acquire contributor kudos, or what Reddit terms ‘karma’, thereby providing both an incentive for would-​be contributors, as well as a potential quality control tool for readers. So, what does the language of Reddit look like? Is it similar to the conversational language of instant messenger texts? A study by Dayter and Messerli (2021) provides some clues. They set out to investigate one popular subreddit forum called Change my view (CMV), aptly named to align with its purpose of providing a space for users to post an idea or opinion they are willing to change their mind about. The forum also exhibits an additional interesting foible: comments do not just receive general positive/​negative votes, but they can also be tagged with a Delta vote. A Delta vote is a special badge which indicates that a comment (or several different comments) was a catalyst for a user’s change of view. Delta votes are awarded by users who initiate a thread in the forum to recognise successful contributions which led to their imminent change of view. Table 2.3 shows what the genre features of the Change my view forum look like (drawn from Dayter & Messerli, 2021, Figure 1, p. 8). There are immediately observable similarities between the language of instant messages and the posts in Reddit CMV forums: they both involve turns, in the form of a comment and a response, between the initiator of the thread and the various contributors. However, the turns are open (not private) to a much bigger community, even though the exchanges are typically restricted between the initiator of the thread and specific users (who are contributing ideas). Furthermore, unlike the open-​ended function of instant messages, the goal of Reddit CMV forums is highly specific: to bring about a change of mind. In other words, the language is likely to involve persuasive and argumentative features. What Dayter and Messerli (2021) found in their linguistic analysis of Reddit CMV posts was that, regardless of whether the posts were successful in changing the initiator’s mind, they shared a high level of formality. The authors analysed the language in 500,000 comments, containing 133 million words collected by randomly sampling CMV between May 2013 and May 2020 and extracting all examples. They coded them for 13 linguistic features, including sentence length, 39

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Table 2.3  Features of the CMV forum genre User

Feature

Example

Initiator of thread

Concise CMV statement

Contributor 1 Initiator of thread Contributor 2 … Contributor X Initiator of thread

Detailed statement Comment Response to Contributor 1 Comment … Comment Response to Contributor X

The average home owner does not benefit from constantly rising house prices. … … … … … … … if resulting in a change of mind, awards Delta and provides short explanation of the reason for the change of mind

lexical density, uses of first-​person singular pronoun (I ) and second-​person pronoun (you), imperative clauses, hedges and so on. Taken as a set, these features correlate with Biber’s (1988) involved vs. informational register contrast. Involved registers rank higher in emotive content and appeal to closer interpersonal relations, while informational registers rank higher in factual content and formality. The quantitative analysis of the language found on the Reddit CMV forum showed remarkable similarity with other highly formal and informational registers, for example those obtained from a corpus of law articles (Breeze, 2013, cited in Dayter & Messerli, 2021, p. 16). It is interesting to ponder the finding that Reddit CMV posts are highly formal and informational, especially given the high proportion of male users active on the platform. In the earlier discussion of instant messages, we saw that it was females who gravitated towards comparatively more formal language rather than males. It seems reasonable then to assume that the formality noted in Reddit may be linked to the function of discourse: in order to induce a change of mind, users are perhaps likely to appeal to more formal language in a bid to project an authoritative and informed voice.

Case study 2.2.3. Genre, register and style of Wikipedia articles As far as social media goes, nowhere is the appeal to authoritative and informational content more prevalent than in Wikipedia pages. The arrival of computer programmer Ward Cunningham in Honolulu inspired him to use a Hawaiian

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word for his upcoming invention, a word that would in due course be extremely widely known. Ward decided to use the concept of a wiki for the platform he was building, after being driven into the city of Honolulu by the local taxi company, Wiki Wiki Shuttles.3 In Hawaiian, wiki means ‘quick’, and the company name Wiki Wiki Shuttles exemplified a process for forming new words, called reduplication, which is widely used in Austronesian languages like Hawaiian. Words formed by means of reduplication repeat the entire word or part of it to create a new but related word-​form, wiki wiki meaning something ‘very quick’, an intensified version of wiki. The first implementation of Ward’s concept was published on the internet in 1995 under the name WikiWikiWeb, itself a reduplication. The site remains accessible today but only for reading purposes, as a museum piece of the first online encyclopaedia. Currently, the most widely known and used wiki is Wikipedia, founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001. Wikipedia is a multilingual, freely accessible and collaboratively edited repository of information. It might come as a surprise that Wikipedia counts as a social media site, and certainly it is not how Wikipedia sees itself4; however, its status is attributed to the fact that the content is both generated and consumed by its users. Wikipedia is enormous, in size (approaching 480 million pages) and reach (with nearly 43 million users and 21 billion views).5 The site has content in nearly 300 languages and this figure is expanding.6 As it turns out, the comparison of Wikipedia to an encyclopaedia is not an exaggeration. In their corpus linguistics study comparing Wikipedia articles with Everything2 (another online wiki platform) and with the print volume of the Columbia Encyclopedia, Emigh and Herring (2005) found unmistakable discourse similarities between Wikipedia and the traditional print encyclopaedia. How can this be, given the self-​nominated collaborative writing in Wikipedia in comparison to the strict editorial guidelines and expert writer teams involved in traditional print encyclopaedias? Like Reddit, the focus of Wikipedia is on the dissemination of information. But unlike Reddit, its content is not organised in turn-​taking exchanges within discussion forums (although there are additional behind-​the-​scenes discussion

Figure 2.5  Wikipedia homepage

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pages called Talk pages which contain interactional language similar to Reddit forum posts). The main content of Wikipedia is structured in encyclopaedia-​like articles, containing headings and sub-​headings and formal paragraphing. As an example, consider the opening sentences for the entry of the term Wikipedia: (3) Wikipedia began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered[2]‌ by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Its technological and conceptual underpinnings predate this; the earliest known proposal for an online encyclopaedia was made by Rick Gates in 1993,[3] and the concept of a free-​as-​in-​freedom online encyclopedia (as distinct from mere open source)[4] was proposed by Richard Stallman in 1998. (https://​www.wikipe​dia.org/​) Example (3) shows a paragraph which uses formal academic language, standard English grammar and punctuation and academic referencing style (using numbered indices) that might easily have been lifted from any reference text, such as a traditional print encyclopaedia. The only difference between a traditional academic text and the text above is the presence of hyperlinks (in blue font) for references cited and for terms which have their own separate entries and can be clicked to access their associated Wikipedia page. Unlike Reddit CMV posts or instant messages, the language is deliberately factual and devoid of any personal references (I think, I believe), which gives the text the appearance of containing uncontroversial and undisputed knowledge. Whether such ‘facts’ are indeed uncontroversial is irrelevant; the important point here is that the language presents them as such. The academic and authoritative tone is constructed by means of various linguistics strategies. One such strategy is the use of passive voice often prescribed in science research articles: Wikipedia … was registered (passive) by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger instead of Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger registered (active voice) Wikipedia, or the concept of a free-​as-​in-​freedom online encyclopedia was proposed (passive) by Richard Stallman rather than Richard Stallman proposed (active) the concept of a free-​as-​ in-​freedom online encyclopedia. Another strategy is the choice of (grammatical) subjects which denote abstract and inanimate entities: Wikipedia began with its first edit on 15 January 2001. Wikipedia could not begin of its own accord without someone’s input (in this case, that of Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger). The same semantic content could have been packaged differently, using different linguistic constructions and carrying a different tone. The emphasis on objective, neutral knowledge in academic prose is linguistically crafted by the way in which phrases and sentences are arranged. However, language is seldom neutral or objective. In the hands of a skilled communicator, it can shape perception towards the viewpoint intended by the writer. In its bid for information dissemination and desire for credibility, Wikipedia is written to mimic precisely the genre (headings, sub-​headings, references) and register (standard

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formal academic language) that meet its goals, thereby aligning it with the print encyclopaedia, to the point of making it virtually indistinguishable from it. Surprisingly, Emigh and Herring (2005) show that it does not take a formal editor (or a specific editorial team) to enforce the norms of the academic style on Wikipedia: in most cases, the volunteer anonymous writers contributing instinctively and expertly align themselves to those norms. The use of the word ‘expertly’ is deliberate here, because the same writers are able to switch to the turn-​taking conversational exchanges in the Talk pages of Wikipedia mentioned earlier, using appropriate norms of interaction that are closer to spoken language, as argued by Myers (2010). (4) Oops I think I made an error and deleted a chunk of the page somehow. Would somebody please fix that?–​unsigned (‘Copyright’) (Myers, 2010, Chapter 10, p. 143) Comparing the two examples from Wikipedia, we see that the language used is very different. In contrast to the academic language of the Wikipedia article, the Talk page excerpt makes ample use of the first-​person singular pronoun (I ), informal interjections (oops) and verbs of cognition (I think), and is clearly addressing a specific (group of) addressee(s) (other contributors to the Copyright page) using markers of conversational language, such as politeness forms (please). These examples show that different register and genre features may show up even within the same platform.

In a nutshell Regardless of whether it is spoken, written or signed, long or short, formal or informal, language is packaged in what linguists term ‘texts’. Texts have specific linguistic features and fulfil certain discourse functions. Some of the features are typical of each individual text in general, such as the use of hedges or taboo words, full clauses, modal verbs and so on (giving us specific registers), while other features are signature, constitutive elements of the text, for example greetings, lists of ingredients, hashtags or @ mentions (giving us specific genres). Texts may also contain particular stylistic conventions. Like many other types of texts, social media texts vary widely in both register and genre: some platforms make use of informal, conversational language akin to spoken varieties, whose function is to increase social bonds (e.g. instant messenger), others exhibit more formal and persuasive language bringing them more in line with written varieties (e.g. CMV forums in Reddit), while others exhibit highly informational features virtually indistinguishable from academic written language (Wikipedia articles).

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Notes 1 For an itemised list, see https://​en.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​Victor​_​of_​Avey​ron. 2 Source: https://​blog.lingu​istl​ist.org/​fund-​drive/​featu​red-​lingu​ist-​doug-​biber/​ 3 https://​en.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​Wiki​Wiki​Web 4 https://​en.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​Wikipe​dia:​Wikipedia_​is_​n​ot_​a​_​soc​ial_​netw​orki​ ng_​s​ite 5 https://​stats.wikime​dia.org/​#/​all-​proje​cts 6 https://​en.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​Lis​t_​of​_​Wik​iped​ias

References Baron, N. S. (2008). Always on: Language in an online mobile world. Oxford University Press. Barthel, M., Stocking G., Holcomb, J., & Mitchell, A. (2016). Reddit news users more likely to be male, young and digital in their news preferences. Pew Research Center. www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​jou​rnal​ism/​2016/​02/​25/​red​ dit-​news-​users-​more-​lik​ely-​to-​be-​male-​young-​and-​digi​tal-​in-​their-​news-​pref​ eren​ces/​ Benzaquén, A. S. (2006). Encounters with wild children: Temptation and disappointment in the study of human nature. McGill University Press. Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge University Press. Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2019). Register, genre, and style. Cambridge University Press. Breeze, R. (2013). Lexical bundles across four legal genres. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 18(2), 229–​253. https://​doi.org/​10.1075/​ ijcl.18.2.03bre Clark, E. V., & Casillas, M. (2015). First language acquisition. In K. Allen (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Linguistics (pp. 311–​328). Routledge. Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the internet. Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. (1987). The Cambridge encyclopedia of language. Cambridge University Press. Dayter, D., & Messerli, T. C. (2021). Persuasive language and features of formality on the r/​ChangeMyView subreddit. Internet Pragmatics, 5(1), 165–​ 195. https://​doi.org/​10.1075/​ip.00072.day Emigh, W., & Herring, S. C. (2005). Collaborative authoring on the web: A genre analysis of online encyclopedias. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (IEEE) (pp. 99a–​99a). https://​ doi.org/​10.1109/​HICSS.2005.149 Global Social Media Stats. (October 2021). https://​datar​epor​tal.com/​soc​ ial-​media-​users

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Liimatta, A. (2019). Exploring register variation on Reddit: A multi-​dimensional study of language use on a social media website. Register Studies, 1(2), 269–​295. Linell, P. (2004). The written language bias in linguistics: Its nature, origins and transformations. Routledge. Ling, R. (2005). The sociolinguistics of SMS: An analysis of SMS use by a random sample of Norwegians. In R. Ling & P. Pedersen (Eds.), Mobile communications: Re-​negotiation of the social sphere (pp. 335–​349). Springer. Meyerhoff, M. (2018). Introducing sociolinguistics. Routledge. Miller, J., & Calude, A. S. (2020). Speaking and writing English. In B. Aarts, A. McMahon, & L. Hinrichs (Eds.), The Handbook of English Linguistics (pp. 547–​567). Wiley. https://​doi.org/​10.1002/​978111​9540​618.ch27 Miller, J., & Weinert, R. (1998). Spontaneous spoken language: Syntax and discourse. Clarendon. Mulac, A., & Lundell, T. L. (1994). Effects of gender-​linked language differences in adults’ written discourse: Multivariate tests of language effects. Language and Communication, 14(3), 299–​309. Myers, G. (2010). The discourse of blogs and wikis. Bloomsbury. Wackernagel-​ Jolles, B. (1971). Untersuchungen zur gesprochen Sprache: Beobachtungen zur Verknüpfung spontanen Sprechens. Alfred Kummerle.

What to read next Part 1. For a detailed introduction to technical linguistic differences between spoken and written language, see Miller and Weinert (1998). A more concise, though still technical treatment of differences between spoken and written grammar can be found in the chapter by Miller and Calude (2020). Miller has written extensively on various aspects of spoken language. Regarding genre analysis, many different scholars have treated this from various angles, so it is easy to get lost in this extensive research. However, Chapters 1–​3 in Biber and Conrad (2019) constitute one solid approach. Part 2. As regards social media specifically, several authors have considered the genre of specific platforms, with a few of these cited above, so it is worth searching for scholarly work on the platform of interest. For example, Baron (2008) provides a non-​technical treatment of the language of instant messenger apps, Liimatta (2019) gives a more in-​depth analysis of Reddit posts, and Myers (2010) offers an extensive discussion of wiki and personal blogs. Stine Lomborg (Social media, social genres: Making sense of the ordinary, 2013, Routledge) discusses Twitter, Facebook and blogs but approaches genre from a different perspective than Biber and Conrad (2019).

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What to do next Spoken–​Written Continuum. Can you think of a particular social media platform (other than Wikipedia or certain parts of Reddit) which uses the features of written language rather than those of spoken language? Can you give some examples of language encountered on this platform? What evidence can you find that the language aligns more closely with this medium? Data collection. Choose a social media platform that you use often to message different people (family, friends, co-​ workers), for example WhatsApp, Twitter or Instagram. Make a corpus of your own text messages by copying and pasting your texts into a Word document while keeping track of whether the message was sent to a family member, friend or co-​ worker. What linguistic features can you identify in the corpus? Do you use formal standard features? Do you use specific features associated with online language, such as emojis, GIFs and terms like LOL, BRB? Do these vary depending on who the message is being sent to? How do these align with the discussion of features in the case study of instant messages (and why/​why not)?

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3

Using social media to speak to your tribe Considering Audience Design, language choice and multilingualism

TLDR. This chapter begins by introducing the phenomenon of style-​shifting. Speakers change how they speak depending on the context and situation. One major factor influencing what speakers say and how they say it is their audience. Audiences are layered and can involve different types of listeners. Moreover, they affect not just the specific language forms used by a speaker, but, for multilingual speakers, they can also have an impact on the language choice made. Multilingual speakers make use of their languages to connect with their audiences in various strategic ways, including mixing languages through various types of code-​switching. From style-​shifting to language choice and language mixing, speakers construct their message to appeal to their audience, whether communicating in person, or on Facebook, TikTok or other social media platforms.

3.1 How do you speak to your tribe? November 4, 2008 marked a momentous change in American politics, namely the election of the first ever African American President. Barack Obama’s ethnicity made as many headlines around the world as his being elected the 44th president of the United States. Questions began to circulate surrounding Obama’s heritage. ‘Is he Black enough?’, some asked. Given that language is understood as a major component of identity, culture and social affiliation, it wasn’t long before Obama’s language style started to attract attention, too. His language captured the interest of journalists, scholars and lay people alike, with an entire book on the topic (Samy & Smitherman, 2012). A mobile phone recording (posted on YouTube)1 captures the former president addressing a fellow African American man working as a cashier at Ben’s Chilli Bowl with the phrase Nah, we straight, in response to the man’s offer of change. In this instance, Obama used a construction from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to address the cashier with a usage representing their shared heritage (the use of nah, the expression straight and the lack of the verb be). The choice of phrase was tied in with the intended audience, attuning to DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-3

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the shared ethnicity of speaker and hearer. Samy and Smitherman (2012, p. 5) explain in their book that ‘It’s one thing to know that you gotta say “the right things” in terms of content but quite another to be able to say “the right things” in the right way in terms of style’. Obama’s shift from standard American English (the more formal variety of the language used in education, media and legal contexts), the variety he primarily used in his professional capacity, to AAVE in the interaction with the cashier is an example of style-​shifting. Style-​shifting refers to changes speakers make in their language, shifting from one variety to another within the same (mutually intelligible) language. Speakers choose to style-​shift for a whole host of reasons. The first studies to scrutinise this phenomenon focused on style-​shifting as a means for speakers to put forward a different persona in different contexts. In a well-​known study, American linguist William Labov compared the speech of department store assistants across three New York chains, ranging from lower to higher end (S. Klein, Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue). He was interested in their use of the sound /​r/​. This sound is noteworthy because it is pronounced in full in standard American English, giving the variety its rhotic label, but not pronounced in New York City. The tension between the two alternative pronunciations hence leads to variation. Labov (1966) found that those interviewed differed in their relative amount of /​r/​pronunciation across the three department stores, with the assistants in the higher-​end store (Saks Fifth Avenue) using the most /​r/​-​full speech, and those in the lower-​end store using the least /​r/​(S. Klein). Secondly, in careful speech (when speakers are paying special attention to their speech), all assistants used more /​ r/​-​full speech when compared to less careful speech, but the relative amount of /​r/​ varied according to the same patterns, with the most expensive store correlating with the most standard use (the most amount of /​r/​), and conversely, the least expensive store yielded the least standard use (the least amount of /​r/​). In other words, the speakers interviewed in Labov’s study were using language features to present themselves as members of a higher social class by using more standard forms to appeal to customers shopping in higher-​end New York department stores. Standard forms carry higher prestige, in that they are associated with ‘correctness’, authority and wealth. The ability to pronounce /​r/​was never in question here and the assumption is that all speakers interviewed were equally capable of pronouncing /​r/​, but the perception that /​r/​-​full speech is part of the repertoire of the American higher social classes acts as a driving force encouraging speakers to style-​shift and thus increase their use of /​r/​in certain contexts, such as when being more careful with their speech or when serving certain customers.

Audience is key! But this is not the only way to make sense of style-​shifting. A different perspective on style-​shifting was put forward by New Zealand linguist Allan Bell. 48

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According to Bell, audience is key. He proposed a theory of language style based around the importance of the audience in influencing speakers’ language choices, called Audience Design (Bell, 1984, 2001). Having a keen interest in broadcasting language, Bell noted that radio language varied widely across stations, even though, in essence, it might all be considered the same genre (see Chapter 2). He noticed, for example, that government-​ owned national stations seemed to be more formal and comprised variants of speech associated with standard varieties of English. In contrast, popular music stations used more slang, informal language and regional forms. Bell theorised that different language forms were attributed to differences in audience of the various stations. But who was the audience? The listenership of the national stations and the classical music station tended to be older, more educated and likely wealthier listeners; that is, individuals from a higher socio-​economic group. This group would orient towards using standard English and value the higher-​prestige forms associated with this variety. In contrast, popular music stations had listeners from all walks of life, including many younger listeners who would be more likely to appreciate and recognise modern slang and identify with non-​standard, regional use. At the heart of Bell’s theory of Audience Design is the notion that speakers adjust their language to appear more similar to (converge with) an intended addressee. This adjustment is termed accommodation, a concept borrowed from psychology and linked to Howard Giles and his collaborators (Giles & Powesland, 1975). We accommodate others in order to show affinity and solidarity with them, to increase social cohesion and decrease social distance. The converse can also happen, whereby speakers may choose to diverge from their audience and use different language forms in a bid to distance themselves from their listener(s). One non-​trivial question is: what counts as the ‘audience’? In face-​to-​face conversations, it is usually straightforward to determine who the audience is: it is the person or persons whom the speaker addresses—​the addressee(s). In other situations, the audience is not completely known but assumed. Or it is a sub-​set from a known set of potential addressees (we will see examples of this in our social media case studies). However, the addressees may not be the only people influencing the speaker’s choices. There are (at least) three other groups which can also play a role (Bell, 1984). In some situations, the person listening may not be directly addressed, but the speaker nevertheless knows they are present and consents to their presence (for instance, a jury in a court of law). Such listeners are called auditors. Then, there are people who are also not directly addressed but who can still hear what is being said because they are close enough to be within earshot (overhearers), such as bystanders on a bus or nearby in a café. Speakers do not deliberately tailor speech for such overhearers, but they may still take their presence into account. Finally, audience members could be individuals who are deliberately listening in when they are not supposed to (eavesdroppers). Their influence is more marginal; however, the possibility of there being certain 49

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Table 3.1  Potential audience members Audience type

Addressed

Ratified

Description

addressee

Yes

Yes

auditor

No

Yes

overhearer

No

No

eavesdropper

No

No

Person spoken to directly in a face-​to-​face conversation Person who is ratified by the speaker but not explicitly addressed Person within earshot of the conversation but not deliberately intercepting it without permission Person deliberately intercepting a conversation without permission

eavesdroppers may indirectly affect the speech produced. The various layers of the audience are summarised in Table 3.1. The awareness that a given speaker might have regarding potential overhearers or eavesdroppers varies according to both speaker and situation. However, most speakers will have some idea of their addressees and possibly of their auditors. The addressee will play the most important role in influencing the speaker’s contribution, not just in content but also in form. Adopting an Audience Design perspective, the style-​shifting noted by Labov in his New York study can be explained by the varying audiences that each assistant might have been expecting to address. In the higher-​end department store, the expectation of an addressee from a higher social class would have correlated with convergence towards a more standard way of speaking. Conversely, in the lower-​end department store, the convergence to the addressee manifested itself in the use of more non-​standard speech. Of course, addressee is not the only factor affecting speech choices (and Bell introduced the dimension of Referee Design to mitigate other choices; see Bell, 1999), but within the theory of Audience Design, the audience remains key. These studies proposed theories on the basis of the speech of monolingual speakers who adapted and changed their language depending on their general audience. It is also interesting to consider what happens when speakers are bilingual or multilingual, juggling multiple languages. How do such speakers make language choices in order to appeal to their audience?

I speak your language The 9-​minute speech given by the former US President John F Kennedy, on June, 16, 1963, on the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg (the former West Berlin Townhall) constitutes the most famous speech of the Cold War era.2 That speech became famous for many reasons, one of those being Kennedy’s use of the German sentence Ich bin ein Berliner. Roughly two minutes into the speech, he quoted the 50

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Latin phrase Civis romanus sum, declaring that while previously the most prestigious claim would have been to be a Roman citizen, ‘today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner’. His intention was to state pride in claiming to be a citizen of Berlin. Great debate surrounds the use of the German construction (Eichhoff, 1993). The controversy arises thus: the word Berliner is polysemous, referring to both a person from Berlin and to a pastry similar to a jelly-​filled doughnut. So, the first objection is the potential misunderstanding between the senses of the word. This is easy to refute, because most languages have polysemous words and these do not seem to cause trouble for interpretation; the context usually helps to iron them out. The second issue is a little more complex and surrounds the claim that a grammatical error had embarrassingly trickled in. German grammar dictates that sentences like I am a student and I am a teacher are uttered without the use of the indefinite article ‘a’; Ich bin Studentin (literally: I am student), Ich bin Lehrerin (literally: I am teacher). Using this rule, Ich bin ein Berliner seems ungrammatical because the article ein ‘a’ should not be there (the article-​less form being the default in German). But it seems that there are exceptions to this rule, and expressions of citizenship, like I am a Berliner, can still be expressed together with the article ein after all (Eichhoff, 1993, p. 77). This is a bit like the English exceptions I am Viennese and I am Swiss, which are grammatical without the otherwise expected article, since they follow the pattern of adjectives (I am tired, I am happy). In sum, despite grammatical differences between the two languages, the famous Ich bin ein Berliner sentence is still grammatically correct in German and Kennedy was not telling half of Berlin that he was ‘proud to be a jelly-​filled doughnut’ after all. Nevertheless, the controversy still lingers in some corners because a good story is hard to resist. Jelly-​ filled doughnuts and German grammar aside, what this anecdote illustrates is the power of language. Kennedy was clearly not able to speak fluent German (he openly thanked his translator in the speech), but he did understand the power of uttering his message in the language of the people whom he was addressing. He understood that uttering a German sentence would make a bold and meaningful statement to his German-​speaking audience.

Juggling multiple languages Given that there are more people in the world who are bilingual and multilingual than there are people who are monolingual, it is surprising how persistent some of the most common myths surrounding multilingualism can be. In his book on bilinguals, Swiss linguist François Grosjean (2008) tackles, among other things, the enduring monolingual view of bilingualism and problems associated with it. For brevity, I will use the term bilingual (a person who speaks two languages) throughout this section, but everything said in connection to bilinguals applies equally to multilinguals (people who speak more than two languages). 51

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The overarching issue stemming from a monolingual view of bilingualism is the assumption that bilinguals are essentially two (distinct) monolinguals trapped inside the same body. Nothing could be further from reality with regard to how bilinguals view and use the languages they speak. Several other issues stem from this misconception. Let’s consider two major problems. First, the proficiency of a bilingual, as measured through monolingual lens, focuses on language fluency as a target and on achieving a perfect balance between languages (think: ‘How many languages are you fluent in?’). As a result, the languages spoken are often assessed through tests which ask bilinguals to perform the same tasks in all their languages, expecting similar results, such as reading a text and answering questions, or being able to express a certain concept. This is similar to the kind of proficiency one might expect to uncover in a monolingual speaker. Yet many bilinguals neither use nor learn their languages in the same social situations, so it is highly unlikely that they will be able to use them for the same functions. Second, the languages a given individual speaks are not there by accident and they are not usually compartmentalised like separate rooms in a house, whereby going into one room entails exiting another. Bilinguals speak languages which are in ‘contact’ with one another (by virtue of being inside the same brain, if you like), they switch from one language to another and they mix them, which is termed code-​switching (more on that later). Code-​switching should not be seen as testimony to a lack of language proficiency. However, because tests designed with a monolingual outlook are not geared to handle language that includes code-​switching, this is often an unfortunate outcome. So, now we come to what bilingualism is actually like, following Grosjean’s (2008, pp. 13–​14) more ‘holistic view’ of bilingualism. There are three main adjustments to make. First, rather than being thought of as two monolinguals trapped inside the same body, bilinguals are better understood as integrated individuals, whose languages co-​exist and interact. Secondly, comparing bilingual proficiency against monolingual proficiency (in a language that speakers share) provides an incomplete and misleading picture. For example, when we analysed the data from a story-​telling experiment that my colleague Jeanette Treffers-​Daller conducted with French/​English bilinguals, we found that despite being faced with the same experimental task, monolingual French speakers produced different linguistic structures from bilingual speakers. Conversely, monolingual English speakers produced equally different linguistic structures from the bilingual group (Treffers-​Daller & Calude, 2015). The bilinguals in our data simply did something different: not incorrect, but at the same time, not similar to either of the monolingual groups. Thirdly, proficiency levels can vary widely between the various languages that a given bilingual speaks. This is because bilinguals acquire their languages in different ways, from different people and under different circumstances. As a result, they also use these languages for different purposes and in distinct domains of their lives. (This is known as the Complementarity Principle; see Grosjean, 2008, p. 123 and Grosjean, 2013, pp. 11–​14). Competent bilinguals 52

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adapt to navigate the languages they use in the various social settings where they are required, juggling one language or another as needed. For example, one language might be used at home, with family and friends, and another for work and study. In this case, it would be unlikely that the language of the home could be adequately used in a formal presentation on a topic of study. Many bilinguals find themselves more proficient in one language than another, termed language dominance. Bilinguals may be dominant in one language, using it in several domains of their lives, and have only passive knowledge of another, being able to understand or read in that language, but not speak or write in it. This imbalance does not make such bilinguals ‘less’ bilingual. Importantly, language dominance is dynamic and it can change over an individual’s lifetime, depending on circumstance. (Grosjean, 1982, provides excellent personal examples of such shifts in his own life.)

Switching languages and language choice For those of us who have studied a second or third language later in life, the effort required to acquire additional languages is evident. It is thus expected that speakers will be extremely attached to the languages they speak, regardless of when and to what extent they acquired them. German linguist Monika Schmid wrote extensively about the loss of a mother tongue or native language (that is, a language acquired from birth). She has documented, first, that it is indeed possible to lose one’s first language, and secondly, the circumstances that can lead to this loss (Schmid, 2020). As discussed, bilinguals typically juggle the various languages they use. While it is possible to use one language in a mostly monolingual mode—​for instance, when reading a book in one language or when conversing with a monolingual speaker—​in many situations the act of managing various languages is a fairly constant process. In this juggling process, all languages spoken are more or less present or activated (Grosjean, 2008, pp. 41–​43). As bilinguals shift from one situation to another, they may (consciously or subconsciously) activate or deactivate the languages used. The most frequently activated language, also called the base language, becomes dominant, but the point is that one or several others may also be activated at the same time. One consequence of the concomitant activation of several languages is the possible interference from one language (a guest language) into the main (or base) language used in the interaction. Typical interference can involve code-​ switching, which denotes the incorporation of material (words, phrases or entire sentences) from a guest language into a base language. Although code-​ switching is stigmatised by language purists, the practice of code-​switching is widespread and has been embraced by bilingual communities, as also reflected in their proud adoption of what some see as pejorative labels sometimes attached to such uses, for example Spanglish (mix of Spanish and English), Franglais (mix of French and English), Romanglish (mix of Romanian and English) and so on. 53

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While code-​switching sometimes occurs as a need to fill a lexical gap when a specific word or phrase cannot be recalled in the base language, it can also serve various strategic discourse purposes. One of these is metaphorical code-​ switching (Lin & Li, 2012, p. 471). Holmes and Wilson (2017, pp. 42–​43) provide an illustrative example from Papua New Guinea (PNG), in which a local businessman rapidly switches between Buang, the local Papuan community language, and Tok Pisin, the lingua franca language used by people to communicate with speakers from neighbouring villages who speak different local languages. Here is a portion of the excerpt which contains a mixture of Buang (given in regular font) and Tok Pisin (given in italics). (1) Ikamap trovel o women, mi ken stretim olgeta toktok. Orait. Pasin ke ken be, meni ti ken nyep la, su lok lam memba re, olo ba miting autim olgeta tok … ‘If any problem comes up, I will be able to settle all the arguments. OK. This is the way—​the money that is there can’t go back to the shareholders, and the meeting brought up all these arguments …’ (Holmes & Wilson, 2017, ­example 17, p. 42) The businessman is attempting to convince local Buang people to invest money in a local village store. He skilfully exploits his knowledge of Buang in order to appeal to the community by positioning himself as a member of it, as an insider who can be trusted. He is also using Tok Pisin which is seen as the language of the wider community, as a symbol of his professional identity. By successfully mixing these two languages, he is ‘getting the best of both worlds’ (Holmes & Wilson, 2017, p. 43). The switching has a social function, whereby each language has a different symbolic part to play. The excerpt in (1) showcases instances of code-​switching that occur at clausal boundaries: ‘Pasin ke ken be, meni ti ken’, where ‘be’ is in Buang, while the following clause starts with a Tok Pisin word, ‘meni’. (See Chapter 2 for more on clauses.) This phenomenon is termed inter-​sentential code-​switching. The example also contains switches within clauses, for example ‘su lok lam memba re’, termed intra-​sentential code-​switching. The terms ‘code mixing’ and ‘code alternation’ are also used in different ways by different scholars to refer to various types of code-​switching (Lin & Li, 2012, pp. 470–​471). Other types of metaphorical code-​switching might involve recounting a story and using one language for the narrative and a separate language for the direct quotes reported. This mix can help to separate the sequence of events from the various portions of recounted speech, adding further authenticity to these quotes. One difficulty in organising the different ways in which languages can mix is distinguishing between a single-​word code-​switch and a more permanent (as much as any language feature can ever be said to be permanent) lexical innovation in the base language; in other words, a borrowing. Borrowing is the process whereby a receiver language absorbs a new, incoming word from a donor language into its lexical inventory. Languages have been 54

Using social media to speak to your tribe

borrowing words from one another for thousands of years, and although, like code-​switching, this process is sometimes frowned upon by language purists, it is nevertheless a constant source of lexical innovation. English has borrowed from many languages, including kimono from Japanese, café from French, pizza from Italian, pyjamas from Hindi and coffee from Dutch (following an epic chain of borrowing: Dutch borrowed the word from Turkish, which in turn, borrowed it from Arabic). And, conversely, these languages have all borrowed from English (such words are called ‘Anglicisms’). The difficulty in disentangling borrowing from code-​ switching is that borrowings start out as single-​word code-​switches that spread to more and more speakers, so that monolingual speakers of the language end up using them without actually being able to speak the donor language which provided them in the first place. With time, speakers may no longer even be aware of the word’s foreign origin. For instance, New Zealand English has borrowed kiwi from Māori, the Indigenous language spoken on the shores of Aotearoa New Zealand, but nowadays, many speakers are unaware of the word’s origin (the word Māori is another example). Scholars remain divided on whether it is possible to reliably distinguish between borrowing and (single-​word) code-​switching (see discussion and references in Levendis & Calude, 2019). You may even wonder why it is important to be able to do so at all. Extensive work by Canadian linguist Shana Poplack (2018, pp. 156–​157) suggests that not only is it possible to distinguish between the two phenomena, but also that speakers treat these differently, which has consequences for how the two types of phenomena are processed. Regardless of whether borrowing and code-​ switching can be reliably disentangled, the fact remains that bilingual speakers are highly likely to mix material from the languages they speak within the same interaction. It is not possible to predict a priori (here is a borrowing!) when this will take place, but we know that, when it does, it can be strategically used for metaphorical purposes. It should come as no surprise that one important factor regulating code-​ switching is the addressee. Successfully mixing material from different languages relies on the fact that both parties understand both (or all) languages. Bilingual speakers will choose the (base) language of any given interaction by taking into account the language(s) spoken by their addressee; choosing a language that the listener does not know or understand will not lead to successful communication. It may be tempting to assume that switching languages is more extreme than style-​shifting, yet these switches need not be interpreted as such. For some speakers and addresses, the mixing of (distinct) languages happens so naturally and readily that they may not even remember which language a given interaction took place in. Whether juggling one or multiple languages, the decision of whether to style-​shift or not, or whether to code-​switch or not, will inevitably be influenced by who is listening, because, ultimately, communication is about engaging with and appealing to an audience. South African comedian Trevor Noah summed this up beautifully in his autobiographical book: ‘If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to 55

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you in Tswana. Maybe I didn’t look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you’ (Noah, 2016, p. 56).

3.2 Using social media to find and keep your tribe Having considered how monolingual and multilingual people change and adapt their messages to accommodate their audience in speech, we now turn to how these matters manifest themselves on social media platforms. In the first case study, we consider linguistic strategies used in Facebook status updates to increase engagement from a networked audience. In the second case study, an example of language mixing on TikTok is used to highlight how businesses utilise language choice to increase the appeal of their products to their intended audience.

Case study 3.3.1. Tailoring Facebook updates to your audience Facebook (www.faceb​ook.com; Figure 3.1) is arguably one of the most widely known social media platforms. Launched in 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg and co-​founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin, the platform was initially open only to Harvard students. Members from other academic institutions were then allowed to join, and eventually it opened up to the rest of the world. At the time of writing, it is ranked the largest social media network, with approximately 2.91 billion active monthly users.3 If the US is anything to go by, roughly 70 per cent of adults visit Facebook, with a wide range of age groups, genders and ethnicities (Pew Research Report, 2021). Facebook allows communication through various channels, including private messaging, by means of its instant messaging app, user stories and discussion threads in various public or private groups. One commonly used channel is that of status updates which are posted on a user’s ‘wall’. In recent times, users have been given an increasing amount of control over who can see or post on their wall. They can opt for a public account that anyone can see—​this is common for businesses, clubs, associations and public figures, whose goal is to be as visible and discoverable as possible—​or they can keep their account private, so only approved connections, termed ‘friends’, can have viewing access, and this is typical for private individuals.

Figure 3.1  Facebook icon

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Figure 3.2  Facebook news feed

Unlike platforms like Reddit or Wikipedia, Facebook is relationship-​oriented (Zhang & Wang, 2010, cited in Page, 2011, p. 67), with communication operating through network ties. Facebook offers a reciprocal (bi-​directional) privacy system, whereby adding a friend allows reciprocal access. In 2006, Facebook enabled the creation of ‘friends lists’ (e.g. close friends, work friends, family members and so on). Users can use such lists to control visibility of status updates, selecting which friends can see a given update. The various status updates can include text, hyperlinks and photos, as well as specific addressee tags explicitly linking friends. While these are all current options within Facebook, its interface is constantly changing. In the same year, Facebook introduced the ‘News Feed’, which aggregates the latest updates of the most relevant or followed friends and displays them in a list on the platform’s landing page (Figure 3.2). As is typical of many social media platforms, Facebook involves a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006, cited in Page, 2011, p. 66) which relies heavily on active and constant engagement: ideally users log onto the platform regularly to share updates and leave comments. As might be expected, the drive for user engagement affects the strategies that users adopt to formulate their status updates, as well as how they react to updates posted by others. One such strategy involves structuring updates as stories (or narratives). Our love of stories is no secret. Those of us lucky enough to have been read to as children develop an early appreciation of stories. Most cultures have myths 57

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or creation stories explaining commonly held beliefs and customs. For educators working in schools, established or aspiring novelists, or even scientists appealing to the wider public or funding bodies (Olson, 2015), stories remain a powerful way of harnessing engagement. It is therefore no surprise that Facebook users who want to increase engagement with their feeds employ a story format to draw in their audience. Facebook users face both space constraints (many users check Facebook on the small screen of their mobile devices) and time constraints (there is fierce competition for users’ attention in the increasingly dynamic News Feed). Given these limitations, users avoid elaborate narratives, opting instead for ‘small stories’ (Georgakopoulou, 2007). Small stories document the user’s own experiences and opinions (though they can sometimes discuss third party events), with a high preference for stories with low tellability (Ochs & Capps, 2001). Low tellability stories relay mundane, day-​to-​day activities where the packaging of the narrative is not highly polished, being more or less off the cuff, and lacking a clear structure or punchline (Page, 2011, p. 69). This is not to say that Facebook updates are not linguistically strategic, because they are, but their focus is on capturing attention, not on rhetorical performance per se. Given a high desire for engagement, the Facebook News Feed has become an increasingly competitive ‘linguistic marketplace’. This metaphor is borrowed from Bourdieu (1977) to describe an online environment where posts can achieve differential value, in this case measured in views, likes and comments, based on their language style and content. But how do narratives achieve such differential values? Facebook narratives are open-​ended, linked to the recent here-​and-​now, typically short, and often accompanied by highly emotive content and opinions, evaluations and inner thoughts which the user discloses in relation to the unfolding event. Here are two examples from Page (2011, p. 70). In (2a), the poster is providing a short but rushed ‘small story’, documenting a short event, accompanied by the user’s own evaluation (enjoyed …), topped by a good dose of excitement (Bring on 2mo’s game). The presence of emotion is also evident in (2b): Now there is a surprise!!!, here denoting sarcasm, whose intensity is attested by the three exclamation marks. (2) (a) enjoyed the fitness training and tactics at Netball this evening, Bring on 2mo’s game. (Female updater, 19–​24 years of age, May 20, 2008 at 21:19) (b) is waiting for a train & guess what its late! Now there is a surprise!!! (Male updater, 40–​49 years of age, June 21, 2008 at 17:29) In a sense, Facebook updates function as broadcasts. Although there might be a limit on who can see a post by controlling its privacy settings, users do not

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really know who will actually see and engage with the update. In other words, the exact audience is not fully known and, depending on the user, it can, in principle, be very large (see also Chapter 10). The awareness of a varied audience poses a number of constraints on the packaging as well as the content of the updates. Although there is some indication that users post narratives with a certain user (or group of users) in mind, the potential for auditors and overhearers is high, even though private accounts are less likely to have eavesdroppers. Eavesdroppers can still intercept certain posts, however, if friends of the user comment on or share the post, thereby allowing their own friends viewing access to it (depending on the poster’s privacy settings). In light of such varied audiences, narratives need to be inoffensive and sufficiently low-​risk to avoid awkwardness and undesirable self-​disclosure (though there are exceptions), while, at the same time, they need to be interesting, relevant and sufficiently intriguing to leverage attention. Italian researcher Matteo Farina (2018) identified three strategies which users employ to increase engagement with status updates: (1) tagging specific users using the @ handle to encourage a response from at least one person, (2) providing sufficient detail around the update for wide intelligibility, and (3) making use of humour to entice feedback. The first strategy identified by Farina (2018) uncovers an unusual way of placing additional emphasis on who is being addressed. Unlike speech (or other writing genres), where addressees are only referenced by means of the second person pronouns you(s) or your, social media platforms provide an additional affordance specifically for calling out the addressee: the tagging of specific users within a post, as illustrated in (3). Such explicit mentions parallel the vocative case available in some languages. The vocative case is a grammatical marker added to a proper noun, usually a personal name, to draw the listener’s attention, labelling them as an overt addressee. (3) Claudio and the tiramisù cake Claudio: Alex se non ti muovi, lo finisco … oggi è ancora meglio di ieri!!!!!!!! Claudio: Alex hurry up or I’ll finish it … today it’s even better than yesterday!!!!!!!! (Farina, 2018, p. 82, ­example 5.8; bolding my own) One arising question is why users choose to post an update of this type in an open forum where other friends can see it, thereby encouraging auditors and even potential overhearers (which the user may have neglected to remember have viewing access), instead of sending it as a private message. The reasons will surely vary from situation to situation, but an overarching one seems to be the desire for wider engagement. Another linguistic strategy employed for securing attention is heightened emotion (Page, 2011). Building on narrative strategies found in other genres, Facebook updates employ affective discourse by using expressive phonology (spelling words the way they might be pronounced, for example, with longer

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vowels, waaaaay longer), repetition, and exaggerated quantifiers and qualifiers (huge, unbelievable, unreal). Other elements expressing heightened emotion include judgements, appreciation and non-​ verbal display, emoticons, kiss symbols, capitalisation and laughter, as well as intensifiers and boosters (very, really, so). Such expressive vivid language facilitates social connection; it attracts attention and increases potential for engagement. But there is a twist. Page also found a gender effect in how users reacted to updates (see Chapter 2 for another example of gender effects in social media). The patterns are complex and they are changing but, overall, women appear to comment and engage with posts more than men do (2011, pp. 85–​89). This is reminiscent of the trends identified in face-​to-​face conversation observed elsewhere, which suggest that women provide more attentive linguistic cues than men, but are also more inclined towards politeness and standard usage, alluding to heightened sensitivity in how they (and others) are perceived (see discussion in Meyerhoff, 2019, Chapter 10). These observations also raise another complication, namely that the repertoire we observe in Facebook updates involves elements associated with (Western) femininity and playfulness. The question is this: are these linguistic strategies representative of the high number of female users active on Facebook, or are they indicative of heightened pressures that women (in particular) experience in regard to self-​presentation (see discussion in Page, 2011, p. 90 and references therein)? More research is needed with a wider range of Facebook users to answer these questions. The heavy focus on personal narrative content compared to descriptive or informational content of status updates has also been noted by Friginal et al. (2017, p. 349). In their study, Facebook updates were classified by topics, ranging from personal stories to political topics, weather updates, entertainment topics and business-​ related updates. Results showed that, while the general trend remained linked to personal narrative (in other words, small stories and low tellability), the balance in narrative content and information content could change depending on the topic discussed. Friginal et al. (2017) report that, when it came to personal topics, such as dating and holidays, the informational content seemed to increase, compared to political topics or entertainment-​related posts. This shift towards information hints at the role of updates in maintaining social links and closeness. In such posts, users were willing to share a certain amount of self-​disclosure in order to maintain close connections, hence the informational content. When it came to more factual seeming posts, politics and business-​related updates, self-​disclosure involved sharing personal opinions and evaluations. In (4), the mix of private verbs (think), personal pronouns (I, her, my) and emphatic verbs is imbued with emotion (shaved, prove) to complement the past tense forms (shaved, was, said) which make up the anecdote and narrate the sequence of events. The update captures the user’s own reaction to the story as it is unfolding. The language used helps the reader to ‘see’ the events through the writer’s own eyes. 60

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(4) I think Hilary Clinton shaved all of the […] to prove a minor point to the league of women. She was giving a speech, pulled up her skirt and said; read my lips, no more […] (Friginal et al., 2017, p. 349; bolding in original) Findings from their study have indeed shown that Facebook posts tend to involve past tense verbs to discuss (recent but nevertheless) past events, with posts such as ‘Went to starbucks for a holiday-​themed pumpkin-​spiced latte’ or ‘Got the sbucks giftcard from my sweetie, yeah!’ (Friginal et al., 2017, pp. 356–​367, bolding in original). The lack of a grammatical subject (we are not told who is doing the action) speaks to low tellability. Another language strategy identified by Friginal et al. (2017) concerns the recurring interplay between the use of the first and second personal pronouns. Many Facebook updates were found to display an ‘Other’-​oriented view, combining mention of the user’s own actions (I, my, and so on) with an explicit inclusion and reference to the intended addressee (you, your), as shown in (5). This is reminiscent of Farina’s (2018) noted tactic of explicitly tagging specific addresses in a post. (5) You may wonder what planet your partner’s head got transported to–​they do seem completely out of this world. But their vacation from reality is likely to be just that–​a temporary situation. And they likely harbor some similar thoughts about you right now; apparently my horoscope thinks i’m dating someone …. lolololololol? … (Friginal et al., 2017, p. 352; bolding in original) The interplay between you/​your ‘as the addressee’ and my/​I ‘as the writer’ provides a hook designed to create closeness (speaker is sharing intimate thoughts) and similarity (you, the reader may have also experienced this situation). These elements increase solidarity and thereby potential for engagement. The discussion so far has highlighted users’ attention to their addressees and their efforts in making the content of their Facebook updates relevant, interesting, emotive and sometimes, directly pertinent to a specific addressee. All of these strategies have been exemplified with monolingual posts, in which users employ one language. The final two examples showcase how multilingual users employ language choice as a strategy in tailoring posts to their audience. The examples come from Tagg and Seargeant (2014), who set out to investigate how users manipulate language choice as a means of ‘pulling in’ readers. Language choice is sometimes leveraged by appealing to other like-​minded bilingual users, and at other times by creating separate threads of discussion with appeal to distinct users. One bilingual French/​English user posted the update: Fac ’em all!, in frustration about her inability to finalise her university enrolment. This sentence plays on the double meaning of the word Fac, which is an abbreviation of the word faculté ‘university’ in French and an indirect allusion to 61

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an expletive in English (2014, p. 176). Another Facebook update read (2014, p. 173): (6) Pauline is enjoying the sun in Lille before going to Bressuire for the weekend. Deux-​Sévrien, c’est trop bien!! :) [translation from original: It’s good to be from Deux-​Sèvres!!] (Tagg & Seargeant, 2014, p. 173) The use of the two languages has the effect of ‘pulling in’ both English speakers and French speakers, thereby ‘getting the best of both worlds’, as Holmes and Wilson (2017) might say. On the one hand, the use of English as a lingua franca appeals to a global audience, while French is enlisted as a marker of belonging to a local community. Tagg and Seargeant (2014, p. 183) sum up their findings as follows: ‘users appear already to be using complex strategies of addressivity to shape the communicative space and navigate the potentially limitless audience that exists in the semi-​public forum of online social network sites’. We see further examples of language choice as a strategy for harnessing engagement in the next section, when we consider advertisements on TikTok.

Case study 3.3.2. Mixing languages on TikTok to increase prestige and appeal to your audience At a time when the world at large was dealing with a bleak and far-​reaching pandemic (Covid-​19), one social media platform seemed to offer precisely what appeared to be in short supply and high demand, aiming to: ‘inspire creativity and bring joy’ (TikTok, 2020). While TikTok had been on the rise since its launch in 2018, the Covid-​19 pandemic seemed only to augment its popularity (Feldkamp, 2021). TikTok (www.tik​tok.com/​) is an open platform which allows anyone to view or upload video content (viewing content does not require an account), which at the time of writing is typically 15, 30 or 90 seconds long. Content can be searched by navigating hashtags, keywords used in video descriptions, sounds, usernames, popular categories or live feeds (the latter does require a registered account). Figure 3.3 shows an example of a dynamic installation from New Delhi in 2020 which screened TikTok content under the title ‘TikTok and the Emerging Face of Culture’, with the aim of detailing digital accessibility and questioning its influence on the wider public. The figure shows elements of a typical TikTok post, which include videos usually accompanied by hashtags and the username of the poster. Engagement with the post may contain text (comments) or emoticons (‘likes’ or other reactions). Within two years of its inception, TikTok became the most downloaded application on Apple iOS and the second most downloaded on Android (Feldkamp, 2021, p. 74). Two areas in which TikTok invests heavily are marketing, 62

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Figure 3.3  TikTok installation from New Delhi, 2020

establishing itself as a marketing platform for companies advertising their products, and education, through the funded support for the #LearnOnTikTok campaign (2021, p. 74). It is the first type of activity that will be the focus of the discussion here. In keeping with the theme of multilingualism and audience appeal, this case study discusses a study that analysed data from an Indonesian business whose TikTok videos combine Indonesian and English resources to appeal to a young and highly educated audience. Indonesian researcher Ince Azir (2021) analysed the captions and text that printing company PT Lazuardy Global Service used in its TikTok content. Indonesia is known for its multicultural population, with hundreds of languages being spoken across its many islands and a number of lingua franca languages, including Bahasa Indonesia (a modified form of Malay, and the country’s national language), Javanese, and varieties of Dutch and English. Azir (2021, p. 401) found 139 instances of code-​switching in the data analysed (although the size of the data is unspecified). Lazuardy used Indonesian as the base language and English as a guest language in its advertisements. The great majority of the switching occurred in the form of single words (84, roughly 60 per cent of all instances identified), followed by mixing of phrases (41 instances, 30 per cent) and Indonesian-​English hybrids (11 instances, 8 per cent). Switches containing entire clauses were rare (3 instances, 2 per cent). What is more, almost all its advertisements on TikTok involved the use of at least one English word (2021, p. 405). Example (7) provides typical code-​switching sentences identified. (7) (a) Design maskernya banyak bangett (b) Semua produk ini waterproof loh (c) Ini produk-​produk custom yang sudah kita buat 63

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(d) Langsung print aja deh (e) Sepraktis itu bawa sajadah travel ga pake ribet! (Azir, 2021, pp. 402–​403; bolding my own) Despite the lack of English translations of the Indonesian words used, the example provides a sense of the kinds of insertions that Lazuardy advertisers employed. The switches are predominantly intra-​sentential (within clauses). The English ‘guest’ words are invariably nouns, and it is difficult to decide whether they are code-​switches or borrowings. Azir (2021, pp. 402 and 405) explains that English attracts high prestige in Indonesia, particularly within economic contexts. Indonesians associate knowledge of English with high education levels and elevated social status, but also with the culture of youth. Azir summarises the reasons for the English code-​ switching in the advertisements of the Indonesian company as follows: one function is to fill lexical gaps (e.g. ecobag), and a second function is to secure prestige, linking the products advertised with high quality and with the modern, innovative culture of youth. This study illustrates how language choice can symbolically serve a user by enabling them to harness local knowledge and appeal through the use of Indonesian (base language), while also using English words (guest language) to signal prestige and innovation. It is noteworthy that the switches are typically short (single words) and non-​intrusive, and therefore unlikely to prevent a consumer from understanding the main message if they have no knowledge of the guest language. In other words, the mixing is carefully crafted with a varied audience in mind, so as to not exclude. Finally, it is worth considering how the theoretical framework of Audience Design applies differently to social media platforms compared to face-​to-​face spoken interaction. In face-​to-​face conversation, the speaker has a broad sense of who their audience is. However, on social media platforms, as with other media outlets (e.g. radio or television), it is difficult to know exactly who the audience is going to be. This factor will invariably affect language choice for some users on social media, though perhaps not for all (see discussion of self-​disclosure practice in Facebook by Bazarova & Choi, 2014). In part, language choice acts as a strategy to appeal to a given audience, but, at the same time, it also acts as a way of selecting the audience in the first place.

In a nutshell Language choices are symbolic and meaningful. They can help to appeal to an audience and, before that, to select it. This chapter has showcased linguistic strategies that online users employ to increase engagement from a varied audience. On Facebook, users structure their status updates by leveraging narrative structures imbued with heightened emotion and affective content. Similarly, bilinguals use

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the various languages they speak in status updates to appeal to a local audience by opting for the language of their immediate community, while at the same time drawing in a larger audience by using a lingua franca. Advertisements on TikTok employ language choice as a symbolic means of increasing prestige of the products they aim to sell. In all these instances, language choice is performative in that it plays a role, highlighting the fact that it is not just the message communicated that matters, but also its packaging. The choice of language and its features work together with the message to draw in the intended audience and to speak to one’s ‘tribe’.

Notes 1 www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​30-​lYueJ​ivk#t=​20 2 The transcript of the speech is available from the BBC: http://​news.bbc.co.uk/​ 2/​hi/​eur​ope/​3022​166.stm 3 According to Statista (www.stati​sta.com/​sta​tist​ics/​264​810/​num​ber-​of-​mont​ hly-​act​ive-​faceb​ook-​users-​worldw​ide/​).

References Azir, I. D. A. (2021). An analysis of code mixing in Lazuardy Printing TikTok account. Ethical Lingua, 8(1), 399–​407. https://​doi.org/​10.30605/​25409​ 190.329 Bazarova, N. N., & Choi, Y. H. (2014). Self-​disclosure in social media: Extending the functional approach to disclosure motivations and characteristics on social network sites. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 635–​657. https://​doi. org/​10.1111/​jcom.12106 Bell, A. (2001). Back in style: Reworking audience design. In P. Eckert and J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation (pp. 139–​169). Cambridge University Press. Bell, A. (1999). Styling the other to define the self: A study in New Zealand identity making. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3(4), 523–​541. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1111/​1467-​9481.00094 Bell, A. (1984). Style as Audience Design. Language in Society, 13, 145–​204. Bourdieu, P. (1977). The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information, 16(6), 645–​668. Eichhoff, J. (1993). ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’: A history and a linguistic clarification. Monatshefte, 85(1), 71–​80. Farina, M. (2018). Facebook and conversation analysis: The structure and organisation of comment threads. Bloomsbury.

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Feldkamp, J. (2021). The rise of TikTok: The evolution of a social media platform during COVID-​19. In C. Hovestadt, J. ReckerJanek, & R. Karl Werder (Eds.), Digital responses to Covid-​19 (pp. 73–​85). Springer. Friginal, E., Waugh, O., & Titak, A. (2017). Linguistic variation in Facebook and Twitter posts. In E. Friginal (Ed.), Studies in corpus-​based sociolinguistics (pp. 342–​362). Routledge. Georgakopoulou, A. (2007). Small stories, interaction and identities. John Benjamins. Giles, H., & Powesland, P. F. (1975). Speech style and social evaluation. Academic Press. Grosjean, F. (2013). Bilingualism: A short introduction. In F. Grosjean, & P. Li (Eds.), The psycholinguistics of bilingualism (pp. 5–​25). Wiley-​Blackwell. Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying bilinguals. Oxford University Press. Grosjean, F. (1982). Life with two languages: An introduction to bilingualism. Harvard University Press. Holmes, J., & Wilson, N. (2017). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Routledge. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press. Labov, W. (1966) The social stratification of English in New York City. Centre for Applied Linguistics. Levendis, K., & Calude, A. S. (2019). Perception and flagging of loanwords –​A diachronic case-​study of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English. Ampersand, 6, 100056. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.amper.2019.100​056 Lin, A. Y., & Li, D. C. (2012). Codeswitching. In M. Martin-​Jones, A. Blackledge, & A. Creese (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of multilingualism (pp. 482–​ 493). Routledge. Meyerhoff, M. (2019). Introducing sociolinguistics. Routledge. Noah, T. (2016). Born a crime: Stories from a South African childhood. John Murray. Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Harvard University Press. Olson, R. (2015). Houston, we have a narrative. University of Chicago Press. Page, R. (2011). Stories and social media: identities and interaction. Routledge. Pew Research Centre (April 7, 2021). Social media factsheet. www.pewr​esea​rch. org/​inter​net/​fact-​sheet/​soc​ial-​media/​ Poplack, S. (2018). Borrowing: Loanwords in the speech community and in the grammar. Oxford University Press. Samy, A. H., & Smitherman, G. (2012). Articulate while Black: Barack Obama, language, and race in the US. Oxford University Press. Schmid, M. (2020). Can you forget your native language? In L. Bauer, & A. Calude (Eds.), Questions about language: What everyone should know about languages in the 21st century (pp. 137–​150). Routledge. Tagg, C., & Seargeant, P. (2014). Audience design and language choice in the construction and maintenance of translocal communities on social network

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sites. In P. Seargeant, & C. Tagg (Eds.), The language of social media: Identity and community on the internet (pp. 161–​185). Palgrave. TikTok. (2020). Retrieved from www.tik​tok.com Treffers-​Daller, J., & Calude, A. S. (2015). The role of statistical learning in the acquisition of motion event construal in a second language. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 18(5), 602–​623. https://​ doi.org/​10.1080/​13670​050.2015.1027​146 Zhang, W., & Wang, R. (2010). Interest-​ oriented versus relationship-​ oriented: Social network sites in China. First Monday, 15(8). https://​doi.org/​ 10.5210/​fm.v15i8.2836

What to read next Part 1. For a detailed and readable description of bilingualism, see Grosjean’s book Life with two languages (1982). Grosjean and Li’s (2013) collection, The psycholinguistics of bilingualism, provides a comprehensive but technical treatment of the topic. See Poplack (2018) for analyses of code-​switching and borrowing. The best discussion of Audience Design can be found in Bell (1984), Language in society, or its abbreviated form, in Coupland and Jaworski’s Sociolinguistics: A reader and coursebook (Macmillan, 1997). Bell’s (2001) article provides an elegant overview, but it does assume familiarity with specialist terms. Part 2. For social media platforms research, Farina (2018) provides a detailed yet non-​technical analysis of Facebook updates and their associated comments, taking a Conversational Analysis approach. Tagg and Seargeant’s (2014) article is also highly readable and largely jargon-​free. Page’s (2011) chapter is similarly non-​technical.

What to do next Personal language ethnography. Draw out your own language history by looking back over your life and thinking back to your childhood and early years: which language(s) did you grow up speaking to whom? Did it change at school? Did you stop speaking any of the languages you were speaking before attending school? What happened to your language(s) as your schooling advanced and you reached higher levels of education? Compare this with what you do online. Which language(s) do you use on social media? Does it vary with platform? Why/​Why not? Discussion. Thinking about the environments in which you study, work and live, which languages are commonly spoken around you and what do you think has the highest impact on these? 67

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Data collection. Thinking of a social media platform of your choice, do you have any connections or friends who code-​switch online? Choose one or two of these and consider their code-​switching practices. Which languages do they use and what function does the code-​switching serve? What kind of code-​switching is it (intra-​sentential, inter-​sentential)? Do you usually notice that they do this and how do you react to it? (Do you ignore it or does it encourage/​discourage you to engage with those posts? Why do you think that is?)

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4

Using social media to get things done Analysing speech acts and politeness

TLDR. In an increasingly busy world, we endeavour to make full use of the tools available to us for getting things done, and language is no exception. In this chapter, we consider the ways in which language is used to perform speech acts, such as to request, to direct, to promise, to admit, to command, to apologise and so on. Sometimes, language is enlisted to carry out the act being performed (direct speech acts), and sometimes, it does it covertly, under the radar (indirect speech acts). Indirect speech acts are often used to be considerate or polite. Politeness is important for maintaining relationships, and here too, language plays a role. In the second part of the chapter, we consider how social media platforms can be used to get things done at work, in a professional context. Using Speech Act Theory, we unpack strategies used by professionals in their LinkedIn profiles for self-​ praise, and by banks in Twitter and Weibo posts to enhance their brand. Speech Act Theory and politeness considerations can also illuminate how employees interact on internal company messaging platforms in order to be productive in a virtual office.

4.1 How do we use language to get things done? Currently, the biggest competitor of the American tech giant Apple in the mobile phones market is a South Korean company, founded by Lee Byung-​chul in 1938 to sell dried fish and noodles. Under Lee Byung-​chul’s lead, the company did well and diversified in multiple areas, including retail, textiles, televisions and, of course, food. But it was under the lead of Lee Byung-​chul’s first-​born son, Lee Kun-​hee, that the real success story of Samsung as an international corporation began (Kim & Kim, 2020). Lee Kun-​hee inherited the electronics subsidiary of Samsung in 1987, just two weeks after his father’s fatal heart attack. Looking back over Samsung’s successful turnaround against seasoned competitors like Nokia and Sony, stories often come back to one particular directive which Lee DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-4

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Kun-​hee gave to his employees: Change everything but your wife and children! (Kim & Kim, 2020). This directive embodied the radical change towards innovation and unsurpassed quality, even at an initial cost of fewer sales, which Lee Kun-​hee saw as vital if Samsung was ever going to outdo its competition. And he was right. It is interesting to consider the role that language plays in bringing about change, in getting things ‘done’. Clearly, Lee Kun-​hee’s directive was not to be taken literally; one presumes he was not asking his employees to change, for example, their job and employer. But the intent behind the directive was a strong one, compelling them to dramatic change. Naturally, this dramatic change could not have hinged on just that one directive alone. Lee Kun-​hee is also rumoured to have once started a large bonfire in front of a group of employees and proceeded to throw into it Samsung mobile phones that he deemed of poor quality, to demonstrate his desire for higher quality (Kim & Kim, 2020). Nevertheless, certain language expressions are powerful enough to seem to induce actual change. So how do we use language to get things done? The transition from a semantic, dictionary-​like view of language towards seeing it as a means for ‘doing’ (not just ‘saying’) thing occurred within a paradigm shift which stemmed from the work of philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. These thinkers argued that language was ambiguous and slippery, and were concerned by the limitations of ordinary, everyday language when it came to solving philosophical problems. In response, some scholars pointed the blame back on philosophers, claiming they were divorcing words from their intended use and context, thereby creating unnecessary problems. Current debates about artificial intelligence suggest that we are still grappling with these questions today. One important consequence arising from these debates is a theory known as Speech Act Theory. Speech Act Theory is largely associated with Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin and his American student, John R. Searle. Austin’s famous lectures on the topic were published posthumously in a much-​cited 1962 volume, How to do things with words. His theory of speech acts has stirred work and discussions in multiple fields of inquiry, including linguistics, philosophy (of language), psychology, sociology and computational linguistics. The basic tenet of Austin’s theory is as follows. Words and utterances are expressed within a context and framework of interpretation and, as such, they can be said to take part in the very act—​to varying degrees—​they are referencing. Initially, Austin began by contrasting two types of utterances: constatives and performatives. Although he subsequently changed his mind about these notions, it is illuminating to see how Speech Act Theory first began. Austin proposed that constatives are utterances which make a statement. Crucially, such statements can be analysed with reference to truth conditions: some constatives are true, others false, but they cannot be both. For example, saying The rain has stopped happens to be false for me at the time of writing, but it is true for someone else (assuming it was ever raining in the first place). As demonstrated by this example, context matters, and taking an utterance out of 70

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context or changing its context may lead to a change in truth value. It is in this sense that words and utterances are anchored in a context and should not be divorced from it. In contrast to constatives, performatives are used to bring about an action, such that a particular action takes place by the very fact of uttering the words in question. Performatives cannot be assigned truth values. A classic example, I now pronounce you husband and wife, cannot be analysed as being true or false. Once it is said, assuming the conditions are right (more on that shortly), the deed is done, as they say, and a change in marital status inevitably takes place for the individuals concerned. It is relatively straightforward to recognise certain performatives (explicit performatives) because they enlist a performative verb; that is, a verb which explicitly names an action: pronounce, declare, promise, deny, command, apologise, christen and so on. But not all performatives are spelled out by a recognisable performative verb. In a sentence like Leave or I’ll scream, there is a clear message: that of a warning or threat, but the performative verb is not made explicit. However, such implicit performatives can still be recognised as performatives by the fact that an overt performative verb can be added: Leave or I warn you that I will scream. Whether implicit or explicit, performatives can only be successful in bringing about the event they call to attention if certain conditions are met, which Austin termed felicity conditions. For example, in the earlier example of pronouncing a couple husband and wife, there are a number of conditions that need to be met for the marriage ceremony to be successful: the person officiating needs to have been given the power to do so, the location may need to be appropriate (in some places, it needs to be the town hall building or a church) and the persons getting married need to be in a fit state to do so. So, while performatives do not involve truth conditions, they are likely to involve a number of felicity conditions. Austin (1975, pp. 11–​14, as cited in Huang, 2013, p. 99) summarised felicity conditions as follows:

Austin’s felicity conditions on performatives A. B. C.

(i) There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect. (ii) The circumstances and persons must be appropriate, as specified in the procedure. The procedure must be executed (i) correctly and (ii) completely. Often (i) the persons must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions, as specified in the procedure, and (ii) if consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant parties must do so.

Breaching any of these conditions may lead to a misfire (a lack of success in carrying out the performative). For example, a celebrant who utters the wrong names during a ceremony will render the speech act infelicitous by violating condition A(ii). Similarly, in J. K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, an incantation that is not pronounced properly will lead to a spell misfire, as pointed out by Hermione (see Figure 4.1, the character on the left) in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: 71

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Figure 4.1  Harry Potter characters: Hermione, Harry and Ron

(1) ‘Wingardium Leviosa!’ he [Ron] shouted, waving his long arms like a windmill. ‘You’re saying it wrong,’ Harry heard Hermione snap. ‘It’s Wing-​gar-​ dium Levi-​o-​sa, make the “gar” nice and long.’ (Rowling, 1997, p. 139) But, alas, what initially seemed like a neat distinction between two separate classes of utterances was eventually abandoned because, upon closer inspection, many of the properties outlined above do not hold as well as first assumed. Specifically, Austin realised that constatives cannot always be classified as true or false (if there are a few isolated raindrops remaining, does that make the sentence It has stopped raining true or false?) and, moreover, some constatives may also be subject to felicity conditions (uttering The King of New Zealand is dead while being aware that New Zealand does not have a king violates condition A(ii), as no such person exists). Conversely, some performatives can be used to assert (I hereby declare he’s an idiot). From this realisation, a new approach to speech acts was born.

Speech acts: a performance in three acts Once he abandoned the distinction between performatives and constatives, Austin decided to tackle speech acts from a different angle. He outlined a three-​ pronged approach, in which a given utterance involves (a) a locutionary act, the production of the utterance (whether spoken or written), (b) an illocutionary act, the action intended by the speaker to be performed in producing the utterance,

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and (c) a perlocutionary act, the effect on the listener or consequence for the hearer when faced with the utterance (Huang, 2013, p. 102). One advantage of this approach is the separation of the speaker’s intent from the effect of the utterance on the hearer: the two match in some cases, but not in others. Put another way, the illocutionary act (sometimes termed the illocutionary force) can clash with the eventual perlocutionary effect. For example, the directive issued by Lee Kun-​hee to his employees (Change everything but your wife and children!) could have been received either as a directive for change or as a criticism of poor performance, or, even more puzzlingly, as both (I return to this point shortly). If, indeed, any utterance can encompass a performative aspect, the next question is: how many different types of speech acts are there and how do we learn to recognise them? Arriving at a taxonomy of speech acts is useful because finding and classifying all the different speech acts available allows us to uncover more concrete links between the language used and its broad function. This kind of information can provide guidance to learners navigating new language territory and to machines ‘learning’ to use natural language to interact with humans. Being able to explain how we recognise speech acts is equally important, because speech acts are pervasive in our everyday interactions and, at the same time, not always straightforward to interpret. You’re smart is a compliment, but you’re upset is for all intents and purposes uttered as a question (or in some contexts as an observation).

How to do things with words Let’s consider how one might go about classifying speech acts. On the one hand, it is important to posit sufficient speech acts to cover a wide variety of activities: promising, threatening, advising, naming, declaring, lying, questioning, complaining, excusing, apologising, laughing, teasing, courting, shaming and so on. On the other hand, too many speech acts would result in overly specific categories and defeat the point of a classification: a speech act category for acts that exaggerate the precariousness of a financial business or institution in order to justify imminent redundancies is probably too specific. Austin (1962) proposed five speech act types: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives and expositives. His student Searle (1969, 1975) proposed five different ones, inspired by the taxonomy of his mentor: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declaratives; see Table 4.1 (Huang, 2013, pp. 106–​108). Although other taxonomies have since been proposed (see Huang, 2013, and Levinson, 2016), Searle’s typology remains among the most widely used today. A number of open problems remain with such taxonomies. One is the fact that certain sentences may look very similar but encode vastly different speech acts. I love your book is a compliment but I love how you felt the need to write a book might be a criticism pointing out the writer’s inflated self-​importance. A slightly

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Table 4.1  Taxonomies of speech acts by Austin and Searle Austin’s speech act taxonomy

Searle’s speech act taxonomy

Type

Function

Type

Function

verdictives

Give a verdict

assertives

exercitives

Exercise power, influence or right over Promise

directives

Commit utterance to a truth value by expressing a proposition Speaker attempts to make hearer do something

Express attitudes or social behaviour Fit an argument within an argument or exposition

expressives

commissives behabitives

expositives

commissives

declarations

Commit speaker to future action Express emotion, attitude, state

Perform immediate changes in current state of affairs (institutionalised performatives)

different wording: I love that you have time to write a book is ambiguous between a (genuine) compliment and a criticism suggesting that the writer is not contributing to other tasks or that they have a privileged position denied to others. This last sentence indicates another problem with speech acts: an utterance can encompass multiple speech acts at once, some directly and others indirectly (see the following section). These problems show that there is not always a one-​to-​ one match between linguistic form and speech act. Let’s now turn to the problem of speech act recognition. There are a number of ways to do this and speakers often use multiple clues to determine which speech act they are faced with (Levinson, 2016, Section 4, pp. 203ff.). One clue comes from knowledge of specific and recurrent verbs that denote a given speech act. A verb like promise is likely to be used with a commissive; a prohibitive construction like [do not X] (do not walk on the grass) is likely to be used in a directive. A second clue comes from considering felicity conditions required for the speech act to be successful; that is, considering who the speaker is and what the situation involves. A marriage celebrant can perform a marriage ceremony, a police officer can issue a warrant of arrest; however, swapping the speakers of these two situations around would lead to a violation of felicity conditions and a speech act misfire. Thirdly, previous linguistic exposure and experience with various speech acts can provide further clues. Given past conversations, we learn to recognise utterances and their likely responses. For example, an infringement might be 74

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followed by an apology; a request might be followed by an assertion. The history of our exposure to various interactions enables us to glean not just content from these, but also knowledge about their packaging and appropriate reactions to it. Research suggests that, on average, we utter approximately 16,000 words a day spread across roughly 1,200 conversational turns (Levinson, 2016, p. 202). Assuming that each turn constitutes one speech act (though some contain several), it seems reasonable to assume that speakers navigate close to 5,000 speech acts each day (2016, p. 202). Navigating so many speech acts must surely require routinised shortcuts to recognising speech acts quickly. And, indeed, some speech acts are more quickly identifiable than others. Direct speech acts involve a one-​to-​one match between sentence structure and speech act (Huang, 2013, p. 110). In direct speech acts, there is also a match between locution and illocutionary force. In English, sentences can be categorised into three main types: declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives. Typically, declaratives are used to express statements and assert things, interrogatives are used to seek information, and imperatives are used to direct. But that is not the full story, because not all questions are used to request, imperatives can be used to assert, and declaratives can be used for just about any speech act, albeit indirectly. This brings us to indirect speech acts.

Meaning more than you say: indirect speech acts and politeness In the summer of 1980, Swedish pop band ABBA released the song ‘The winner takes it all’,1 which went on to top the music charts at Number One in several countries, including Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa and the United Kingdom, though interestingly not in the band’s own country, Sweden (where it only made it to Top Five). The song, which deals with the breakup of a relationship, was written by Björn Ulvaeus shortly after his divorce from fellow band member Agnetha Fältskog. Although he initially denied allegations that the song was factual, eventually he went on to admit being inspired from his own experience (Palm, 2009). Ulvaeus specifically commented on the fact that the words were not to be taken literally, and that there were ‘no winners or losers’ in his divorce, despite the uncanny resemblance of the lyrics to reality (by the time the divorce had gone through, just as the song suggests, Ulvaeus, too, had moved on to a new relationship). Listening to the song, one gets the impression that the singer (who counts as the speaker in this case) does not earnestly mean: I don’t wanna talk/​​if it makes you feel sad. The speaker feels like ‘the loser’ because they were left feeling lonely and sad following the breakup, while their former partner had already moved on to someone new. They clearly do want to talk because they are singing a song about it. Similarly, they also do not mean: I apologize/​​if it makes you feel bad, because they go on to cancel the intent of the apology by then claiming But you see/​​The winner takes it all/​​The winner takes it all, thereby implying that the 75

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hearer is a winner who takes it all, leaving the speaker with nothing. The apology does not seem sincere, because the context surrounding it suggests the hearer is at fault for the speaker’s lack of self-​confidence. The song contains a series of indirect speech acts. In contrast to direct speech acts, indirect speech acts refer to utterances that contain markers (the locution) of one illocutionary act whose intended illocutionary force corresponds to a different illocutionary act. According to Searle (1975, p. 60), ‘in indirect speech acts, the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and non-​linguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer’. In other words, hearers have to work harder to arrive at the correct interpretation of indirect speech acts because the ideas are not spelled out explicitly. As a result of the incongruence between locution (what is said) and illocutionary force (what is intended), in some cases, hearers may not be certain that they have understood the intended message. The lyrics constitute a prime example. The exact intention of the song is still feverishly debated, as evidenced by the plethora of discussions which surface on the internet about it. But why put the hearer through the trouble of decoding hidden indirect speech acts in the first place? There are several reasons for this. In some cases, speakers may deliberately want to build ambiguity into their utterance, as was perhaps the case for the lyrics discussed earlier. In other cases, speakers may resort to indirect speech acts in order to be polite and avoid offending the hearer. Making reference to the concept of ‘face’ proposed by Goffman (1967), Brown and Levinson (1987) proposed a theory to explain how language is used to maintain harmony and societal cohesion. A person’s face is, in essence, the public image they intend to put forward (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 61). Following Goffman, speakers have two sets of desires or wants: positive face needs, the desire to be liked and accepted, and negative face needs, the desire for autonomy over their lives and a recognition of their status and freedom. However, as individuals go about their daily lives, their needs may impinge on those of others, resulting in potential threats to either an individual’s positive face or to their negative face. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), when considering such face-​threatening acts speakers make choices that are sometimes formulaic and automatic, and other times carefully planned. One choice involves going ahead and committing the face-​threatening act with no mitigation; in other words, going bald on record (Stop it!). A different strategy involves being very indirect, or going off record (Gosh, it’s hot in here). This is where indirect speech acts come in. The previous example of the declarative sentence commenting on the temperature is not just making a statement but, indirectly, it expresses a request: to open a window. This is how, in Austin’s words, speakers can ‘mean more than they say’. The risk in using an indirect speech act is that the hearer may miss the covert message, but the advantage is that while a threat is being committed, it is strongly mitigated.

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Besides going bald on record and off record, speakers can also choose to mitigate face-​threatening acts by employing various politeness strategies. One strategy involves using positive politeness to reassure the hearer and validate their positive face needs; in other words, to overtly express that the hearer is liked and appreciated. In a sentence like I love your new dress, can I borrow it on Saturday? the hearer’s negative face is threatened by the speaker’s request to borrow the hearer’s dress (can I borrow it on Saturday?), which is mitigated by an appeal to the hearer’s positive face (I love your new dress). Another mitigation strategy involves the use of negative politeness to recognise the hearer’s autonomy or status. Do you mind if I borrow your red dress? contains the same threat as before, the request to borrow a dress, but this time, the mitigation explicitly states the hearer’s imposition (do you mind ), thereby recognising the hearer as an independent agent who is free to exercise their autonymy and refuse the request. It is also worth noting that speakers can employ multiple strategies at once, for maximal politeness (I love your new dress, do you mind if I borrow it on Saturday?). Table 4.2 provides a summary of the various choices that speakers consider in their everyday interactions. These choices hinge on a number of factors, including but not limited to the formality and context of the situation, the cost of the imposition, and the familiarity and status of participants involved. Crucially, choices vary not just from situation to situation and from speaker to speaker, but also from culture Table 4.2  Summary of speaker choices in relation to linguistic politeness Face loss to hearer

Speaker choice

Example

Least

Do not commit face threatening act

Say nothing or something unrelated to the potential FTA Gosh, it’s hot in here Would you mind opening the window? You’re always so kind, how about opening the window for me? Open the window!

Commit face-​ threatening act

Off record On record

With Negative mitigation politeness strategy Positive politeness strategy

Baldly (no mitigation) Most

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to culture (see Huang, 2013, pp. 119–​125; Song, 2017). Put another way, politeness is both a matter of linguistics, that is, of using the appropriate words (for instance, using titles Doctor, Professor, Your Honour, or formulaic phrases please and thank you), as well as a matter of cultural and societal norms; in other words, of adhering to expected ways of doing things that are licensed for the context of the interaction. It also means that every interaction between a speaker and an addressee has the potential to put someone’s face (speaker’s, hearer’s or both) at risk.

4.2 Using social media to get things done Having reviewed some of the ways that language is used to get things done, we now turn our attention to the one context in which we are most concerned with productivity: the workplace. This second part of the chapter, we reflect on how employees and employers use social media to get things done in a professional setting. Three case studies are included here, drawing from data in personal summaries on LinkedIn, posts on microblogging platforms of Twitter and Weibo, and instant messages sent across company-​internal social media.

Case study 4.4.1. Putting your best foot forward on LinkedIn When it comes to professional networking, LinkedIn (www.linke​din.com) is one of the most widely used platforms for job seekers and recruiting agencies alike. Launched in 2003, to gather and distribute job advertisements, the site has expanded its horizons considerably over the years. By 2020, it was used in nearly 200 countries, with a total of 645 million registered users (Statista, 2020). Unsurprisingly, a great majority of its registered users are young professionals, between 25 and 34 years old, looking for new career opportunities but also looking to connect with like-​ minded colleagues (Statista, 2020). LinkedIn acquired the nickname ‘Facebook in a suit’, as an allusion to the typical interview attire (Van Dijck, 2013, p. 208), but also as a metaphor for the idea that one’s profile on LinkedIn is a way of putting their ‘best foot forward’. This is because employers often check LinkedIn profiles while considering potential candidates for a job opening.

Figure 4.2  LinkedIn icon

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Figure 4.3  LinkedIn connection levels

Over time, being ‘LinkedIn’ has become important not just for those seeking a career or job change, but also for those wanting to remain visible, connected and informed in a fast-​paced, global work environment. In a study of LinkedIn communities, Castillo-​de Mesa and Gómez-​Jacinto (2020, p. 110) write that ‘participants seem hyperactive on LinkedIn, always doing things, meeting deadlines, and making the most of their time at work’. The hyperactivity of LinkedIn users is demonstrated by their self-​promoting posts and especially in the personal summaries that they create to describe their work personae. Personal summaries constitute an integral part of a user’s profile, because they are visible to anyone who accesses the LinkedIn platform. Users can ‘connect’ to one another if one initiates contact by requesting to connect with another user as a ‘Contact’ or by messaging them (which need not always result in a connection). LinkedIn tracks the contact distance between users by displaying a number next to each username capturing this information: 1 is a direct contact, 2 is a contact of a contact and so on (Figure 4.3). Certain layers of information remain hidden from users who are not part of one’s network of contacts (for example, the email address of a user). However, as personal summaries are visible to all users, they 79

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are often the first thing that others see, so in this sense, they can be thought of as digital micro-​CVs. Personal summaries present a paradox in communication: on the one hand, it is obvious to all LinkedIn members that the goal of such summaries is to promote the user’s skills and professionalism, while on the other hand, such promotion can act as a threat to the reader’s face in its lack of modesty. The (potential) blatant broadcasting of self-​praise may result in offending the sensibilities of readers and thereby turning them against the user. Put simply, self-​promotion is both expected in the digital environment of LinkedIn, but also ‘socially risky’ (Tobback, 2019, p. 648). We can think of self-​praise as a speech act (Dayter, 2014, p. 92), whose locutionary force is geared up, in various ways, to stir a reader towards the intended perlocutionary effect of a positive and flattering assessment of the user. Given the paradox above, the question is: how do users achieve this fine balance of successfully performing the speech act while avoiding the violation of politeness constraints and threat to their own face? Tobback (2019) analysed 90 personal summaries from American and French LinkedIn users in order to answer this very question. She found that users resort to both direct and indirect strategies of self-​praise, and that these followed a number of distinguishable patterns. First, let’s consider direct speech acts of self-​praise. These are instances where users openly state their skill with no mitigation (bald on record). The primary linguistic tool here was the use of key noun phrases. Users made use of semantically loaded noun phrases as a means of referring to themselves, for instance, as ‘communication expert[s]‌’ or ‘gifted speaker[s]’, or as an opportunity for listing skills and expertise: ‘my expertise is in employee/​internal communication, employee engagement and morale, leadership, development, and organisational change management’ (Tobback, 2019, p. 653). The descriptive nouns used in direct self-​praise appear to reference recognisable business communication attributes (communication, public speaking) and workplace jargon (organisation change management, employee engagement). The directness of the speech act can therefore be excused by the brevity achieved and the explicit mention of in-​group rhetoric assumed to be familiar to the reader. While direct self-​praise is relatively homogeneous in regard to the language used, indirect self-​praise appears to be comparatively much more varied in nature. Indirect self-​praise can be categorised in two major types, each containing several sub-​types: (1) self-​praise with a shift of focus away from the self, and (2) self-​praise with focus on the self but accompanied by implicit expressions of skilfulness referencing various allusions to positive self-​assessments (in other words, using suggestive ways to indicate the user is skilful). The examples that follow, taken from Tobback’s corpus (2019, pp. 653–​658) illustrate how this is done. One way for users to indirectly assign self-​praise is by shifting the focus away from themselves, either by invoking third party evaluations, thereby appearing ‘objectively’ skilful in the eyes of others (see example (2a)), or 80

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by shifting the focus to potential third-​party beneficiaries of their skill (see ­example (2b)): (2a) She has been recognized nationally as of one of PR News 15-​to-​Watch, an award honouring young dynamic PR practitioners across the country under the age of 30, and was listed among the ‘Young BHCU Alum to Watch’ by The Huffington Post. (2019, p. 654, ex. 4; bolding in original) (2a) My students are able to enhance their understanding and mastery of all the components of effective communication. (2019, p. 654, ex. 8; bolding in original) Such indirect self-​praise implies that if others have previously arrived at a positive evaluation of the user, then it is likely that the reader (of their LinkedIn summary) will too. Direct and indirect self-​praise acts are often used together, as illustrated in (2a), where the direct flattering noun phrases (an award honouring young dynamic PR practitioners across the country under the age of 30) are couched among third-​party mentions (PR News 15-​to-​Watch and Young BHCU Alum to Watch), mitigating the threat to politeness, captured by Leech (2014) in his Maxim of modesty. The second major type of indirect self-​ praise encountered in LinkedIn personal summaries involves the use of various implicatures alluding to implicit expressions of skilfulness (Tobback, 2019, p. 655). One strategy is to mention accomplishments based on something the user has done, as in (3a). Another is to state the user’s full commitment and personal investment, thereby alluding to knowledge and expertise, see (3b). The implication in (3b) is that one can only truly enjoy their job if they are good at it; confusion and lack of skill are not conducive to job satisfaction. Thirdly, certain cognitive attitudes can be exploited as implicit markers of skill and professionalism, see (3c). In a similar vein to the previous example, having a belief requires sufficient knowledge of the field. The user is positioning themselves not just as someone employed to do a job but as an expert able to reflect on general practice in that field. (3a) Previously, he proudly served as the Head of the Department of Communication and Creative Arts, Purdue University Northwest. (2019, p. 656, ex. 13; bolding my own) (3b) I work in communication because I truly enjoy helping businesses of all size[s]‌transform their brand through strategic communication planning and practice. (2019, p. 657, ex. 18; bolding in original) 81

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(3c) I believe that infusing EQ into communication will enable people to meaningfully connect in the digital age. (2019, p. 657, ex. 19; bolding in original) The examples in (3a–​c) exhibit an interesting point of variation, namely in the use of personal pronouns. The user is referenced by a third-​person pronoun (he) in (3a) and by the first-​person pronoun (I ) in (3b) and (3c). Pronoun forms are notoriously transient and there are various ways to interpret a third-​person use. For example, third-​ person pronouns could be interpreted as pompous, self-​important markers of the ‘self’, but first-​person pronouns could equally be evaluated as repetitive markers betraying an egotistical preoccupation with the ‘self’ (repeating I throughout a text). In a digital space that is constantly changing, users are likely to follow what others in their network are doing to show their own awareness of in-​group speaking norms. An additional tool that LinkedIn professionals use to further enhance their efforts for self-​praise is the use of pragmatic modifiers (Tobback, 2019, p. 658). Pragmatic modifiers are qualifiers that are scattered strategically throughout discourse to reinforce the accomplishment expressed. An example is given in (3a), where the adverb proudly calls to attention the fame of the institution where the user served; if they were proud to serve there, it is because Purdue has an excellent reputation. Adverbs are not the only qualifiers enlisted for this purpose, numerals giving exact quantities are used when these are sufficiently large to be impressive: three decades of experience, while vague quantities appear when they are perhaps not as impressive: awarded several accolades. In general, additional details are given (has worked with hundreds of organisations, keynotes in every continent of the world ) in a bid to engulf the self-​praise speech act in a description which appears to be factual and objective. LinkedIn exemplifies a digital environment where work and professionalism are key. Users, being both content generators and content consumers, understand the goals of communication as being heavily tied to self-​promotion in a workplace setting. In the next case study, we consider how companies use social media on platforms to enhance their brand and to connect with their customers.

Case study 4.4.2. Enhancing your company’s image on Twitter and Weibo Ever since the 1990s, people have taken their diaries online, documenting their thoughts in a digital space. In 1997, the term weblog was coined (Wortham, 2007), and later shortened to blog. But in a fast-​paced world, a much more condensed version emerged in 2006, launched by Californian entrepreneurs Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams: microblogging (ironically, its name is longer). Within 15 years, their platform Twitter (https://​twit​ter.com) reported more than 300 million active users worldwide (Statista, 2022). Initially, Twitter offered registered users a space where they could share their thoughts in 82

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concise bursts of 140 characters. Following pressure from the Twitter community, the limit was extended in 2017 to 280 characters. On Twitter, anyone can see everyone else’s tweets and no permissions are required, though users can theoretically make certain posts private or even keep their entire accounts hidden. However, most posts are public because the goal is to be discoverable. As is common with other platforms, text, images and links can be shared and users (tweeters) can choose to follow others by clicking the follow button. This enables their Twitter newsfeed to be populated with the most recent posts from tweeters they chose to follow. One feature associated with Twitter is the use of hashtags, which are terms preceded by the # symbol and spelled without spaces (see Chapter 8 for a discussion of hashtags). In response to the American concept of microblogging, China launched its own local microblogging services in 2007, called Weibo (weibo is the literal translation of the term microblogging into Chinese; see Harwit, 2014, p. 1060). Various Weibo platforms emerged. But two years later, riots rocked the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uyghur, which led the Chinese government to block both Twitter and most other local microblogging services from operation in China (Harwit, 2014; Homburg et al., 2020). Later that year, the government-​ backed platform Sina Weibo (Weibo for short) was launched (https://​weibo. com). By 2014, Weibo had already acquired 600 million registered users (Harwit, 2014; Homburg et al., 2020). Its growing popularity may be tightly linked to the unavailability of alternative platforms. It is worth remembering that Weibo was launched partly for authorities to interact with citizens, in an authoritarian state (Homburg et al., 2020), where the potential for official surveillance remains high. These issues are likely to have significant consequences for how users interact on and with the Weibo platform. Weibo shares with (early) Twitter the constraint of 140 characters per post. However, 140 Chinese characters do not correspond to 140 English characters, because one Chinese character can represent an entire word, thereby allowing

Figure 4.4  Example of tweet by HSBC bank

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more content to be included in Weibo posts compared to Twitter posts (Harwit, 2014, p. 1060). Twitter and Weibo are used by individuals and companies alike. In this case study, we consider the use of microblogging by American and Chinese banks to interact with existing and prospective customers. Sun, Wang and Ren (2021) analysed posts from ten high-​ranking US and Chinese banks to find out how these companies used social media to build an identity and reputation online. Taking the classification of speech acts proposed by Searle as a starting point, and reframing these into a more detailed taxonomy following Li and Wu (2018), the researchers discovered that their corpus of bank posts could be assigned to seven speech acts (Sun et al., 2021, p. 126). Interestingly, while all banks engaged in all of seven speech act activities to some extent, there were visible differences between the US and Chinese banks. The main speech acts present in posts by Chinese banks seemed to be (1) disclosing information, (2) responding to customers, and (3) general greetings and well-​wishes (Sun et al., 2021, p. 129). In contrast, the US banks almost never responded to customer questions on Twitter and were most engaged in sharing information and in promoting products, services or achievements of the company (2021, p. 129). Secondly, while investigating the politeness approach of the different companies, cultural differences were again detected between US and Chinese banks. Chinese banks adopted a more direct style of politeness, which involved the envisaged addressee (the customer) directly, but which did not reference emotion overtly. In contrast, US banks adopted a more indirect and expressive style. Unsurprisingly, all banks engaged in speech acts of self-​promotion, but they did this to varying degrees: Chinese banks seemed to shy away from this activity. Such self-​promotion was not uncommon for US banks. At the same time, US banks avoided direct engagement with customer queries. Sun and his colleagues (2021) attribute these differences to cultural differences in the way that customers are perceived in the two countries. Because Chinese society is largely seen as collectivist, securing business involves securing trust and negotiating interpersonal relationships (though, of course, this is a wide generalisation of a very diverse country). The openness of Chinese banks in addressing customers is used to inspire trust and transparency. Chinese businesses want to portray themselves as ‘the audience’s friendly companions’ (2021, p. 132), while, at the same time, providing an authoritative and professional corporate identity in responding to questions and observing appropriate politeness norms expected in Chinese society, such as avoiding the display of overt emotions, avoiding overt self-​praise and cultivating modesty. In contrast, the approach of the US banks to securing consumers comes from the perspective of a more individualistic society (2021, p. 133), where overt promotion of services, products and achievements is valued and appreciated, and where individuals will choose businesses for their ability, consistency and competitiveness. Engaging directly and openly with customers may impinge 84

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on an individual’s sense of privacy and, from the company’s point of view, the uncertainty of customer queries is best avoided in case it brings up unfavourable exchanges or compromising information about individual customers. For US banks, politeness revolves around personal freedom and right to anonymity. Conversely, the posts of the US banks suggest that the expression of emotion is associated with trust and sincerity rather than a threat to politeness norms. This research highlights the importance of anchoring language within a culture and context.

Case study 4.4.3. Doing ‘collaboration’ in a virtual workplace The two case studies analysed so far have looked at how individuals or companies use social media to enhance their brand or work image. The final case study takes an inward-​facing look at how employees use internal social media platforms to get on with doing work. There is a well-​established tradition of research analysing the language of the workplace (see, for example, Holmes, 2020), and this field has truly boomed in the last few decades, not least because what we think of as ‘the workplace’ has changed dramatically. In response to the Covid-​19 pandemic more of us have ended up ‘doing work’ virtually, swapping the office for our own home and conducting meetings over the internet. But even before the pandemic, many workplaces were becoming increasingly digital, with employees working in teams across time zones and continents. One development in the digital working space is the use of company-​internal social media platforms of various sorts, typically providing instant messaging and video-​calling capabilities. These have acquired different names: Enterprise 2.0 (McAfee, 2009), enterprise social media (Leonardi, Huysman & Steinfield, 2013) or simply internal social media (ISM). Some companies use existing platforms for this purpose, Skype, Zoom, Teams or Slack, while others create their own. Regardless of the service used, several questions arise in response to this workplace change. Are employees still productive in a social media work environment? What strategies do employees use to maintain their connection to work and their motivation to remain productive in the absence of a physical office? Early research suggests a positive relationship between social media use and productivity (Leftheriotis & Giannakos, 2014) and also high job satisfaction for those who are active on social media throughout their work day (Robertson & Kee, 2017). Here, we consider linguistic strategies that employees adopt to maintain their identity and connection with their work in a digital office, as well as politeness cues used to mitigate potentially risky communication. The data come from two studies of internal instant messaging exchanges, conducted by Darics (2010) and Darics and Gatti (2019).

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In her earlier study of workplace discourse, Darics (2010, pp. 133–​ 134) analysed instant messages sent online between six members of a global management and consultancy company based on London, England. She was particularly interested in finding out how people overcame the lack of auditory cues (intonation and pitch) and visual cues (body language), which are often associated with signalling politeness when communicating in person. This is what she found. One commonly used strategy involves textual enhancements. For example, employees made use of unconventional and playful spelling to tone down and mitigate potential face threats. In the exchange below, Beth reports to Marge, her superior, after an unsuccessful training session. The delivery of bad news (we had a crap session) constitutes a face threat to the addressee, who is about to find out something disagreeable. As a superior, Marge is typically direct in her communication (will do and what was the main problem, any specific feedback), but the exaggerated initial reaction spelled with an elongated vowel (noooooo) mimics an emotional and understanding auditory cue, making Beth feel heard and at ease, despite the obviously uncomfortable position she is in. (Typos have been left as in the original message.) (4) 1  Beth: FYI 2   Beth: we had a crap session in (reference to location) today 3  Beth: Interviewing skills 4  Marge: noooooo 5  Beth: (name) is rather concernd 6  Beth: concerned 7   Beth: we immediately need to chaeg the instructions for the (name of client) on 5–​6 Dec. as it’s the same trainer and he is apparently awful 8   Beth: can you take this up with (name), please? 9  Marge: will do 10  Marge: what was the main problem, any specific feedback? 11  Beth: let me call you (Darics, 2010, ex. 2, p. 137; bolding my own) Other textual strategies of mitigation include capitalisation used to evoke sound and emphasis, and emoticons, used to embody facial expressions and emotional reactions to the content being communicated. Of note in example (4) is also the lack of concern for standard spelling (concernd, chaeg). Users sacrifice adherence to spelling conventions in favour of speedy replies, showing engagement and moving the conversation on in a timely manner. A second strategy is the deliberate effort of favouring politeness mitigation strategies, whether positive or negative politeness, over and above being brief. Employees go to great lengths to explain and clarify any potential misunderstandings. Generally speaking, previous research has shown that, when typing, users are keen to express themselves as economically as possible, enlisting 86

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abbreviations, mixing upper-​and lower-​case letters, compromising spelling and punctuation, and so on (see overview in Darics, 2010, p. 142). However, instant messages in a workplace environment demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice the desire for economy if politeness is at stake. In one message, an employee writes: Can you please let me know if this is confirmed or cancellation is required instead of the much more concise but also more direct alternative: Is this confirmed or is cancellation required? The appeal to negative politeness (Can you please let me know) constitutes an explicit effort towards face needs, in other words, a mitigation of the request put forward. In the absence of facial cues to indicate emotion and an overall reaction to what is being said, employees take to explicitly stating the missing visual cues, affirming their emotions, providing overt clarifications, backchannelling (hmmm and ahhh used to indicate ongoing attention and interest) and using emojis and other playful textual enhancements to maintain relational work and to reassure their colleagues that all is well. Consider the following exchange. (5) 1   Beth: this needs to be rescheduled 2  Beth: :-​\ 3  Ann: i feel bad to cancel a session:-​\ 4  Ann: :’( 5  Beth: don’t worry, (name of client) should feel worse 6   Beth: it cost them a lot 7  Ann: hhmmm …. 8   Ann: anyways I’ll b waiting for an official mail 9  Ann: :) 10  Beth: oki, thanks (Darics, 2010, ex. 8, p. 145; bolding my own) Beth and Ann are discussing an unpleasant task: dealing with a cancellation. Ann expressed her guilt and general feeling of unease in both words and emojis, while Beth provides reassurance by mimicking her colleague’s language and using both words (don’t worry) and emojis. Ann acknowledges the support she is given with the use of hhmmmm … (backchannelling), before moving the topic on to the resolution (I’ll be waiting for an official mail ) and closing with a friendly emoji. In a follow-​up study of virtual workplace communication, Darics and Gatti (2019) analysed instant messages sent between employees working at a large-​ scale multinational food manufacturer. As with the earlier findings from Darics (2010), Darics and Gatti found that instant messages contained many features that paralleled those typically found in face-​to-​face communication, attending to face needs, establishing a joint and shared identity and common ground. As before, economy and directness were sacrificed in favour of a more elaborate and playful approach, where relational work is privileged. Two examples illustrate these strategies (from Darics & Gatti, 2019). First, in (6), the call for a meeting (Is 2:30pm working for everyone?) is preceded by a lengthy and ‘chatty’ introduction. Despite being a superior, the 87

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manager engages in ample face work, prefacing the request with an informal greeting (Good morning my friends), setting the mood as relaxed and amicable. This is followed by an indirect justification for the time of the meeting (I’m a little bit tied up this morning with Italy), which fosters understanding and closeness. And finally, when delivered, the request contains an inclusive reference (for everyone), validating the importance of all team members. Considerable linguistic effort goes into this message. (6) [Manager 3/​27/​17, 10:00AM]: Good morning my friends. I’m a little bit tied up this morning with Italy. But later in the afternoon we need to review the project status. Is 2:30 pm working for everyone? (Darics & Gatti, 2019, ex. 8, p. 251) Secondly, in (7), the team is engaging in interpersonal communication, with members cheering each other on (Mark is a rock star), and bridging work-​talk with personal information of their musical tastes. The manager brings up a non-​ work topic (Guns ’n Roses) which then encourages sharing from others (You like guns and roses /​Manager/​?). The small talk interaction demonstrates how online environments can be customised to facilitate features that regular face-​to-​face communication enlists for team-​building: the personal is mixed with the professional. While the important workplace information is still communicated (the /​ software name/​has been updated and rebooted ), the additional layer of background chat fills an important function, fostering closeness between otherwise (physically) distant employees. (7) 1 [Mark 5/​29/​17, 9:53 AM] 2 [Manager 5/​29/​17, 11:03 AM] 3 [Raymond 5/​29/​17, 11:04 AM] 4 [Manager 5/​29/​17, 11:04 AM] 5 [Jill 5/​29/​17, 4:05 PM] 6 [Manager 5/​29/​17, 4:06PM]

the /​software name/​has been updated and rebooted Thank you Mark! Mark is a rock star Guns ‘n Roses You like guns and roses /​Manager/​? I went to many of those concerts? REALLLY??????] I’m envious now … :-​( they were the best (Darics & Gatti, 2019, ex. 10, p. 252)

In a nutshell Given that our communication at work involves language, in this chapter we have considered ways in which individuals and corporations go about being productive in a professional context and, in particular, how they expand this 88

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communication to harness the full potential of social media platforms. In one case study, individuals were shown to use indirect speech acts in their LinkedIn profiles to successfully engage in self-​praise, for example, by distancing themselves from the service or skill being presented. In a virtual office environment, where emotion and body language cues are missing, employees make use of internal messaging platforms and various linguistic strategies, such as emojis, unconventional spelling and humour to maintain good relationships with co-​ workers in a bid to foster a sense of belonging within a physically dispersed team. Corporations are also active on social media platforms, such as Twitter and Weibo, to engage with customers and impart information, respond to questions or simply to enhance their brand by presenting themselves in positive and culturally-​appropriate ways. Language is not just about saying things but also about doing them.

Note 1 The song can be accessed on YouTube (www.yout​ube.com/​watch?​v=​ 92cw​KCU8​Z5c).

References Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford University Press. Brown, S., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press. Castillo-​de Mesa, J., & Gómez-​Jacinto, L. (2020). Connectedness, engagement, and learning through social work communities on LinkedIn. Psychosocial Intervention, 29(2), 103–​112. https://​doi.org/​10.5093/​pi202​0a4 Darics, E. (2010). Politeness in computer-​mediated discourse of a virtual team. Journal of Pragmatics Research, 6(1), 129–​150. https://​doi.org/​10.1515/​ JPLR.2010.007 Darics, E., & Gatti, M. C. (2019). Talking a team into being in online workplace collaborations: The discourse of virtual work. Discourse Studies, 21(3), 237–​257. https://​doi.org/​1.o0r.g1/​107.171/​1774/​6114​4614​4546​5169​1898​ 2299​240 Dayter, D. (2018). Self-​praise online and offline: The hallmark speech act of social media? Internet Pragmatics 1(1), 184–​203. https://​doi.org/​10.1075/​ ip.00009.day Dayter, D. (2014). Self-​praise in microblogging. Journal of Pragmatics, 62, 91–​ 102. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.pra​gma.2013.11.021

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Fogal, D., Harris, D. W., & Moss, M. (2018). New work on speech acts. Oxford University Press. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face to face behaviour. Anchor. Harwit, E. (2014). The rise and influence of Weibo (Microblogs) in China. Asian Survey, 54(6), 1059–​1087. https://​doi.org/​10.1525/​as.2014.54.6.1059 Holmes, J. (2020). Researching workplace discourse: A review. Language in the Workplace Occasional Papers No. 13. Victoria University Press. www.wgtn. ac.nz/​_​_​d​ata/​ass​ets/​pdf_​f​i le/​0007/​1816​549/​OP-​13.pdf Homburg, V., Moody, R., Yang, Q., & Bekkers, V. (2020). Adopting microblogging solutions for interaction with government: Survey results from Hunan province, China. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 88(1), 76–​94. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​00208​5231​9887​480 Huang, Y. (2013). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press. Kim, S., & Kim, S. (2020). Lee Kun-​hee, Korean icon who transformed Samsung, dies at 78. Bloomberg. www.bloomb​erg.com/​news/​artic​les/​2020-​10-​25/​sams​ ung-​elec​tron​ics-​says-​chair​man-​lee-​kun-​hee-​has-​died Leftheriotis, I., & Giannakos, M. N. (2014). Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work? Computers and Human Behavior, 31, 134–​142. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.chb.2013.10.016 Leonardi, P. M., Huysman, M., & Steinfield, C. (2013). Enterprise social media: Definition, history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations. Journal of Computer-​Mediated Communication, 19, 1–​19. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​jcc4.12029 Levinson, S. (2016). Speech acts. In Y. Huang (Ed.), Oxford handbook of pragmatics (pp. 199–​216). Oxford University Press. Li, C., & Wu, D. D. (2018). Facework by global brands across Twitter and Weibo. Discourse, Context & Media, 26, 32–​42. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​ j.dcm.2018.03.006 Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford University Press. McAfee, A. P. (2009). Enterprise 2.0: New collaborative tools for your organization’s toughest challenges. Harvard University Press. Matley, D. (2018).“This is NOT a# humblebrag, this is just a# brag”: The pragmatics of self-​praise, hashtags and politeness in Instagram posts. Discourse, Context & Media, 22, 30–​38. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.dcm.2017.07.007 Palm, C. M. (2009). Bright lights, dark shadows: The real story of ABBA. Omnibus Press. Robertson, B. W., & Kee, K. F. (2017). Social media at work: The roles of job satisfaction, employment status, and Facebook use with co-​workers. Computers in Human Behavior, 70, 191–​196. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​ j.chb.2016.12.080 Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone. Bloomsbury. Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (pp. 59–​82). Academic Press. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press. 90

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Statista. (2022) Twitter statistics. www.stati​sta.com/​sta​tist​ics/​303​681/​twit​ter-​ users-​worldw​ide/​ Statista. (2020) LinkedIn statistics. www.stati​sta.com/​top​ics/​951/​linke​din/​ #dossie​rKey​figu​res Song, S. (2017). The Brown and Levinson theory revisited: A statistical analysis. Language Sciences, 62, 66–​75. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.lang​sci.2017.03.006 Sun, Y., Wang, G., & Ren, H. (2021). To entertain or to serve: Chinese and US banks’ online identity based on a genre analysis of social media. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 64(2), 121–​136. https://​doi. org/​10.1109/​TPC.2021.3064​395 Tobback, E. (2019). Telling the world how skilful you are: Self-​praise strategies on LinkedIn. Discourse & Communication, 13(6), 647–​668. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1177/​17504​8131​9868​854 Van Dijck, J. (2013). ‘You have one identity’: Performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture & Society, 35(2), 199–​215. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1177/​01634​4371​2468​605 Wortham, J. (2007). After 10 years of blogs, the future’s brighter than ever. Wired Magazine. www.wired.com/​2007/​12/​after-​10-​years-​of-​blogs-​the-​futu​res-​ brigh​ter-​than-​ever/​

What to read next Part 1. Within linguistics, scholars working in various sub-​fields (pragmatics, conversational analysis, discourse analysis) have approached Speech Act Theory according to their varying primary interests, which has led to a huge divergence of approaches. A good pragmatics-​oriented overview can be found in Levinson’s (2016) chapter or in Huang (2013). Fogal, Harris and Moss’s (2018) book provides a discourse analytic view and some applications of speech acts to legal and political matters. With regard to linguistic politeness, the Journal of Politeness Research is an excellent source for the latest research in this area. Part 2. For more analyses of self-​praise on social media, see Matley’s (2018) study of personal ‘brags’ on Instagram and Dayter’s follow-​up study of self-​ praise speech acts in WhatsApp messages (2018). However, these studies do not focus on work discourse but on personal representation. The area of workplace discourse and social media is still very much in its infancy but new work is under way. Most studies seem to focus on organisational matters rather than linguistic ones. Erika Darics and her colleagues are exceptions to this and their work is a good starting place.

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What to do next Face-​threatening acts comparison. Take two languages that you are familiar with (if you speak only one language, find a friend who speaks another language and ask them for help with this task). Identify a particular context which might involve a face-​threatening act (such as a refusal, or a criticism; you can even try compliments) and contrast how the two languages deal with the face-​threatening act. What do the differences tell you? Discussion. To what extent do you see Brown and Levinson’s Theory of Politeness as being universal? Can you think of any languages and contexts in which it is not straightforward to apply it? Why? Data collection. You may be familiar with the term ‘humblebrag’. If you are, explain what it is and how it is used in relation to online language. If not, do some research to find out about it by paying special attention to its use in social media language. Following this, collect some examples of posts from a social media platform of your choice which might be classified as a humblebrag. In what sense do they qualify as such speech acts? Why?

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5

Using social media to be yourself Examining indexing, gender and communities of practice

TLDR. Who are you really? In one sense, this question is impossible to answer because there are so many different selves to consider. In this chapter, we uncover the ways in which language is employed to ‘perform’ our different selves, foregrounding certain characteristics while masking others. Whether performing a specific gendered identity or a given sexual one, members of speech communities learn to associate (index) certain features with certain social meanings (the girly girl, the manly man) and with particular communities of practice (Indian LGBT youth). Three case studies illustrate how various selves are performed online: (1) maintaining an image of your ‘best day’ on Facebook, (2) manipulating body image on Instagram, and (3) Twitter and TikTok posts which express non-​normative sexuality.

5.1 How to find your ‘self’ and what language has to do with it The first ever coffeehouse opened its doors in 1550, in the Turkish city of Constantinople, known as Istanbul in modern-​day Turkey (Britannica, 2021). Europeans did not just inherit coffeehouses from Turkey, they also received the word for coffee itself from the Turkish kahveh, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Given that Muslims were prohibited from consuming alcohol and visiting bars, coffee provided an excellent alternative for socialising and exchanging ideas. Fast-​forward nearly 500 years and coffee culture has spread to every corner of the Western world. Meeting for coffee has become so commonplace that the phrase has acquired a life and meaning of its own. Importantly, it need not involve the consumption of caffeine. Arranging to meet for coffee has come to mean meeting for a friendly catch-​up and chat, with or without coffee, in a coffee house or elsewhere. The symbolic nature of meeting for coffee brings to mind a specific association: it is a proxy for a specific social engagement, and the presence of coffee is immaterial.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-5

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Similarly, many language forms, such as certain words or grammatical structures, bring with them associations that provide important social cues beyond the semantic meaning they designate. When we use language, we convey something about ourselves, perhaps our biological gender or where we grew up, our sexuality or our ethnicity. Whether meeting for coffee is part our linguistic repertoire or not, we all have an understanding of what it means. We also learn to recognise such social meanings in the language use of others. In this chapter, I introduce some foundational ideas that have shaped our understanding of what makes people who they are and how we go about presenting the different facets of their selves to others, all of which add up to jointly form a unique identity.

The presentation of the self in everyday life One of the most influential texts to consider the nature of ‘the self’ was written by Ervine Goffman in 1956, later revised under the title The presentation of the self in everyday life (Goffman, 1959). The son of Jewish immigrants Max and Ann Goffman, Ervine went on to achieve wide acclaim as a sociologist, while his sister Frances became famous too, as a celebrated actress (Syme, 2011, pp. 27–​28). Interestingly, both gravitated to the stage. While Frances performed on the actual stage, Ervine was writing about it, borrowing ideas from the theatre to describe how people present themselves in everyday life as though they were actors, literally performing their various selves, foregrounding certain characteristics and backgrounding others, according to the situation and the audience. Goffman argued that social interactions between individuals are continuously affected by the way that others see them. Interactions are not just exchanges of information between several parties, but also constitute an exercise in ‘impression management’ created by the ‘performed self’ (Goffman, 1959, pp. 209). Giving off the wrong impression can lead to losing face (see Chapter 4 for Politeness Theory, a theory centred on Goffman’s concept of face). According to Goffman (2021, p. 4), ‘We lead an indoor social life. We specialize in fixed settings, in keeping strangers out, and in giving the performer some privacy in which to prepare himself [sic] for the show’. In other words, the actors engage in a front stage performance which is visible during the interaction, but at the same time, they are engaged in back stage management, planning the image they wish to present to their audience (see Chapter 3 for a discussion of audience). The performance provides the actors with ‘a way to form new identities’ and convince themselves that they have thus ‘become an enhanced person’ (Bullingham & Vasconcelos, 2013, p. 101). The difference between front stage and back stage arises from the use of a mask, that is, a way of hiding certain details of an actor’s persona while revealing others. Using a mask does not imply that the individual becomes someone else altogether, but, Goffman argued, the mask allows different facets (impressions which all apply) of the individual to be made visible. 94

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In his later work, Goffman contrasted an innovative technology of his time, the telephone, with ordinary face-​to-​face conversation in order to show how various types of interactions provide different affordances for the performed self. Since the caller remains unseen in a telephone conversation, they are able to further manipulate their front stage persona and conceal certain aspects that face-​ to-​face conversation does not allow, chiefly physical traits or certain emotions (further details of this will be discussed when we consider sexuality). Telephone conversations do not provide particularly rich cues, making them a ‘marginal way to interact socially’ (Goffman, 1971, p. 70, cited in Bullingham & Vasconcelos, 2013, p. 102). However, more recent work by Hall (1995) might challenge some aspects of this claim. One can’t help but wonder what Goffman would have made of today’s social media platforms; however, as Bullingham and Vasconcelos (2013) have demonstrated, his framework contributes to our understanding of online identities, testimony to its wide applicability.

Indexing, speech communities and communities of practice In their ground-​breaking book on language and gender, sociolinguists Eckert and McConnell-​Ginet propose a similar concept to that of impression management: ‘fashioning selves’ (2013, p. 248). They begin by discussing the concept of style. Style is often thought of as how something is said or done, as opposed to what is said or done. Styles vary; for example, ‘a tough guy’s talk about his exploits is as much of his style—​is as big a part of his threatening demeanour—​as his studded leather jacket’ (2013, p. 248). But the how and what are related; beating people up and acting threateningly goes with the ‘tough guy talk’, while baking cupcakes doesn’t. According to Eckert and McConnell-​Ginet, two key ingredients are required for any style to work: first, a social type needs to already exist, so that the audience can make the connection between this type and various elements (the jacket, the tough guy talk and so on), and second, the actor needs to convince their audience that they fit the social type in question. Thinking about style in this way uncovers two observations. One is that language is a resource, much like dress style, hairstyle, make-​up and so on, which is utilised in the presentation of the self. The second is that style does not exist in a vacuum. When we fashion ourselves to match a particular style; be it the knowledgeable academic, the caring mother, the ambitious leader, or the tough guy, we do so by appealing to a social type that exists in a community of speakers. The resources—​be they linguistic or otherwise—​help us, as performers, to symbolically bring to mind the particular social type in question, and they help our audience to recognise the social type and form the intended association. Back in the 1990s, Ochs (1992) introduced a very useful term, indexing, to capture how we come to associate some language with male speech and other language with female speech. Nowadays, indexing refers more generally to ‘forms which gain meaning through association with things in the social world’ (Eckert & McConnell-​Ginet, 95

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2013, p. 251), whether in relation to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age or any other social dimension (see also the related concept of enregisterment proposed by Agha, 2005). Indexing is essentially used to anchor meaning within a speech community. As mentioned earlier, social types need to exist in the first place and they need to be sufficiently salient in society for individuals to be able to align themselves with them in recognisable ways. If we are thinking specifically about language, we might use the term speech community to denote a coherent group, whether this is a group of speakers of a particular language (English), or language variety (New Zealand English), or an even more specific group with shared language codes (Latin American immigrants living in New Zealand). The way in which we define ourselves may vary depending on the situation, but it is possible, in principle, for one individual to be part of all three speech communities at once. As American philosopher and psychologist George Herbert Mead argued back in the 1930s, we can only acquire a sense of self through the social world, by connecting to others, being able to ‘only know ourselves through others, through the people, groups and institutions with which we create and share our experiences’ (Longhofer & Winchester, 2016, p. 447). But, in certain cases, speech communities do not just share a language code; they might also become involved in joint activities, such as salsa dancing, playing hockey or working in a hospital. Members of such communities share not only a linguistic repertoire (a way of speaking and certain jargon words), but also a common goal or shared enterprise, and a way of connecting members to one another. This is called a community of practice (Eckert & McConnell-​Ginet, 2013, pp. 45–​47) and it denotes a type of social enterprise that all of us take part in, often on a daily basis, in various personal and professional capacities. The dinners you share with your flatmates or family, the football matches you take part in, and the courses you are taking at university are typical examples of social groupings that constitute communities of practice. Criminal gangs are considered speech communities, and so are phone sex workers. It is through the various communities of practice we frequent that we acquire in-​jokes, ways of speaking, ways of belonging and, ultimately, ways of performing our different selves.

Performing gender: girly girls and manly men One of the most ardently researched and hotly debated communities of practice involves the construction of gender. But how did it unfold? The history of research on language and gender is complex (Meyerhoff & Ehrlich, 2019 constitutes an excellent review). Here, I will attempt to merely sketch out significant milestones to give a sense of its long history. Sociolinguists map the study of gender and language in terms of waves, the first of which is considered to be the rise of feminism, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The second wave was led by Robin Lakoff in the 1970s, who introduced concepts like ‘women’s language’ and ‘men’s language’, 96

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describing the former as being perceived as tentative and powerless, and the latter as dominant and powerful. For example, women, more than men, tend to use tag questions like ‘I thought we might get takeout tonight, yes?’ to check the listener’s approval. Men interpret questions as opportunities for giving expert advice more often than women do. Women also tend to use more standard, high-​prestige language, avoiding swearing and non-​standard grammar. Meyerhoff and Ehrlich (2019, p. 457) describe women as being in a ‘double-​bind’: on the one hand, if a woman uses passive forms, she is precluded from gaining power (for not being assertive enough); on the other, if she uses more assertive forms, she is criticised for not being feminine (e.g. nice) enough. One major problem with the dominance-​based approach to language and gender is its treatment of women and men as coherent homogeneous groups—​an unrealistic generalisation. And there is another problem: it turns out that women drive incoming language change (Labov, 2001). This gender paradox presents another puzzle: why and how would the oppressed group be linguistically ahead in this manner? The end of the second wave is marked by Butler’s (1990) book Gender Trouble, which uprooted gender from deterministic biological concepts of sex and reconceptualised it as something one does rather than something one is. Gender became performative, ‘a dynamic verb’ (Eckert & McConnell-​Ginet, 1992, p. 462). Through socialisation during childhood, girls learn how to do girl-​talk and boys learn how to do boy-​talk. Girls learn to take conversational turns and to complete each other’s utterances; they learn that giggling is feminine and that crying is ok. Boys learn the opposite: giggling is out and so is crying. There is no deterministic reason why the chips should fall this way, but like other gendered behaviour (play-​fighting is manly, playing with dolls isn’t), subtle (and sometimes not-​so-​subtle) cues teach boys and girls how to perform their respective gender as they grow into adolescence, and eventually into adulthood. We have strong convictions of what a typical female style might be like (girly girls) and what a typical male style might be like (manly men); see Eckert and McConnell-​Ginet (2013, p. 253). The performative nature of gender remains a foundational aspect of how we understand language and gender patterns. These ground-​breaking ideas paved the way for the third wave. Led by Penny Eckert (2012) and drawing on earlier work by Labov (1963), the third wave recognised that not all women are the same, nor are all men. Men and women are embedded in communities of practice and their language use varies dynamically according to the communities they belong to. It is thus ill-​advised to generalise patterns to (all) women or (all) men, as a group, without paying attention to communities of practice. Moreover, gender presents itself as fluid, better thought of as a continuum than a specific category. Eckert’s theory was heavily informed by her (1989) landmark study of American adolescents in a Detroit high school, containing members from two separate communities of practice, Jocks and Burnouts (each involving both boys and girls). Eckert’s ethnographic study provides details of the kinds of places the different adolescents frequented, their clothing, their general aspirations for life 97

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and views of school, and the lengths to which they each went in order to perform their various selves. ‘The female Jocks must aggressively develop a Jock image, which is essentially friendly, outgoing, active, clean-​cut, all American’, while ‘the female Burnouts must aggressively develop a Burnout image, which is essentially tough, urban, experienced’, writes Eckert (1989, p. 258). Unsurprisingly, language comes into this image too, with observed sound differences among the groups. What’s interesting is that girls utilised language to show their group membership more than boys (1989, p. 265). For Eckert, this is in line with the idea that girls rely on symbolic associations (like sounds and other language features) more than boys to signal their identity. Girls are socialised to pay attention not just to make-​up and hair but also to vowels. Her study aptly illustrates the importance of communities of practice, showing that language use cannot be simply explained by equating it with girl-​talk or boy-​talk (or non-​binary-​talk for that matter), because female Jocks sounded different not just to males but also to female Burnouts. The communities that these girls and boys belonged to had important consequences for the language repertoires observed.

Performing sexuality: coming on and coming out ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover is not a dirty book’ began Richard Hoggart in his introduction to the controversial novel by D. H. Lawrence (Lawrence, 1928, p. v, formatting as in original). Prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act at the Old Bailey in London, 1959, Lawrence’s book dared to explore in intimate detail women’s sexuality and pleasure, and, to top it off, pleasure outside marriage. (Incidentally, 1959 was the year of publication of another memorable sexually provocative novel: Emanuelle, published in French by Thai-​French novelist Marayat Rollet-​Andriane, whose pen name was Emanuelle Arsan.) And if some of the novel’s themes were not challenging enough (sexuality was one of several), the writing also featured repeated uses of the virtually unprintable four-​letter F word. The strong reaction against the book was directed not only at the plot but also at its language. The importance of language in matters of human sexuality has been explicitly noted not just by language researchers and fiction writers but also by fantasy line operators. In her interviews with phone sex workers, Hall (1995) discovered an acute awareness of linguistics performance and a conscious fashioning of discourse towards language with a more marketable appeal. As language is the sole link between these workers and their clients, it is unsurprising that they pay special attention to linguistic features which might increase the market value of their services. Fantasy line workers develop several different personas in response to (male) client demand. For example, one worker in Hall’s study (1995, p. 201) adapted her performance to create four different ‘characters’, including the ‘beach bunny’ stereotype, the ‘dominating older woman with an Eastern European accent’ and a ‘demure Asian accent[ed]’ female. These personas reveal two observations. 98

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Figure 5.1  Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence (1928)

First, the descriptions of the characters confirm that language plays a big part in their creation. Another worker interviewed explains that ‘to be a really good fantasy maker, you’ve got to have big tits in your voice’ (1995, p. 199). How is this achieved? In general, performing female fantasies involves as many stereotypically feminine language features as possible: intensifiers (very, extremely, so), words associated with femininity and female activities (girlfriends, shopping, the mall, secrets, gossip), particular adjectives (cute, curly, satiny) and non-​basic colour terms (apricot, peach), and specific voice qualities (dynamic high-​pitched voice combined with low-​pitch and breathy innuendos, for example, suggesting that she might have so many ideas which come fast and furious). Conversely, in contrast to the submissive feminine persona adopted by the fantasy line workers, their (male) clients are construed during the interaction as dominant, in control and powerful. Astonishingly, another phone sex worker turned out to be a Mexican American bisexual male, who performed the role of a heterosexual female of varying ethnicities (Asian, Mexican, African American), as required by his unsuspecting male clients. 99

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Secondly, Hall’s study uncovered that linguistic performance did not stop with gender roles. Ethnicity and race were similarly malleable linguistic identities capable of being changed and reworked as part of the front stage persona. Strikingly, as Hall reports, ‘European American women turned out to be more successful at performing a Black identity on the phone lines than African American women’ and, conversely, ‘the best white woman [the company] ever had was a Black girl’ (1995, pp. 201–​202). These interactions illuminate the remarkable power of gender performance. If there was any support lingering for a deterministic underpinning of biological sex in regard to language use, research documenting phone sex workers must surely have delivered it a final blow. These are interactions in which both parties—​clients and workers—​are under no illusion regarding the performative aspect of the interaction. Yet, the performance is so convincing and the audience so receptive (they are willing to pay good money for it, after all) that everyone is able to completely ignore that fact. Work by Hall (1995) shows that sexuality research parallels and intersects the field of gender and language, and constitutes another domain where enacted identity, the fashioned self and performance are crucial (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004). As with the third-​wave ideas observed in language and gender studies, the innovative field of queer linguistics has arisen, aiming to document ‘performances of heterosexuality’ and to ‘stud[y]‌sexually marginalized groups for what they can reveal about the constructed nature of normative alignments of sex, gender, and sexuality’ (Meyerhoff & Ehrlich, 2019, p. 463). Queer linguistics is not just about sexually marginalised groups and the LGBT community; more than that, it sets out to reveal insights about sexuality in general, including heterosexual groups. According to queer linguistics, heterosexuality is to sexuality as hegemonic masculinity is to gender. While the default (unmarked) position in gender work is male, the default (unmarked) position in queer linguistics is heterosexual (man–​woman relationships). Heterosexuality does not need to be announced or flaunted, because it is expected. In contrast, deviations from this ‘norm’ require unpacking, qualifying, explaining and defending. Sometimes, this has been described as having to ‘come out’ all over again with each interaction. This is illustrated by Kitzinger (2005)’s study of after-​hours emergency calls in which callers have to relate symptoms on behalf of their partners (and sometimes, children and neighbours). The use of the pronouns we and us in calls involving heterosexual couples was unproblematic, but its use in same-​sex relationships led to confusion and required further explanation. Assumptions made by health professionals that they were dealing with a heterosexual relationship (unless told otherwise) reinforced the dominant majority perspective. So, what do we know about language and non-​normative sexuality? In his book chapter ‘Can you tell someone’s sexuality by the way they speak?’ Hazenberg (2020) provides a stimulating thought experiment in which he asks his students to list stereotypes of language features associated with gay men and then to list such stereotypes for lesbian women. The first task is inevitably much easier than 100

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the second. Why? He explains this by recourse to (the usual suspects) dominance and power, but also to how each group positions itself (2020, p. 117). First, men tend to remain comparatively more dominant, privileged and visible compared to women, even as far as marginalised non-​normative groups are concerned. Second, gay men position themselves in opposition to heterosexual men, while lesbian women ‘construct identities through greater affinity with women, not through opposition’ (2020, p. 117). As we will see below, this difference may account for the absence of a concrete representation of what lesbian speech might be like. The identity construction of the two groups is reflected linguistically (but not deterministically). Language features associated with gay men include many features generally associated with (heterosexual, feminine) women, for example use of non-​basic colour terms, feminine adjectives (fabulous, divine), variable pitch patterns, and the articulation of the ‘s’ sound as a ‘th’ sound, thereby thounding gay (though this feature does not hold in all languages; Hazenberg, 2022, p. 115). On the other hand, speech style associated with lesbian women has less to do with phonology (sounds) and more with discourse, and as alluded above, these are more slippery and harder to pin down. Lesbian identities are constructed locally, within tight communities, and this may play a role in their being less recognisable by outsiders. However, the fact that we may not be able to reliably recognise a lesbian repertoire does not mean that one does not exist. Ultimately, Hazenberg explains that you can only tell someone’s sexuality if they chose to divulge it. The field of queer linguistics documents societal tensions and the dominance of heteronormative behaviour, calling out mechanisms that operate to reinforce them. But, as long as norms exist, they will also be questioned! A study of marginalised LGBT youth in Delhi (Hall, 2019) shows how non-​heterosexuality is associated with innovation and progress, indexed by the use of English, as a tool of modernity. Here is one humorous example of sexual modernity—​as Hall terms this phenomenon—​from a well-​known Sardarji joke: (1) Sardar Ji: It is a shame but let me confess I have become homosexual. Wife: How come? Sardar Ji: I have sex at home only! (Hall, 2019, p. 493) The humour arises from a play on words, in which homosexual is (mis)interpreted by the naïve Sardar Ji as home +​ sexual. The shame of being a homosexual is juxtaposed against his purported acquaintance with English, thereby demonstrating a lack of knowledge in both areas. While the joke calls out traditional norms of heterosexuality which oppose same-​sex marriage in India, it also makes reference to a superior proficiency of English—​a language associated with overt prestige and middle-​class India. The joke and its humour can only be understood by someone with sufficient English proficiency, in other words, a privileged member of Indian society with the 101

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support and backing of the very hierarchical systems which the joke is intended to criticise. Hall argues that the sexual modernity indexed by English proficiency in such jokes, the purported sexual emancipation, is itself not immune from normative behaviour. The discourses which aim to overturn current norms are imbued with features from the very establishment they are trying to topple (2019, p. 494). As Hall reminds us, ‘social meaning cannot arise from nowhere’ (2019, 511); however, we repeatedly make use of existing associations, creating and re-​creating new-​fashioned selves in a bid to be authentic.

5.2 Using social media to be yourself Having discussed the performative aspect of gender, sexuality and other facets of our various selves, we now consider three case studies of such acts extracted from social media platforms. We begin by considering Facebook users who engage in impression management to create an image of ‘their best day’. We then discuss two different Instagram examples of users who manipulate body image for various purposes. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Twitter and TikTok users who index their non-​normative sexuality by recourse to language features associated with marginalised communities.

Case study 5.5.1. Presenting your ‘best day’ on Facebook In his article on identity and the presentation of the self, Van Dijck (2013, p. 199) begins with an infamous quote by Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook (see Chapter 3 for more on Facebook): ‘You have one identity. The days of having a different image for your work friends or co-​workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly …’. Zuckerberg refers to what has come to be known as context collapse, the idea that one’s social network is flattened by its presence within the same online space, where connections from different social spheres (work, sports clubs, hobbies, family and friends) all conglomerate within the same (Facebook) newsfeed. However, Zuckerberg is mistaken, not least because, as Van Dijck (2013, p. 200) argues, ‘the interest of owners [of social media platforms] may run counter to users’ need to differentiate between their various online personas’ and because, for users, ‘there is a distinct difference between one’s professional persona, addressed mainly to co-​workers and employers, and one’s self-​communication towards “friends” ’. Goffman’s (1959) presentation of the self rings true today, just as much as it did at the time he was writing. As we saw in Part 1, the self is presented differently in different contexts, and social media is no exception. One important way in which users separate out their various online selves is by managing the people they are connected with, follow or befriend on the various platforms they 102

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frequent. Additionally, some platforms offer ways of limiting the audience of a given post. For example, Facebook facilitates this functionality by enabling the creation of different lists of friends, such as family, acquaintances and so on (see Hollenbaugh, 2021, p. 86 for a comparison of social media platforms in relation to audience control affordances). Let’s consider Facebook as an example. Following various studies surveying American undergraduate students, Baron (2008, p. 88) found that users would spend, on average, 20 minutes a day on Facebook, viewing around seven profiles each time, with females spending slightly longer than males (one can only imagine what that figure might look like today). The platform allows users flexibility in how they structure their profiles, including how much (or how little) information they share about themselves, from political views and music preferences to birthday and address information, and relationship status. While, in theory, users could go on updating their profiles every minute of the day, once created, it appears they hardly update them at all (2008, p. 88). User profiles can be considered (in the words of one of the women Baron’s students interviewed) ‘an expression of who one wants to be rather than who one really is’ or, put succinctly, ‘me on my best day’ (2008, p. 85). Preoccupation with presenting one’s ‘best day’ is accurately described by Van Dijck (2013, p. 200) as a shift from self-​ expression to self-​promotion. The front stage performance is masked by careful back stage orchestration. Information is only released when and if it can serve to add to the ‘best day’ image. In a bid to present one’s ‘best day’ or ‘best self’ on social media, users are influenced by a number of factors (Hollenbaugh, 2021, p. 83). These include consideration of perceptions that others hold in relation to posting and online behaviour, affordances that various platforms allow (visual content, text, option to re-​share content), including anonymity and privacy (who can see the posts), consideration of content posted by other users and reactions to previous posts (for example, number of likes and comments received, labelled ‘number of impressions’). However, there are some important differences between the presentation of the self online compared to its presentation in face-​to-​face interactions. The imagined nature of the audience, akin to the imagined audience of radio language, presents unforeseen difficulties for users who do not know the identity of the addressees reading their posts. Even if likes and comments are taken as an indicator, there are also many ‘lurkers’ who read posts but do not engage explicitly with them, thereby leaving no visible trace of their engagement (or evaluation). A relatively new platform to address this issue is BeReal, which only allows friends connected to a user to see the user’s post if they themselves have posted something that day. The persistence of posts also increases the stakes of online communication and platforms vary with regard to this affordance (see Hollenbaugh, 2021, p. 86 for a review). Also, as above, anonymity and visibility play a role, as users adjust what they post based on how open their various social media accounts are, taking into account who can see or (re-​)share their content.

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Facebook is a platform of choice when it comes to self-​presentation (De Vito et al., 2017, p. 748) because it combines high levels of persistence which enable ‘lasting impressions’ with high levels of visibility control, allowing users to manage who has access to their posts. In the next case study, we consider how multimodal elements can influence the way that self-​presentation is done on a different platform: Instagram.

Case study 5.5.2. From creating a sense of belonging to creating a hybrid identity on Instagram Launched in 2010, by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram boasts 1.28 billion users worldwide (Statista, 2022), with India taking the top spot for the highest number of registered users (230.25 million users at the time of writing), followed by the United States (159.75 million users) and Brazil (119.45 million users). Images constitute the focus of Instagram posts, often accompanied by text and hashtags (see Chapter 8 for more on hashtags). This visual focus is captured by the name of the platform itself, which is derived from blending ‘instant camera’ and ‘telegram’. The sharp rise in similarly derived words (e.g. instapost, instadate, instablog, instagoods) is further testimony to the popularity of the platform. Gains in popularity, especially seen among adolescents and young adults, are coupled with reported high levels of addictive behaviour, bringing the majority

Figure 5.2  Instagram application

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of users on the platform to check their account at least once a day (Pew Research Center, 2019). A number of alarming findings have emerged in relation to Instagram, in a large survey conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health (2017). The survey uncovered grave concerns about poor body image, particularly for female users, and poor mental health and depression following extended activity on Instagram. In this section, we consider how two different types of Instagram users use body image as a means to construct a particular self: one involving runners seeking a sense of belonging to a community of practice, and the other involving a medical practitioner who leverages a hybrid identity (the ‘sexy doctor’) in order to influence and inform the wider public about health. In a recent book, Turkish researcher Kurtoğlu-​Hooton (2021, p. 112) describes the online lived experiences of 150 instarunners (runners with Instagram accounts), who are runnerbloggers (running enthusiasts who blog about running on Instagram). There are several reasons why instarunners take to social media. Chief among these is finding a group of like-​minded individuals with mutual interests and ideals: a community of practice. Instarunners underscore their identity as runners, which in turn helps them maintain and reinforce it. In the words of one instarunner, ‘it takes a village and you are my village’ (2021, p. 114, bolding my own). Other reasons include promoting park runs, volunteering at local running events, exchanging tips and advice regarding race preparation, encouraging one another to keep running, and sharing experiences of running through pregnancy or postpartum. It appears that engaging in online running communities on Instagram shapes both how users present their various selves (as runners) and also how they understand their own identity vis-​à-​vis participation in running. For example, Miranda (name changed for privacy reasons), writes: (2) “You’re still so fat”… I occasionally see this pop up in my   comments on Instagram (thankfully not much). Yeah I am. For me, this journey isn’t a quick fix to seek the   holy grail of skinniness. It’s ‘thank goodness’–​I can stand longer now. It’s ‘yay’–​putting on the seatbelt is getting easier. It’s ‘ahhh that’s better’–​my stomach isn’t half way down my   thigh anymore. It’s ‘woo’–​my boobs are weighing less like cinder blocks   these days. It’s ‘holler’–​I’m getting my confidence back. It’s ‘yass’–​my knees are making a comeback. It’s ‘yolo’–​my dreams are growing everyday. It’s ‘damn straight’–​I’m about to do my third 10km event for   the year.

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It’s ‘getting there’–​if I just keep going. So yes, SOME people only see me as fat. But I feel the facts. (Kurtoğlu-​Hooton, 2021, p. 135–​136; formatting my own)

Miranda’s post presents an imagined dialogue between herself and an addressee (possibly representing an old version of herself) in which she reflects on her progress towards weight loss. Through the discourse, she presents herself as not just someone who is overweight, but also someone undergoing a transformation to a healthier, happier self. The post received 220 comments, including many positive words of encouragement, some detailing how the post has motivated them to take up running despite being overweight. Reactions include ‘You inspired me to start running again! Thank you for sharing your journey’ and ‘There will always be nasty people in the world but please don’t let them bother you. You’re inspiring and taking care of yourself–​that’s lovely!’ (Kurtoğlu-​Hooton, 2021, p. 136). The alignment between other users and Miranda’s presentation of self helps to foster a shared sense of identity and mutual common ground. Although there might be an apparent contradiction between Miranda’s various identities (being overweight and being a runner), her instarunner blog helps mitigate the conflict and override her own sense of self as an overweight person paving the way to an emerging self as a fit runner. It might be tempting to assume that body image is primarily a female issue, especially as research suggests symbolic associations are particularly linked to female behaviours (see Part 1). However, increasingly, the pressure to be attractive is not confined to females alone. A recent study by Schoofs et al. (2022) illustrates how a male medical doctor combines his ‘hybrid identity’ as a medical practitioner and, at the same time, as an attractive male in order to increase his following online: ‘it is precisely being “sexy” and “knowledgeable” that makes Doctor Mike such an Instagram success’ (Schoofs et al., 2022, p. 447). Who is Doctor Mike and which self is he performing on Instagram? As more people are increasingly going online for information, particularly in times of uncertainty, such as during the Covid-​19 pandemic, social media provides a competitive market place where influencers with many followers compete with, say, medical doctors for the attention of the wider public. Medical doctors are significant agents of dissemination of public health information and thus under pressure to consider their identity online and to present health advice in a more captivating and appealing manner if they are to attract a large public following. Schoofs and her colleagues (2022) show how one American family doctor, Mikhail Varshavski—​known as Doctor Mike—​uses his profile on Instagram to create a hybrid identity. At the start of 2022, Doctor Mike had four million followers on Instagram and six million subscribers on YouTube (see Chapter 7 for more on YouTube), and he is regularly ranked in the Top 10 most popular and influential online doctors (Schoofs et al., 2022, p. 453). The ‘self’ that Doctor

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Figure 5.3  Doctor Mike Varşavski Source: www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​hnaS​kcJW​BLg

Mike presents on his Instagram account combines two different facets of his identity: on the one hand, an attractive, charming persona, and on the other, a medical expert. Here are some examples illustrating how he achieves this ‘doctor-​ influencer’ identity. One linguistic technique exploited by Doctor Mike is the use of the inclusive we pronoun. We is used to refer to a social group in which the writer (here, Doctor Mike) includes himself. The texts of his posts draw attention to his affiliation as a member of the medical community and, often, not just the local community in his city or country, but a wider, global community of health practitioners, who by their very large number and varied specialities (nurses, pharmacists, custodial staff) embody a knowledgeable and trustworthy authority, as in ­example (3): (3) We may be doctors from different countries, we may be doctors that have different specialities, we may have different backgrounds. But we are all working in some way to battle COVID-​19 […] I think that we need to highlight these stories from frontline healthcare workers–​ this isn’t limited to doctors–​nurses, pharmacists, custodial staff […] (Schoofs et al., 2022, p. 436; bolding my own)

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By his creation of a global networked identity within a united front of workers labouring towards the same common goal, Doctor Mike legitimises his position as someone who can competently contribute to the discussion of Covid-​19. His authoritative identity is complemented by images in which he is portrayed as an attractive man. Sometimes, non-​Covid-​19 related posts bear the hashtags #mensstyle or #mensfashion, positioning him as being aware of body image and a follower of current fashion. In contrast to his statements positioning him as a medical expert, the identity of Doctor Mike as a sexy man is not signalled overtly though the discourse, but implied by visual cues (carefully selected photos and videos), or by hashtags suggesting that the content is relevant to the topics of fashion or style (see more on hashtags in Chapter 8). And whatever he is doing is clearly attracting attention: (4) Although I payed [sic] close attention to what you said I literally spaced out. All that handsomeness kept distracting me. @doctor.mike (Schoofs et al., 2022, p. 437) The careful management of impressions from intersectional identities is no easy task, and can sometimes lead to identity struggles (Van de Mieroop & Schnurr, 2017). For instance, in one set of posts, Doctor Mike lands himself in trouble by setting his ‘sexy doctor’ persona in direct conflict with his ‘knowledgeable doctor’ image. Following initial posts discouraging mask-​wearing for the public, particularly owing to a shortage of masks available to healthcare workers, Doctor Mike changes his advice towards encouraging the use of masks, but he does not follow through with his image posts (his posts feature images of himself without a mask, nor do they feature him as a doctor). This dissonance between the text encouraging mask-​wearing and the image of a maskless Doctor Mike is interpreted as a contradiction between his two identities. And his followers are quick to judge: (5) A mask on your chin? My god, what kind of doctor is this? You should just stick to your self-​centred YouTube channel and this attention-​seeker Instagram. You, sir, are no doctor. (Schoofs et al., 2022, p. 446) Although the creation and maintenance of a dual identity help Doctor Mike achieve wide appeal, giving him access to a wide online audience, having to juggle the two selves also proves a challenge in ensuring coherence between them in the eyes of a savvy and unforgiving public. The image of Doctor Mike as a ‘sexy doctor’ could be considered a challenge to normative associations of doctors with stern, serious, perhaps older personas. In the next case study, we consider a different challenge to the status quo, namely, users on Twitter and TikTok who express their non-​normative sexuality in order to find a like-​minded community of practice and a safe space, free of discrimination and abuse. 108

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Case study 5.5.3. Expressing your sexuality on Twitter and TikTok In 2011, the American journalist, critic and author Jeff Jervais gave a public address entitled ‘Let’s get naked: Benefits of publicness versus privacy’ (Keen, 2012, p. 52). In his speech, Jervais argued that social media would restructure public spaces and our view of them, reconditioning society towards increased tolerance of previously held social taboos, such as homosexuality. It is certainly true that living a more public life on social media has enabled users to connect with like-​minded communities that would have previously been hidden. Whether or not Jervais is right in claiming that social media is helping us dismantle traditional prohibitions is another matter. Sexuality, a domain previously associated with various taboos and relegated to the private sphere, is one area that has seen ample visibility online. In this case study, we consider the expression of sexuality on Twitter and TikTok. Let’s first turn to Twitter. Twitter functions, by and large, as an open platform where users exhibit and often strive for discoverability, and where followers tend to cluster around topics of interest and communities of practice (e.g. academia, political affiliation etc.) rather than by connection in real life. The openness of Twitter accounts has led to large groups of followers, where ‘the top user of Twitter reaches around 3.2 per cent of the total user base’ (Rao et al., 2010, p. 37). The figure of 3.2 per cent might not seem high until we put it into context: at the time when Rao and colleagues were writing, Twitter was estimated to have 10 million global users (2010, p. 37). Ilbury (2019) set out to study language patterns of Twitter users who employ stylisation features from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to perform a ‘Sassy Queen’ persona. To this end, he analysed a large portion of data (15,804 posts) extracted from the Twitter accounts of ten (openly) gay White British men between the ages of 18 and 25. The link between AAVE and particular gay subcultures had been previously documented by studies of drag queen culture and queen stage performances (Barrett, 2017; Mann, 2011). But why AAVE? It might seem surprising that features of AAVE, a dialect associated with (typically) working-​class Black Americans, should be used to depict social identities of White British gay men. Yet, AAVE and the gay community share an important aspect: their marginalisation from dominant societal positions of power and their struggle against discrimination in a climate where power is placed in heteronormative White hands. Members of the gay community use AAVE features not to portray themselves as Black, nor as AAVE speakers, but in order to exploit the indexical field associated with these features, namely, their association with a lively, provocative, confrontational and outspoken persona. These stances denote qualities that have become enregistered as components of a persona ‘made possible by an essentialised imagining of Black women’ (Ilbury, 2019, p. 13). Recall that gay men tend to present themselves in contrast to heterosexual men and in similarity to (feminine) women. (See China, 2020, for a different example of how features of AAVE, associated with the singer Beyoncé, 109

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have been adopted to index marginalised groups to counter hegemonic, norms of race and gender on Tumblr.) Ilbury wanted to study specifically gay White men, whose repertoire would not otherwise be associated with the use of AAVE. He also set out to probe all levels of language variation: phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic. In other words, he wanted to go beyond the idea that users might borrow just the odd word from AAVE by investigating the extent to which they embraced other AAVE features as well. The phonological level (sounds) was probed by inspecting spelling choices: for example, the use of swimmin’ for swimming, ma’ for my and lawd for lord. The morphosyntactic level relates to the structures used within words and sentences (see Chapter 8). In sum, Ilbury (2019, p. 6) manually combed a corpus of 15,804 tweets for instances of variation in orthography, lexis and grammar. His findings confirmed the hypothesis that tweeters used stylisation to index a well-​established persona in the gay community, labelled by Ilbury as ‘Sassy Queen’ (equivalent to ‘Gay Diva’ and ‘fierce queen’). The patterns found suggest that, while the use of AAVE features was low as an overall proportion (307 tweets, 1.9 per cent of all data, contained at least one AAVE feature), all ten users employed such features in at least some of their tweets. The low occurrence is probably not surprising given the fact that none of the users were actual speakers of AAVE themselves. However, the widespread occurrence of AAVE features shows their pervasiveness in the repertoire of community members. Moreover, Ilbury found evidence of AAVE features across all linguistic levels, from phonology to morphosyntax. Interestingly, users showed a preference towards phonological and lexical features over grammatical ones. Examples of the language analysed are given in examples (6–​8). (6) Phonological features a. Sat Sippin’ ma Starbucks in Soho Square with @User #london #soho #sohosquare #relax b. Post swim, gym and steam…. Feeling pumped for another night in the big city working dat podium! c. @User don’t stan near me please xox

(7) Lexical features a. When I wake up and there no text from bae! And then suddenly remembering the fact there i have no bae…. b. YAAAAAAS @User! Greatest athlete in the world? Of course that’s how @ User rolls. #LEMONADE (8) Morphosyntactic features a. You a strong, black, independent woman, who don’t need no man! @User @User #Beyoncé #Lemonade #BeyHive #Bey 110

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b. Done bought me a candyfloss machine! c. My bitches working them boots #Gucci #glamsquad #dubai #mydubai #friends #fashionista (Ilbury, 2019, pp. 9–​10; formatting as original) The Sassy Queen persona was also performed through humorous memes (see Chapter 8) using a quote from a TV interview by African American Kimberly Williams (2019, p. 14), when she says ‘Ain’t nobody got time for that’. This sentence was a response to claims that she may have caught bronchitis from smoke inhalation during a fire which broke out in her apartment. The video of the interview went viral, as did the quote, which led to the birth of its related meme, as well as a song entitled ‘I got bronchitis’ viewed on YouTube more than 65 million times. Staying on the topic of songs, these have also proved highly influential vehicles for signalling users’ sexuality on another social media platform: TikTok. A signature feature of the Chinese-​backed platform TikTok is its focus on music and dance content (see Chapter 3 for more on TikTok). For instance, its functionality allows users to discover posts by searching for song titles. During the Covid-​19 pandemic, in the later part of 2020, Sachs et al. (2021) identified a noticeable increase in coming out gender identity and sexuality orientation video posts on TikTok. By analysing more than 3 million posts, Sachs and colleagues found that the same four songs were consistently associated with coming out posts. Thus, it seems that these songs had acquired widely recognised social meanings, indexing personal disclosure acts of gender and sexuality. The increased online activity dedicated to revealing these sorts of personal identities may have been the result of social distancing rules imposed during the global pandemic. In the absence of face-​to-​face contact, TikTok offered a safe space in which to connect with other like-​minded community members, identified by means of a shared communicative repertoire; in this case, specific songs. Sachs et al. (2021, p. 5) suggest that, in addition to the notorious echo-​chambers of social media (in which users are isolated from opposing views), it is also possible to identify flowering chambers, which are spaces that allow users to present their authentic selves without fear of being discriminated against. Another study which reports positive outcomes from self-​ expression on TikTok concerns posts responding to #ThisIsMeChallenge. Challenges encourage users to share content on a given theme, usually linked to a particular song or dance routine. #ThisIsMeChallenge is a music challenge which involves songs from Michael Gracey’s film The Greatest Showman, whose ‘challenge consisted of presenting discrimination and coping experiences by marginalised groups, seeking to emphasize their identity and value as a symbol of empowerment’ (Vizcaíno-​Verdú & Aguaded, 2022, p. 158). Users could respond to the challenge by posting content featuring the hashtag #ThisIsMeChallenge. With more than 85.4 million views (as of July 2022), #ThisIsMeChallenge attracted a large number of posts in which users disclose information of discrimination experienced in relation to various aspects of their identity, pertaining to 111

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Figure 5.4  Keala Settle at The Greatest Showman premiere

their gender, sexuality, race, health, physical appearance and so on. Analysing both the posts and the comments to these, Vizcaíno-​Verdú and Aguaded (2022, p. 168) report that ‘in contrast to the negative words introduced by the TikTokers, in the comments we found a large number of positive adjectives and emoji characterized, for example, by the LGBTQIA+​flag, and supportive speech’. Following the popularity of the challenge, songs from The Greatest Showman have come to index authentic representations of the stigmatised and marginalised self. The multimodal affordances created by social media platforms can thus enable the proliferation of not only echo chambers but also flowering chambers, in which text and other communicative means, such as songs and dance routines, can become associated with a shared understanding of the world. These spaces allow users to express their various selves freely, without fear of judgement or discrimination and, in so doing, to challenge existing societal norms.

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In a nutshell We began this chapter by asking the question: who are you really? In a sense, we are the persona we perform for others, foregrounding aspects we want brought to light, and masking those we don’t. Language is one resource, among others, which we utilise in order to position ourselves within a community of practice—​ a community of runners on Instagram, an English gay community on Twitter, a flowering chamber on TikTok. Performance of the self on social media employs some of the same language features used to index social meanings offline, with the added technological affordances provided by the various platforms available. The acts of performing our various selves in person or online help us to imagine and re-​imagine our own ideas about who we are.

References Agha, A. (2005). Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15(1), 38–​59. https://​doi.org/​10.1525/​jlin.2005.15.1.38 Baron, N. S. (2008). Always on: Language in an online and mobile world. Oxford University Press. Barrett, R. (2017). From drag queens to leathermen: Language, gender, and gay male subcultures. Oxford University Press. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2004). Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research. Language in Society, 33(4), 469–​515. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​ S00474​0450​4334​020 Bullingham, L., & Vasconcelos, A. C. (2013). The presentation of self in the online world: Goffman and the study of online identities. Journal of Information Science, 39(1), 101–​112. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​01655​5151​2470​051 Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. China, A. S. (2020). Racialization and gender in Tumblr: Beyoncé as a raciolinguistic semiotic resource. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 265, 81–​105. https://​doi.org/​10.1515/​ijsl-​2020-​2104 DeVito, M. A., Birnholtz, J., & Hancock, J. T. (2017). Platforms, people, and perception: Using affordances to understand self-​presentation on social media. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 740–​754). https://​dl.acm.org/​ doi/​pdf/​10.1145/​2998​181.2998​192 Eckert, P. (2012). Waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41(1), 87–​100. Eckert, P. (1989). The whole woman: Sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation and Change, 1(3), 245–​267. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​ S09543​9450​0000​17X 113

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Eckert, P., & McConnell-​Ginet, S. (2013). Language and gender. Cambridge University Press. Eckert, P., & McConnell-​ Ginet, S. (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-​based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 461–​490. Encyclopedia Britannica. (2021). Café. www.bri​tann​ica.com/​topic/​cafe-​eat​ing-​ and-​drink​ing-​establ​ishm​ent Goffman, E. (2021). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor. https://​ wps.pearso​ncus​tom.com/​wps/​media/​obje​cts/​6714/​6875​653/​readi​ngs/​MSL_​ G​offm​an_​P​rese​ntat​ion.pdf Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. Penguin. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor. Hall, K. (2019). Middle class timelines: Ethnic humor and sexual modernity in Delhi. Language in Society, 48(4), 491–​517. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S00474​ 0451​9000​435 Hall, K. (1995). Lip service on the fantasy lines. In K. Hall & M. Bucholtz (Eds.), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self (pp. 183–​ 216). Routledge. Hazenberg, E. (2020). Can you tell someone’s sexuality from the way they speak? In L. Bauer & A. S. Calude (Eds.), Questions about language: What everyone should know about language in the 21st Century (pp. 108–​122). Routledge. Hollenbaugh, E. E. (2021). Self-​presentation in social media: Review and research opportunities. Review of Communication Research, 9, 80–​98. Ilbury, C. (2019). “Sassy Queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 24(2), 245–​264. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​josl.12366 Keen, A. (2012). Digital vertigo: How today’s online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us. Macmillan. Kitzinger, C. (2005). Heteronormativity in action: Reproducing the heterosexual nuclear family in after-​hours medical calls. Social Problems, 52(4), 477–​498. https://​doi.org/​10.1525/​sp.2005.52.4.477 Kurtoğlu-​Hooton, N. (2021). Language, identity online and running. Palgrave Macmillan. Labov, W. (2001). Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Blackwell. Labov, W. (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 19(3), 273–​309. Lawrence, D. H. (1928). Lady Chatterley’s lover. Penguin. Longhofer, W., & Winchester, D. (2016). Social theory re-​wired: New connections to classical and contemporary perspectives. Routledge. Mann, S. L. (2011). Drag queens’ use of language and the performance of blurred gendered and racial identities. Journal of Homosexuality, 58(6–​7), 793–​811. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​00918​369.2011.581​923

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Meyerhoff, M., & Ehrlich, S. (2019). Language, gender, and sexuality. Annual Review of Linguistics, 5, 455–​475. https://​doi.org/​10.1146/​annu​rev-​ling​uist​ ics-​052​418-​094​326 Ochs, E. (1992). Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp. 335–​358). Cambridge University Press. Oxford English Dictionary Online. (n.d.). Coffee. www.oed.com/​view/​Entry/​ 35784?​rskey=​hQE​PcH&res​ult=​1&isA​dvan​ced=​false Pew Research Center. (2019). Share of US adults using social media, including Facebook, is mostly unchanged since 2018. www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​ 2019/​04/​10/​share-​of-​u-​s-​adu​lts-​using-​soc​ial-​media-​includ​ing-​faceb​ook-​is-​ mos​tly-​unchan​ged-​since-​2018 Rao, D., Yarowsky, D., Shreevats, A., & Gupta, M. (2010). Classifying latent user attributes in Twitter. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Search and Mining User-​Generated Contents (pp. 37–​44). https://​dl.acm.org/​ doi/​pdf/​10.1145/​1871​985.1871​993 Royal Society for Public Health. (2017). Instagram ranked worst for young people’s mental health. www.rsph.org.uk/​ about-​us/​news/​instagram-​ranked-​ worst-​for-​young-​people-​s–​mental-​health.html Sachs, J., Wise, R., & Karell, D. (2021). The TikTok self: Music, signaling, and identity on social media. SocaArXiv. https://​doi.org/​10.31235/​osf.io/​2rx46 Schoofs, K., Van De Mieroop, D., Schnurr, S. Huang, H., & Stavridou, A. (2022). “Masks aren’t comfortable or sexy, but …”: Exploring identity work on DR Mike’s Instagram during the first phase of the COVID-​19 pandemic. In A. Musolff, R. Breeze, K. Kondo, & S. Vilar-​Lluch (Eds.), Pandemic and crisis discourse: Communicating COVID-​19 and public health strategy (pp. 431–​ 452). Bloomsbury. Statista. (2022). Instagram—​statistics & facts. www.stati​sta.com/​top​ics/​1882/​ instag​ram/​ Syme, S. L. (2011). Memoir of a useless boy. Xlibris Corporation. Van De Mieroop, D. & Schnurr, S. (2017). Identity struggles: Evidence from workplaces around the world. John Benjamins. Van Dijck, J. (2013). “You have one identity”: Performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture & Society, 35(2), 199–​215. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1177/​01634​4371​2468​605 Vizcaíno-​Verdú, A., & Aguaded, I. (2022). #ThisIsMeChallenge and music for empowerment of marginalized groups on TikTok. Media and Communication, 10(1), 157–​172. https://​doi.org/​10.17645/​mac.v10i1.4715

What to read next Part 1. The sheer quantity of work on the presentation of self in linguistics can be overwhelming. However, there are several excellent places to start. Because much of the presentation of the self in language can be gleaned by 115

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gaining an understanding of the presentation of gender, two excellent articles are Eckert’s (2012) paper on waves of variation and Meyerhoff and Ehrlich’s (2019) review of field. See also Agha (2005) for an anthropological take on the process of association between language resources and social meaning. Hall’s (1995) article is a non-​technical (and high-​heat) treatment of how language is used to perform sexuality and sexual acts. Bucholtz and Hall (2004) provides an insightful but technical discussion of key ideas arising in research on sexuality. Part 2. There are many studies of identity and presentation of the self on social media, considering various strategies and angles. For example, there is a growing body of work focusing on selfies (photos taken by users of themselves); see the article by Page (2019, ‘Group selfies and Snapchat: From sociality to synthetic collectivization’, Discourse, Context and Media, 28, 79–​92). There are also a number of articles on gender construction and the automatic detection of gender, age and ethnicity, such as Bamman, Eisenstein and Schnoebelen (2014, ‘Gender identity and lexical variation in social media’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(2), 135–​160). An excellent overview of the notion of self-​presentation on social media can be found in Hollenbaugh (2021), though it places less emphasis on language use.

What to do next Data collection. Pick one social media platform you are active on and identify one community of practice you belong to on this platform. Collect a good sample of your own posts (maybe 20) and of some posts of other users whom you deem to be members of the same community of practice. Identify three language features that are used to index the community you are all part of. In looking for these features, consider how you know that the other users are part of the community of practice. What words do they use? Are there particular hashtags that appear recurrently in the posts? Are there jargon terms only shared by the group which perhaps others would not be able to understand? Often, it is straightforward to recognise individual words but try to look beyond lexical items to consider other features, such as unconventional spelling which indexes certain ways of speaking, recurrent phrases and idiosyncratic grammatical patterns. Discussion. Ask a friend to send you a sample of five posts (of reasonable length, 15 words or more) from a single user familiar to them, extracted 116

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from one particular social media platform. Try your hand at guessing as much information about the user as you can. Are they female/​male/​non-​ binary/​trans? What ethnicity are they? What community of practice do they index in their posts? Once you have done that, check with your friend on how well you did. How easy/​hard was this task? Why? (Note: posts collected without permissions are not to be shared with others.)

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Using social media to save the world Theorising metaphor

TLDR. Metaphor is one of the principal tools enlisted in creating complex meaning by making use of direct bodily experience (in the form of primary metaphors). The process of connecting two domains to each other, a target and a source domain, allows speakers to create new framings and evoke different perspectives of the world around them. The chapter introduces various types of metaphors: primary, complex, conventional and deliberate, and uses these to sketch some key ideas from theories of metaphor. Part 2 consists of three case studies, which discuss (1) ‘green’ lifestyle personal blogs referencing the journey metaphor, (2) political campaigns using the game metaphor on Facebook and TikTok and (3) the framing of health discourse related to the Covid-​19 pandemic in terms of war metaphors on Twitter. The discussion elaborates on the linguistic strategies used to participate in various forms of activism on social media.

6.1 From linguistic signs to reality: conjuring up a picture In 1929, a Belgian artist would paint one of the best-​known Surrealist images: an image so iconic and puzzling that it remains enshrined in mystery to this day. The painting in question, The treachery of images (La trahison des images in the original French; Figure 6.1) involves both shape and text, and an apparent contradiction. This is how the French philosopher Paul-​Michel Foucault described it: ‘a carefully drawn pipe, and underneath it (handwritten in a steady, painstaking, artificial script, a script from the convent, like that found heading the notebooks of schoolboys, or on a blackboard after an object lesson), this note: “This is not a pipe” ’ (Foucault, 1982, translated from French by James Harkness). The artist, René Magritte, was born in a moderately affluent Belgian family, but one plagued by tragedy. His mother committed suicide while he was only a child. Showing a keen interest not just in art, but also language, classics and philosophy, Magritte did not see himself as a painter dealing in canvases, but as a thinker dealing in ideas (according to James Harkness’s introductory notes to his 118

DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-6

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Figure 6.1 René Magritte, La trahison des images (‘The treachery of images’) Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

translation of Foucault’s book). The relationship between words and the things which they denote fascinated and tormented Magritte. The deliberate contradiction between the image of the pipe and the text underneath it (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) in his celebrated painting is interpreted as a critique of language as a whole. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure had argued that words do not have meanings in and of themselves, and that they are arbitrary signs which are conventionally assigned to entities within an organised system. So, Swahili mbwa, Māori kurī, Romanian câine and English dog do not ‘refer’ to a given entity (in this case, a four-​legged, furry animal which barks, often kept as a faithful pet) but they can ‘evoke’ it by convention. Magritte’s painting The treachery of images highlights this disconnect between language and reality in an unnerving manner, by deliberately setting up a contradiction between the image and the text. In a similar vein to Saussurean arguments about the disconnect between reality and linguistic signs, Magritte’s paintings underscore the disconnect between reality and art—​the drawing of a pipe does not make the pipe real; it merely evokes the notion of a pipe, but one cannot pick it up and smoke it. These ideas demonstrate the symbolic nature of language. Words and texts stand in for ideas and evoke them. If this happens for concrete objects, such as pipes, what about the more complex and abstract concepts, like health, 119

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happiness, love or politics? How do we use language to evoke those notions? Two American linguists gave an answer to that question in their 1980 book Metaphors we live by.

Metaphors we live by: ubiquitous and systematic When cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson met in January 1979, they realised that they shared a dissatisfaction with how meaning had been understood and treated in the Western tradition. They wanted to probe how we make meaning and how we make sense of complex ideas. This quest led them to metaphors and eventually to writing their ground-​breaking book on the subject. One of the major claims of the book is that ‘metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words’ but, in fact, ‘on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical’ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p 6, italics as in original). So, what are metaphors and why are they so important? In simple terms, a metaphor is an expression in which one entity or idea is used to understand another. We will come to a more formal definition of the concept shortly, but before doing so, let’s consider an example. Take the sentence My memory is a little rusty these days. A person’s memory is not a physical object and, therefore, it cannot rust, and even if it technically could rust, the sentence is not used to suggest that anything is actually turning copper-​red and brittle. Instead, the sentence is used to indicate that the speaker’s memory is not performing as well as it once used to. But how do we arrive at this interpretation? The expression brings together two different domains (which is to say, two topics or themes): (1) the physical domain of objects or tools (if we want to think of the mind as a tool used to get things done) that have the capability of rusting, and (2) the domain of the human brain. The brain’s slowing down is understood by reference to a physical change of state in which a tool that was once fully-​functioning has become sub-​optimal. The link between the two domains is helpful, because we have direct experience with physical changes like tools rusting but less knowledge of invisible processes like brains slowing down. A domain such as the familiar experiential domain, used to conceptualise ideas that are less accessible, is called the source domain. The less tangible and less familiar domain we are trying to explain by reference to it is called the target domain. The connection between the two domains is a mapping. We can now formulate a linguistic definition of the notion of metaphor as follows: conceptual metaphors are expressions in which a target domain concept is mapped onto a source domain concept. There are two important observations to make about conceptual metaphors. First, as already mentioned, metaphor is ubiquitous. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) note, metaphors are everywhere: we use them in our daily lives and often, we don’t even realise we are doing so. Against the popular misconception that metaphors are reserved for poetry and award-​winning prose, it turns out that 120

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our thought processes rely heavily on metaphors and that they are, in fact, themselves metaphorical. That is to say that we make sense of the world and organise concepts in our minds by recourse to our direct, bodily experience, such as movement, sight, eating, drinking, sleeping and so on. From this perspective, our understanding of various concepts relies on cross-​domain mappings (mappings from one domain to another) which, over time, can become stored in long-​term memory, enabling them to seem so natural that they go completely unnoticed. As Evans (2015, p. 56) explains, when it comes to abstract or complex notions such as love, minds, time or death,1 we recycle and reuse existing structures from concrete motor-​sensory experience to create and layer meaning. Secondly, metaphors are systematic (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, Chapter 2). Systematicity refers to the fact that sentences like My memory is a little rusty these days are not unique examples: they belong to a family of similar uses, which also make reference to the target domain of (in this case) the brain as a proxy for the mind by mapping it onto the source domain of a tool or machine. Five examples are given in (1). Using linguistic notation, this is represented with small capital letters denoting the domains or concepts involved, and square brackets spelling out the mapping: [the mind is a machine]. The words in bold belong to the source domain, in this case referencing the concept of a machine. (1) (a) We’re still trying to grind out the solution to this equation. (b) My mind just isn’t operating today. (c) Boy, the wheels are turning now! (d) I’m a little rusty today. (e) We’ve been working on this problem all day and now we’re running out of steam. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 27; bolding my own) Another set of examples is given in (2), involving the metaphor [love is a journey]. (2) (a) We are at a crossroads in our relationship. (b) The marriage has been a rather weird journey so far. (c) We have hit a few bumps along the road but are now on a smooth path. (d) This relationship is a dead-​end street. (e) Look how far we have come since that first date. (Evans, 2015, p. 38; bolding my own) Interestingly, the domain of journeys is not the only way to explain the idea of love: it can also be conceptualised as a container, war, magic, hunting, food, madness, a physical force and a patient: (3) (a) I’m in love.                        [love is a container] (b) He conquered her.                     [love is war] 121

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(c) She cast a spell on him.              [love is magic] (d) She trapped him in her games.        [love is hunting] (e) He’s hungry for her lips.         [love is food] (f) I’m just crazy about her.            [love is madness] (g) We could feel the electricity between us.  [love is a physical force] (h) Their relationship is on life support.    [love is a patient] (Evans, 2015, pp. 55–​56; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 49) The different source domains we can draw on to make sense of the mysterious concept of love have the ability to foreground distinct aspects of what it means to be in love. For instance, framings of the patient domain bring to mind the pain and suffering that might be involved in unrequited love, while the container domain foregrounds the imprisonment that can arise from feeling utterly consumed by the emotional intensity of being in love. In order to analyse how the various aspects of a given metaphor arise, we need to consider how the mapping mechanism works. Table 6.1 provides a breakdown of the ways in which the two domains (source and target) connect in the metaphor [love is food]. For instance, food consumed is compared to a desired lover, and the pleasure and satisfaction evoked by loving someone is compared to the kind of pleasure and satisfaction one might gain from a satisfying and enjoyable meal. Yet the mapping between love and food does not constitute a perfect one-​to-​ one match. Without going into too many details of what desiring a lover might involve, the fact remains that we do not physically consume them as we might an apple or a piece of cake. And while the intensity of desire one might experience for another could indeed be very high, one’s actual survival is not likely to depend on it in exactly the same way as one’s need for food. Put another way, not all elements from one domain will have perfect counterparts to those in the other domain (Kövecses, 2017).

Table 6.1 [love is food] mappings food

(source domain)

(target domain)

mapping

love

The food consumed

→

The act of eating something The person eating The feeling of pleasure or satisfaction from eating delicious food Necessity of food for nourishment and survival

→ → →

The desired lover or desired body parts belonging to the lover The act of loving or desiring someone The person experiencing being in love The feeling of pleasure or satisfaction from being in a fulfilling relationship

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→

Necessity of love for emotional fulfilment

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Metaphors from the body: directly experiential metaphors are primary One of the most quoted English-​language playwrights, the Irish-​born Oscar Wilde, was known for his wit. His humour and intellect linger through his many quotes, which continue to fascinate and amuse. Among the most famous, but also the most misrepresented of these is the line We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. It appears that this much-​quoted line has mistakenly acquired a life of its own, having escaped the context in which it was first used. The excerpt in (4) from Wilde’s 1980 play, Lady Windermere’s fan, provides the surrounding discourse in which the line occurs. The character who utters it, Lord Darlington, references two sets of people, where the second set is presented as a sub-​set of the first: those ‘who are all in the gutter’ and those (people who are in the gutter but which are also) ‘looking at the stars’. (4) lord darlington. [Rising from R. table, where he has been writing letters.] They always do find us bad! dumby. I don’t think we are bad. I think we are all good, except Tuppy. lord darlington. No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. [Sits down at C. table.] dumby. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars? Upon my word, you are very romantic to-​night, Darlington. (Wilde, 1980, p. 64) It is not difficult to interpret who those looking at the stars are: they are people who see the good around them, in other words, beauty, hope and positivity (related to the metaphor [up is good]). The difficulty is interpreting who the people in the gutter are meant to be. Clearly being in the gutter is not deemed a good thing: [down is bad]. Many interpret the phrase we are all in the gutter as referring to the poor, luckless and ill-​fated. However, Dumby’s previous turn contains the sentence I don’t think we are bad. But who is we? In the wider context of the play, it turns out that we is used to refer specifically to men, not to all humankind, and, in particular, to men who are untrustworthy and who behave badly, especially in affairs of the heart (a primary theme of the play). Putting it all together, the intended meaning of the quote is that, while men are generally bad and not to be trusted, some men are still capable of seeing beauty in the right places. Setting the exact details to one side, the main point of Wilde’s quote is to draw attention to the remarkable human capacity for changing perspective and finding good in others, even if they lack such goodness in themselves. He conjures up this interpretation by resorting to a basic body experience: namely,

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physical orientation (up, down), which is then mapped onto a value judgement (good, bad). This example illustrates a distinction between two different metaphor types: primary metaphors, like the one in (4), and complex metaphors. Conceptual metaphors that arise from bodily experience connected to motor-​sensory capabilities, movement and other body actions, are thought to be primary or core metaphors, because they leverage the most basic knowledge available. Examples of primary metaphors include the price of oil has gone up, the number of students is going down [quantity is vertical elevation], relations between us have cooled, things are heating up between those two [intimacy is warmth] and he made his point very clear, do you see what I mean? [knowing is seeing] (from Evans, 2015, pp. 152–​153). In contrast, complex metaphors arise from a layered process in which the metaphor consists of multiple primary metaphors (involving the body) or of cultural associations rather than embodied ones (Evans, 2015, p. 42 and 49). These include expressions like I’ve invested a lot of time in this, he has no idea how he’s even spent the last three weeks [time is money] or I am bubbling with anger or bursting with rage [emotion is a natural force].

Metaphors in the mind: an unsolved puzzle So far, we have seen that regardless of type, metaphors are tools enlisted in meaning-​ creation, which is precisely the crux of what Lakoff and Johnson wanted to investigate. But according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), we can go one step further and argue that metaphors are not just mere stepping stones from bodily experience to abstract concepts, they are also vehicles for reasoning (see also Kövecses, 2017, p. 16). For example, if we consider the metaphor [love is food], our knowledge of food and eating can help us reason and, thus, act accordingly. We know that consuming too much food is bad for our health and, similarly, becoming too consumed by or wrapped up in a relationship can be bad for our mental health. Not all food is good for us and, similarly, not every relationship is going to be a healthy one. Making wise food choices is recommended, as is making wise choices concerning relationships. However, not everyone agrees that metaphors play such an active role in reasoning. The concern is that this kind of reasoning may only follow if the cross-​ domain mapping (from source to target domain) is consciously derived each time a metaphor is used. Psychologists like Ray Gibbs have questioned whether recurrent metaphorical expressions like our relationship is at a crossroads and we may have to bail out of it really do lead speakers to ‘re-​enact the same mappings across conceptual domains, spaces or categories over and over again if they have conventionalized metaphorical senses at their disposal that they can pull directly from their mental dictionaries when needed’ (Steen, 2011, pp. 30–​31). Psycholinguistic experiments comparing sentences with two possible interpretations, a literal one and a metaphorical one (Glucksberg et al., 1982, cited in 124

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Harley, 2014, p. 338), show that, in some cases, the two readings are processed at the same time. In other words, the literal one is not always parsed ahead of the metaphorical one. Others analysed frozen metaphors (idioms such as kick the bucket or fly off the handle) and found that readers process idioms faster than literal, non-​conventional uses of such expressions, for example she kicked the bucket next to her leg, the fly immediately flew off the handle of the door (Gibbs, 1980, cited in Harley, 2014, p. 338). These ideas have led to another distinction between different types of metaphors. On the one hand, there are conventional metaphors, which are merely figures of speech; in other words, routinised associations between what were once separate domains but which have since become so often associated with one another that the words no longer activate both domains. Conventional metaphors include John attacked all my points ([argument is war]), the meaning is right there in the text ([ideas are objects]) and I am in high spirits today but my sister is down in the dumps [happy is up, sad is down]. These metaphors are not conducive to reasoning because they involve well-​established ways of talking about the world and the words used no longer register on our meaning-​making radar. Put another way, if our metaphors are nothing more than ready-​made, routinised formulae (similar to idioms), their relevance to thought processes becomes highly questionable (Steen, 2011, p. 30). And troublingly, it is estimated that the great majority of metaphors are of this type. In sharp contrast to conventional metaphors are deliberate metaphors, which are novel and coined deliberately through creative language play and ‘quite consciously employed for their unique, didactic, qualities and sometimes for poetic beauty’ (Gibbs, 2011, p. 27). These include the much-​cited line It is the East, and Juliet is the sun, from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, and expressions used by advertisers to sell products. For example, a new deodorant that offers 24-​hour protection may conjure up the novel conceptualisation of the deodorant as an ally against a common enemy, here body odour (Kövecses, 2017, p. 17). Indeed, these metaphors actively invite explicit processing of (novel) mappings between concepts from one domain to another, thereby influencing thought processes. Alas, despite the theoretical plausibility of such a distinction between conventional and deliberate metaphors, not everyone agrees that it is possible to objectively establish whether a metaphor is deliberate, or whether speakers consciously go about trying to create novel metaphors (e.g. Gibbs, 2011). Various proposals have been put forward (Steen, 2011 offers one) to mitigate these problems. However, despite lingering disagreements and open questions, it is indisputable that metaphors have been around since ancient times, having been found in the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt, the characters of ancient Chinese, and old Greek and Roman writings alike (see Gibbs, 2011, p. 533 and references cited therein), and they remain pervasive and omnipresent in all language use, right up to and including modern times.

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6.2 Using social media to frame the world around us In this section, we consider a specific use of social media platforms, namely for activism, and present data illustrating how metaphors of various kinds are involved in achieving particular framings of the messages they are enlisted to convey. Activism has many different facets, and social media provides an ideal tool for such activity, given its freedom and lack of gatekeeping. Users can put forward their own agenda and amplify their voice in support of various causes, from documenting and promoting ‘green’ living on personal blogs, to lobbying for political votes and increased popularity on TikTok or Facebook, to declaring ‘war’ on a global pandemic on Twitter. The discussion in this section does not attempt to evaluate whether this kind of activism is positive or negative; rather, the main focus is on the language strategies which are used to frame the various forms of activism.

Case study 6.2.1. Promoting ‘green’ living journeys on personal blogs Weblogs (shortened to blogs) first appeared in the late 1990s (Herring et al., 2004), but it was only in the early 2010s that they became truly interactive, allowing visitors to read content and comment on it. This, in turn, could result in long discussion threads, and in communities emerging, if users with common interests formed relationships with one another through their online interactions. Over time, the number of blogs has risen exponentially, particularly in light of the many software platforms hosting them free of charge. If the US is anything to go by, there are currently more than 31 million American-​based bloggers online (Statista). While blogs were initially owned by individuals (single-​authored blogs), more recently they have come to constitute hubs bringing together teams of bloggers with a shared topic of interest (multi-​author blogs). The practice of blogging is deemed to bring a sense of self-​expression and empowerment, and to encourage a more reflective and thoughtful perspective on the world (see Blood, 2002; Herring et al., 2004). The topics of blogs range widely from technical and academic, to news reporting, niche hobbies and personal diary-​like entries about travel, parenting or crafts. One common blog topic is that of environmental sustainability and climate change. From businesses and corporations, to governments and councils, scientists and social scientists, all the way to everyday citizens, environmental sustainability has become a hot topic attracting debate, concern and activism. In this case study, I draw on a recent article by Lancaster-​based linguist Dimitrinka Atanasova, on ‘green’ living blogs (2020). Atanasova analysed the language used in personal blogs promoting various aspects of green living, including zero waste, sustainability and eco-​ friendly 126

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parenting. She did this by inspecting 222 posts from Healthline’s top ten blogs, collected during January–​ December 2017. Healthline is ‘one of the largest providers of consumer health information on the web actively raising awareness about the negative effects of climate change on human health’ (Atanasova, 2020, p. 15, footnote 5). It is relevant to point out that the very phrase we use to describe this lifestyle is itself figurative, using a colour term (green) to reference the complex notion of the environment; in other words, using an attribute of the concept referenced as a proxy for the concept itself. This process is called metonymy. Figure 6.2 shows an example taken from one of the blogs analysed by Atanasova, namely My zero waste. The screenshot in Figure 6.2 showcases two clauses in which the goal of attaining a zero-​waste lifestyle is framed as a journey: starting their own Zero Waste journey and one of the first steps I suggest. Since journeys are events which unfold over time, they can be thought of as having a beginning and an end, as well as encompassing a number of steps—​depending on the length of the journey, these could be big or small, with few or many such steps. There are at least two reasons why metaphors are useful in discussions of sustainability. First, the notion of sustainability encompasses high complexity and in-​depth technical knowledge. Given current research available, it is highly unlikely that any one individual will fully understand the scientific evidence backing ongoing changes in our environment and their causes, let alone the precise solutions needed. Secondly, the idea of attempting major lifestyle changes leading to a zero-​waste goal can seem overwhelming and downright impossible for many. This is where the notion of a journey can help ease the burden. As reported elsewhere for business communication (Milne et al., 2006) and interviews with environmentally-​minded individuals (Uren et al., 2019), the journey metaphor is a common recurring linguistic tool in framing sustainability discourse.

Figure 6.2  Excerpt from article posted on blog My zero waste Source: https://​myze​rowa​ste.com/​2021/​07/​4-​reas​ons-​why-​you-​sho​uld-​buy-​loose-​fruit-​and-​veg​ etab​les/​

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Here are some advantages which this metaphor provides in discussions of ‘green’ lifestyles. First, journeys can involve multiple ways of reaching the final destination, which allows the possibility that there is no right or wrong way to achieve it: (5) I’ve come up with an outline of a step-​by-​step zero waste process, but it by no means has to go in this order. You can go in any direction you lik) […). Going zero waste really is a journey. When I started this lifestyle, I knew I wanted to avoid making trash and bringing plastic into my home. (Going zero waste blog, quoted in Atanasova, 2020, pp. 7–​10; bolding my own) Secondly, journeys can present difficulties and stumbling blocks along the way. Knowing this is a normal part of the journey can help ease the fear that failure is looming. (6) As an admitted perfectionist, I too have felt the guilt and fear of not choosing the healthiest, most eco-​friendly route every time. […] I do use some mindful principles to guide me along the way. (Mindful momma blog, quoted in Atanasova, 2020, pp. 7–​10; bolding my own) Thirdly, it is expected that journeys will unfold over time and involve incremental changes along the way; new things may be learnt, new habits develop and growth ensues. This framing projects a positive, low-​stress, growth mindset to accompany the overwhelming feeling connected with pressure to adopt a ‘green’ lifestyle quickly. (7) I can hardly believe that January 2017 marks the beginning of our family’s fourth year of pursuing Zero Waste by living with less. Looking back over the previous three years I am proud of how far we have come, but I continue to encounter important lessons along the way. (PAREdown blog, quoted in Atanasova, 2020, pp. 7–​10; bolding my own) Fourthly, the journey metaphor can be used to bring to mind the idea that individuals travel along a path, which they are carving for others to follow. A step in the right direction can mitigate the worrying feeling of doom by suggesting that small changes enacted by single individuals can lead to big societal impacts in the long run. (8) [w]‌ether you’ve just started going zero waste or you’re trash in a mason jar level with just one step in the right direction, you can change the world. (Going zero waste blog, quoted in Atanasova, 2020, pp. 7–​10; bolding my own) 128

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Table 6.2 [‘green’ lifestyle is a journey] mappings journey

(source domain)

Takes time to complete, not instantaneous May present different routes for reaching the final destination, some may travel at a different pace to others Can present road blocks and difficulties in completing the course May require new skills and present life lessons along the way Individual travellers may help pave the way for others who embark on the same journey in future

lifestyle (target domain)

mapping

‘green’

→

Takes time to implement necessary changes, possibly many years Not everyone will need to make the same changes in lifestyle to achieve this, and they might make these at a different pace Can present difficulties and challenges in making the changes required

→

→ → →

May require personal growth and new knowledge to achieve Individual changes in lifestyle constitute potential catalysts for bigger societal changes

The sentence in (8) foregrounds the fact that different people might be at different stages (levels) in their zero-​waste journeys; for example, some might be at the very beginning (you’ve just started) and others further along (you’re trash in a mason jar, implying that one’s entire household waste can fit inside a mason jar). The main point is that, regardless of how far along the journey someone is, they are already doing the right thing (one step in the right direction) and they have the potential to make an impact (you can change the world ). Adopting a zero-​waste lifestyle is conceptualised as an action (going zero waste); it is something one does, not something one is. Table 6.2 summarises the ways in which (regular) journeys can fruitfully be used as a proxy for efforts towards a ‘green’ lifestyle.

Case study 6.2.2. Playing the political game on Facebook and TikTok We have just seen how individuals access social media resources to champion sustainability causes online. A different kind of promotion takes place within the political realm, in which politicians make use of social media platforms to lobby for votes and attract support. Two examples will be given here from Facebook and TikTok. Facebook is arguably the archetype of social media platforms. As described in Chapter 3, Facebook combines various features designed to increase engagement and bring users back online regularly, with the ‘newsfeed’ stream (a constantly updating list of posts) being one of these. Scrolling through the latest news feed items allows users to see not just the latest updates from their ‘Friends’ (people they are bidirectionally connected to), but also their friends’ activity on 129

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Figure 6.3  Facebook news feed example in which other users’ activity is visible

the platform (as long as their friends enable this feature): what they have ‘liked’, commented on and reacted to. For example, the news feed featured in Figure 6.3 has been liked by 73 users, some of whom will be connected to the user browsing. Social scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler argue in their book Connected: The amazing power of social networks and how they shape our lives (2010) that people are influenced not just by their friends but also by their friends’ friends. The Facebook news feed stream directly illustrates how this can take place: we are privy to what our friends are doing on Facebook and, indirectly, this provides a window into what their friends are doing by watching from the ‘sidelines’ how our friends react to their friends’ activity. The sphere of influence can thus spread beyond immediate connections to our more distant social network connections. Social network behaviour is leveraged by companies and individuals alike, and nowhere is the power of influence more sought after than within the world of politics. This is because (positive) influence can translate into votes—​the top prize in politics. A pilot study by a Nigerian scholar analysed Facebook posts discussing two of the most influential politicians in Kano, a highly unstable region of Nigeria (Yusuf, 2021). The former governor of Kano, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau and his adversary Engr. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso faced ongoing and fierce rivalry in securing political control over the Kano region. Hausa language posts collected by Yusuf 130

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(2021) framed the opposition between the two figures as a game of football and, more specifically, as a conflict between renowned international football coaches, also known for their ongoing enmity: the Spanish coach Pep Guardiola and the Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho (Yusuf, 2021, p. 6). In particular, Guardiola would often be used to metaphorically reference Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, while Mourinho stood for Engr. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso. These comparisons emerged from similarities between how the coaches managed their football teams and how their political counterparts approached government within their regions. Here are some examples from Yusuf’s data (2021); examples are given only in their English translation from Hausa, with the exception of (9f). (9) a. My football mind shows me the Guardiola and Mourinho of Kano politics. b. They are both winners and losers. c. You are referring to stylish and beautiful attacking football that is linked to Guardiola and the boring, disgusting and parking the bus of Mourinho. d. It’s more to do with their differing pre and post-​match interviews. e. Things would have been different had our darling president scored this early on corruption. f. Kwankwaso yabawa Buharikafa (Kwankwaso has performed a step over on Buhari). (Yusuf, 2021, pp. 6–​7; bolding my own) These sentences illustrate the use of the metaphor [politics is football] to conceptualise the target domain of politics by leveraging the source domain of football. The rationale of the metaphor follows from the familiarity of Nigerian citizens with the sport. Given its popularity in the country, the metaphor facilitates a vivid representation of the complex domain of politics by referencing the population’s own experiences of football. Yusuf summarises the link between the two domains as shown in Table 6.3. Table 6.3  The mechanics of the politics is football metaphor in Nigerian politics football

(source domain)

(target domain)

mapping

politics

Football coaches and players Pre-​and post-​match interviews given by coaches and players Winning and losing football games Football’s transfer window Scoring an early goal in a game

→ →

Politicians Media interviews given by politicians

→ → →

Football governing body (FIFA)

→

Winning and losing elections Defection from one party to another Dealing decisively with anyone who violates the laws of the land Nigerian electoral body (INEC)

Source: Yusuf, 2021, p. 8

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Unsurprisingly, Nigerian politicians are not alone in utilising a framing involving games to appeal to everyday citizens. The left-​wing populist Podemos party in Spain employs a similar strategy in its TikTok posts. Following a social media campaign backing an anti-​ austerity movement (15-​ Movement), the Podemos political party was formed in 2014 with the aim of fighting corruption and inequality (Cervi et al., 2021). In a climate of concern that young people were becoming disengaged from politics and increasingly reluctant to vote, the Podemos party (literally, ‘we can’) was keen to back student causes and student-​ led protests to enlist the support of the youth. Founded by Pablo Iglesias, a 29-​ year-​old political science lecturer (Tremlett, 2015), the party quickly rose to fame, reporting marches involving tens of thousands of attendees. Chief among the party’s strategies was its deliberate and widespread use of social media. For example, Podemos was the first political party in Spain to join the platform TikTok, which is known for its youth culture (see Chapter 3 for more on TikTok). With 191,400 followers and more than 3 million likes, it also became the most followed political party on the platform (Cervi et al., 2021, p. 269). The platform’s orientation towards a young and innovative audience resonated deeply with Podemos’s ideals of circumventing the (corrupt) elite (2021, p. 270). So integral is the use of technology and social media to the party ethos that some have called it a ‘techno-​populist party’ (Bickerton & Invernizzi Accetti, 2018, cited in Cervi et al., 2021, p 270). Cervi and her colleagues (2021) analysed the first 100 posts released by Podemos on TikTok (including their captions) to gain an understanding of the party’s promotion strategies. Interestingly, while the posts made use of rather sophisticated affordances associated with internet language, such as music, videos, emoticons, GIFs, hyperlinks and internet slang, the content did not specifically

Figure 6.4  Podemos march, Madrid, 2015

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seem to be adapted for TikTok per se. For instance, the posts included only one Duet (Duets and Challenges, in which users attempt to reconstitute and mimic a video of another user’s dance or singing routine, are a key feature of TikTok). Two common ways of framing political discourse reported in previous literature involve the ‘game frame’ ([politics is game]) and the ‘issue frame’ ([politics is tactical strategy]). Podemos opted overwhelmingly (77 per cent) for the ‘game frame’ (Cervi et al., 2021, p. 276). Specifically, the framing involves an imagined fight between ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, which is also related to the war metaphor: [politics is war]. A second and related strategy employed by Podemos was to frame their political content with explicit appeal to emotions (82 per cent of the posts involved some kind of affective positioning). By far the most frequent type of emotion referenced was that of enjoyment (62 per cent), followed by anger (20 per cent) and disgust (18 per cent) (2021, p. 278). These emotions were often heightened by the presence of emoticons and hashtags. In sum, the ‘game frame’, referencing a battle between Good and Evil, heightened by emotive language, creates a powerful dose of ‘politainment’ (Cervi et al., 2021, p. 281), whose goal is both to persuade and to entertain.

Case study 6.2.3. Using Twitter to declare war on a global pandemic In late December 2019, Chinese authorities announced that a new virus was rapidly spreading (2019-​nCoV as it was first called). By the start of 2020, many governments around the world had begun implementing lockdowns and various other measures in order to control the potential spread of this deadly virus. While the specific pandemic of 2019 was new, pandemics themselves were not. Humans had experienced others throughout history, including the Black Plague, which spread across Africa and Eurasia in the fourteenth century, the cholera outbreaks of the nineteenth century, the so-​called Spanish flu (1918), various measles outbreaks (for instance, in the Netherlands in 2013), the Ebola outbreak in Africa (2014), and the Zika virus in Brazil and the Americas (2015), among others. However, one new aspect of this latest pandemic was the global availability of social media platforms which allowed anyone to freely express their views on the events unfolding around them. The role of social media in the Covid-​ 19 pandemic could hardly be overestimated. A research report published by the University of Melbourne in collaboration with the World Health Organization (Volkmer, 2021) found that most people between the ages of 18 and 40 obtained just over one third (34.2 per cent) of their information in relation to Covid-​19 from social media platforms, only slightly less than national news media (43.6 per cent), and much more information than they obtained from family (22.4 per cent), friends (19.8 per cent) or friends’ social media (16.1 per cent). One of the social media platforms which recorded increased traffic in relation to Covid-​19 was the microblogging site Twitter. Twitter allows anyone 133

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with an account (which is free to register) to share thoughts, images, pictures and hyperlinks in bite-​sized posts of 280 characters (see Chapter 4 for more on Twitter). As news and lockdowns were spreading, so were Covid-​19 posts on Twitter. By May 2020, one estimate placed the total number of tweets about Covid-​19 at 628 million (TweetBinder Blog, n.d.). Various researchers took to compiling datasets of Covid-​19 posts from Twitter in a bid to understand not just what people were talking about in relation to the virus but also how they were talking about it (for example, Lawson, 2021). To this end, Wicke and Bolognesi (2020) analysed 203,756 English-​language tweets from unique users, collected over a period of 14 days during April–​May 2020. They wanted to discover the broad topics of the tweets and their framing. Owing to the volume of data collected, it was impractical to analyse each tweet individually, so they resorted to computational tools to automate the process. Using sophisticated artificial intelligence tools (an unsupervised machine learning technique for extracting recurrent words in their data, called Latent Dirichlet Allocation, LDA), Wicke and Bolognesi (2020, p. 10) found that a broad-​ brush approach could summarise the topics in four themes: Topic 1: Communications and Reporting, Topic 2: Community and Social Compassion, Topic 3: Politics, and Topic 4: Reacting to the pandemic. It is useful to note that the LDA algorithm is an exploratory tool rather than an exact one, and it cannot be used to summarise the topics on its own. The topic labels were conceived by the researchers after inspecting the weightings of the various words that the algorithm provides for each of the four groupings. The second question which Wicke and Bolognesi (2020) wanted to probe relates to how Twitter users framed their Covid-​19 posts. Following related research which suggested that the war metaphor would likely come up, the authors set out to automate tools for identifying and quantifying the use of this particular metaphor in their data. Unsurprisingly, the war metaphor did indeed have a large presence in the tweets collected. In total, 10,846 tweets contained at least one term related to war—​for example, fight, combat, attack, enemy, defeat, violence and so on. Figure 6.5 provides one such example, containing the phrase After we disarm this pandemic, in which the source domain (war) is mapped

Figure 6.5  Tweet in relation to Covid-​19 containing the war metaphor

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onto the target domain (this pandemic), to personify the pandemic as an enemy in need of disarming. Other recurrent metaphors involved the conceptualisation of Covid-​19 in relation to the source domain of storms (Covid-​19 as the perfect storm, a snow blizzard, a typhoon, tornado, disaster), the domain of monsters (Covid-​19 as a freak virus, an evil zombie, bogeyman, villain, ghost, vampire) and the domain of waves (Covid-​19 as a tidal wave, eruption, flood, whirlpool, tremor, calamity). Although all these other metaphors did occur in the data, the war metaphor was by far the most common (Wicke & Bolognesi, 2020, p. 18) and, specifically, the word fight (and its related forms, fighting, fought and so on) was present in more than 3,000 tweets. In a follow-​up study, Wicke and Bolognesi (2021) collected additional Twitter data with the aim of tracking changes over time. They found that tweeters’ attitudes and general sentiment dropped from a largely positive outlook during the initial lockdown to a highly negative one in subsequent lockdowns. But that was not the only change detected. The use of war metaphors changed too, declining in use over time. Here are two illustrative examples from their data. In (10), the words riots and rioting are used in reference to actual (literal) events which took place in protest of Covid-​19 measures. (10) Covid was the setup for the riots. Business closed.pre-​covid to run out of business.post-​covid so no one is around when rioting. Funny strange too the masks requirement in these cities giving cover.it’s a warped strategy by Left/​ Dems to win election & or coup (Tweet, July 2, 2020, quoted in Wicke & Bolognesi, 2021, p. 18; bolding my own) Similarly, although the violence and fighting referenced in (11) remain figurative, the #BlackLivesMatter movement resurged following the murder of George Floyd, as did BLM protests; referencing real events. (11) Think I need to switch off Twitter for a while, my feed is just full of senseless violence. #BlackLivesMatter for sure, but the world has temporarily forgotten we are also still fighting a global epidemic #Covid19 (Tweet, July 2, 2020, quoted in Wicke & Bolognesi, 2021, p. 18; bolding my own) The conflation of real events denoting violence and figurative underpinnings of Covid-​19 may have triggered a decrease in efficiency of the war metaphor for characterising the virus which ‘could contribute to the overall decrease of metaphorical uses of war-​related terms’ (Wicke & Bolognesi, 2021, p. 18). But there may be more to this story. A slightly unusual comment, posted on Twitter in March 2020, formed a thread initiated by Spanish linguist Inés Olza (University of Navarra) (Figure 6.6), who was later joined by several other academics. 135

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Figure 6.6  Tweet which sparked the #ReframeCovid initiative Source: Reproduced with author’s permission Note: Translation kindly provided by Inés Olza: ‘Oh, war rhetoric. Please let’s look for different metaphors: there are plenty of them (e.g. spatial metaphors, which are much more neutral and close to reality), and I believe they would encourage people in better ways. #rhetoric #metaphor #COVID19’.

This thread culminated in the official launch of the #ReframeCovid initiative (https://​sites.goo​gle.com/​view/​refra​meco​vid/​), as both a bilingual website (in Spanish and English) and a collaborative multilingual Google document, alongside the Twitter campaign. The aim of the #ReframeCovid initiative is to draw attention to unintended, negative consequences of framing Covid-​19 by reference to war and to propose viable alternative metaphors for conceptualising it. But what is the problem with war metaphors? In a research article which outlines the rationale for the #ReframeCovid initiative, Olza and colleagues (2021, pp. 101–​105) explain that conceptualising Covid-​19 in terms of war metaphors may present a number of disadvantages, as shown in Table 6.4. So, while the war metaphor may have been fruitful as a starting point at the beginning of the pandemic, in order to engender a sense of urgency and to prompt compliance from the public with unprecedented measures designed to stop the spread of the virus, over time the relevance and suitability of this metaphor may have declined. Having outlined problems with war framings of Covid-​19, we now turn to the second goal of the initiative, namely to provide viable alternative framings. The strategy proposed by Olza et al. (2021) was to crowdsource potential alternatives by encouraging the community at large to contribute relevant contenders, in as many languages as possible. Examples of other such contenders include the journey metaphor, sports metaphor, natural disasters metaphor, and people and animals metaphor, as exemplified in (12). (12) The Covid-​19 rollercoaster continues.  The Covid-​19 storm is subsiding.  We need to up our game against Covid-​19.  Covid-​19 came uninvited into our homes.  136

[journey metaphor] [natural disasters metaphor] [sports metaphor] [people & animals metaphor]

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Table 6.4  Negative consequences of the war metaphor in framing Covid-​19 mapping

Covid-​19 (target domain)

Setup of the ‘good’ (the heroine/​ hero) fighting the ‘bad’ (the enemy)

→

Legitimisation of states of emergency There might be an anticipated end-​goal of victory

→

Patients infected with the virus might be thought of as ‘the enemy’ leading to feelings of guilt Patients infected with the virus may be led to envisaging being at war with their own bodies Concern for individual loss of freedom

Devastating mental health consequences Dramatic loss of social well-​being Literal loss of life Severe economic recession

→

war

(source domain)

→

→

Raising of false hopes that the virus would be eliminated may lead to anger upon the realisation that this is unlikely to happen Feelings of helplessness, depression, being overwhelmed and sadness

Feeling of financial doom, panic buying

Source: Based on Olza et al., 2021, pp. 101–​105

While the goals of the initiative are not prescriptive, some scholars have nevertheless criticised the position taken by the #ReframeCovid proponents as being too strong in its disparagement of the war metaphor (see Olza et al., 2021, p. 114). Another use of metaphors within the context of Covid-​19 has been in framing different measures that governments took in order to restrict its spread, by enforcing stay-​at-​home restrictions. Some users on Twitter described these restrictions as lockdowns, while others used the term bubble, a term originating in New Zealand English and linked to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government. Although the two terms refer—​in essence—​ to the same thing, they are not entirely synonymous. Figure 6.7 shows an example containing both terms, from a tweet posted by NZ academic and writer Susan Wardell. The tweet illustrates how (New Zealand) lockdowns are connected with scary insularity, whereas bubbles are associated with new forms of ‘kinning’ & cooperation. In general, Burnette and Long (2022) found that, while lockdown was used either as a more neutral term or, in some cases, as a negative one, often associated with the container metaphor (lockdown is something one goes into and hopes to come out of), bubbles were framed as whimsical, fun, colourful safety nets, linked to play and protection. The discussion of Covid-​19 on Twitter and the introspective look at the metaphors chosen to shape such discussions have certainly captured the attention 137

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Figure 6.7  The use of ‘lockdown’ and ‘bubbles’ to frame stay-​at-​home measures in New Zealand English Source: Reproduced with author’s permission

of many, including the Twitter community itself. This case study shows that we not only take to social media platforms in search of information and in need of an outlet for sharing our experiences; we also use them as sources of rich introspective analysis into the words we use to frame these experiences.

In a nutshell For many, the Holy Grail of language is meaning-​creation. In this chapter, we have considered the ubiquitous and systematic ways in which we use metaphor as a device for layering meaning and for explaining complex and abstract concepts by referencing familiar, bodily experience. Metaphors constitute powerful tools for conjuring up strong feelings and framing reality from different perspectives. Whether encouraging others to take up ‘green’ lifestyles by presenting these as fulfilling and satisfying journeys, or compelling even the most reluctant voters to participate in the game of politics by evoking well-​known sporting imagery, social media platforms provide an arena for activism of various kinds, in which everyone can participate and campaign for their cause.

Note 1 In keeping with general cognitive linguistics convention, I use small caps to reference concepts throughout this chapter.

References Atanasova, D. (2020). Journeys towards a “green” lifestyle: Metaphors in green living blogs. Cahiers de Praxématique, 73, 1–​17.

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Bickerton, C. J., & Invernizzi Accetti, C. (2018). ‘Techno-​ populism’ as a new party family: The case of the Five Star Movement and Podemos. Contemporary Italian Politics, 2(10), 132–​150. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​ 23248​823.2018.1472​919 Blood, R. (2002). Introduction. In J. Rodzvilla (Ed.), We’ve got blog: How weblogs are changing our culture (pp. ix–​xiii). Perseus Publishing. Burnette, J., & Long, M. (2022). Bubbles and lockdown in Aotearoa New Zealand: The language of self-​ isolation in #Covid19nz Tweets. Medical Humanities, 49(1). http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1136/​med​hum-​2022-​012​401 Cervi, L., Tejedor, S., & Marín Lladó, C. (2021). TikTok and the new language of political communication: The case of Podemos. Culture, Language & Representation/​ Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación, 26, 267–​287. http://​ dx.doi.org/​10.6035/​clr.5817 Christakis, N., & Fowler, J. (2010). Connected: The amazing power of social networks and how they shape our lives. Harper Collins. Evans, V. (2015). The crucible of language: How language and mind create meaning. Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. (1982). This is not a pipe. Translated by James Harkness. University of California Press. Gibbs, R. W. (2011). Are ‘deliberate’ metaphors really deliberate? A question of human consciousness and action. Metaphor and the Social World, 1(1), 26–​ 52. https://​doi.org/​10.1075/​msw.1.1.03gib Gibbs, R. W. (1980). Spilling the beans on understanding and memory for idioms in conversation. Memory and Cognition, 8, 149–​156. Glucksberg, S., Gildea, P., & Bookin, H. B. (1982). On understanding nonliteral speech: Can people ignore metaphors? Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 21, 85–​98. Harley, T. A. (2014). The psychology of language: From data to theory. Routledge. Herring, S. C., Scheidt, L. A., Bonus, S., & Wright, E. (2004). Bridging the gap: A genre analysis of Weblogs. In 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Proceedings of the IEEE. https://​doi.org/​10.1109/​ HICSS.2004.1265​271 Kövecses, Z. (2017). Conceptual metaphor theory. In E. Semino & Z. Demjén (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of metaphor and language (pp. 13–​27). Routledge. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. Lawson, R. (2021). We archived 84 million tweets to learn about the pandemic –​ Each one is a tiny historical document. The Conversation. https://​thec​onve​ rsat​ion.com/​we-​archi​ved-​84-​mill​ion-​twe​ets-​to-​learn-​about-​the-​pande​mic-​ each-​one-​is-​a-​tiny-​his​tori​cal-​docum​ent-​160​675 Milne, M. J., Kearins, K., & Walton, S. (2006). Creating adventures in wonderland: The journey metaphor and environmental sustainability. Organization, 13(6), 801–​839. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​13505​0840​6068​506

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Olza, I., Koller, V., Ibarretxe-​ Antuñano, I., Pérez-​ Sobrino, P., & Semino, E. (2021). The #ReframeCovid initiative: From Twitter to society via metaphor. Metaphor and the Social World, 11(1), 98–​120. https://​doi.org/​10.1075/​ msw.00013.olz Statista. (n.d.). Number of bloggers in the United States from 2014 to 2020. www.stati​sta.com/​sta​tist​ics/​187​267/​num​ber-​of-​blogg​ers-​in-​usa/​ Steen, G. J. (2011). The contemporary theory of metaphor –​Now new and improved! Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 9(1), 26–​64. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1075/​rcl.9.1.03ste Tremlett, G. (2015). The Podemos revolution: How a small group of radical academics changed European politics. The Guardian. www.theg​uard​ian. com/​world/​2015/​mar/​31/​pode​mos-​rev​olut​ion-​radi​cal-​academ​ics-​chan​ged-​ europ​ean-​polit​ics TweetBinder Blog. (n.d.). How many tweets about Covid-​19 and Coronavirus? 628M tweets so far. www.twee​tbin​der.com/​blog/​covid-​19-​coro​navi​rus-​ twit​ter/​ Uren, H. V., Dzidic, P. L., Roberts, L. D., Leviston, Z., & Bishop, B. J. (2019). Green-​tinted glasses: How do pro-​environmental citizens conceptualize environmental sustainability? Environmental Communication, 13(3), 395–​411. Volkmer, I. (2021). Social media and Covid-​19: A global study of digital crisis interaction among Gen Z and millennials. https://​arts.unim​elb.edu.au/​_​_​d​ ata/​ass​ets/​pdf_​f​i le/​0007/​3958​684/​Volk​mer-​Soc​ial-​Media-​and-​COVID.pdf; see also infographic at https://​covi​d19-​infode​mic.com/​#about-​study Wicke, P., & Bolognesi, M. M. (2021). COVID-​19 discourse on Twitter: How the topics, sentiments, subjectivity, and figurative frames changed over time. Frontiers in Communication, 6, 45. https://​doi.org/​10.3389/​ fcomm.2021.651​997 Wicke, P., & Bolognesi, M. M. (2020). Framing COVID-​19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter. PloS One, 15(9), e0240010. https://​doi.org/​10.1371/​jour​nal.pone.0240​010 Wilde, O. (1980). Lady Windermere’s fan. Ernest Benn. Yusuf, A. Y. (2021). The interface between politics and football in language use: A conceptual metaphor theory. Ansu Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 1(5), 94–​105.

What to read next Part 1. There is a vast and ever-​growing body of work which focuses on metaphor production, use and processing. Too many strands of research in this area exist to do justice to the richness and depth of the field. For example, the chapter has not touched on cross-​cultural metaphor universals, nor on computational approaches to metaphor, nor on individual theories, such as Conceptual Metaphor Theory or Career of Metaphor Theory. Lakoff and

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Johnson’s (1980) book is a rewarding and fascinating introductory read and a major milestone in the field. Evans (2015) constitutes a more technical and comprehensive treatment, in which cognitive linguistics ideas are presented in considerable detail, while still aimed at a largely non-​specialist audience. Part 2. Regarding social media platforms, there are various studies documenting activism online, such as a number of articles analysing tweets posted by American politicians (in particular, Donald Trump) authored by Jack Grieves and colleagues, as well as a myriad of studies of Covid-​19 related language. There is also considerable work on Hashtag Activism, see for example, the book by Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey and Brooke Foucault Welles, #HashtagActivism: Networks of race and gender kustice (MIT Press, 2020). Many of these studies do not focus on metaphor specifically but analyse the language of activism by taking a discourse analysis approach or a lexical perspective.

What to do next Discussion. One complex concept to consider is that of time. The lives of many people from many different cultures around the world are highly dependent on this notion. Take just two examples: work and school start and end at a given time of the day, and meals are prepared and consumed at particular times. Yet no one can ‘see’ time or ‘touch’ it, and the physics notion of time is incredibly complex to grasp. So how do we talk about time? What expressions and which metaphors do speakers of your language/​culture use to discuss time? Survey a number of these by consulting friends, family and the research literature. Data collection 1. Try to locate posts from the time of the Covid-​19 pandemic, on a social media platform of your choice, containing information related to the virus or to measures implemented by the government in your country or region to contain its spread. What kind of linguistic framing do these posts involve? Can you find some examples of the actual language used? In many platforms, you can use hashtags, such as #Covid-​ 19 or #Corona, to search for posts related to Covid-​19. Aim to collect a number of posts (say 40–​50) using these hashtags. Does metaphor turn up in these framings? If so, which metaphors and what are the source domains used? Can you see any other linguistic strategies used to discuss the pandemic?

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Data collection 2. What are some of the advantages of using a game (or sport) metaphor to frame politics and political elections? Can you think of any disadvantages? Find one politician you are familiar with and the social media platform on which they are most active and consult a selection of their posts (or a selection of posts about them written by others). What kind of language is used? How are these framed?

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Using social media to influence public opinion Surveying texts with Move Analysis and corpus linguistics

TLDR. This chapter concerns the language of texts and introduces various types of discourse analysis. We begin by considering the components of a text (in the form of moves) and how these are used to support its broader communicative function (Move Analysis). This top-​down method is contrasted with a bottom-​up corpus linguistic approach, in which individual word choices and phrases are interrogated in order to garner hidden assumptions, implications and ideologies. The second part of the chapter discusses two case studies in which discourse strategies are enlisted to investigate the language of online reviews and comments. The first case study documents TripAdvisor reviews and strategies adopted by reviewers to create a credible, expert voice. The second case study involves YouTube bullying comments and hate speech inciting derogatory attitudes.

7.1 Beyond the sentence: how is discourse structured? It is very likely that the painting in Figure 7.1 constitutes the single most cited piece of art in linguistics work. This is none other than Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Tower of Babel (both his sons, Pieter Bruegel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder became painters, though sadly their father did not live long enough to see it).1 At first glance, the painting just looks like an unfinished tower—​precisely what it sets out to depict. Yet a closer inspection illuminates an astonishing amount of detail. This is characteristic of Bruegel the Elder, but it is particularly revealing in this painting. A further layer of interpretation emerges for those familiar with the biblical story after which the painting is named. In the story, King Nimrod orders the construction of a tower high enough to reach the clouds, for which he is punished by God. The punishment is delivered by preventing the builders from communicating with one another by having them speak different languages. And this is not all that the painting evokes. Those familiar with Flemish history might also DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-7

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Figure 7.1  Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, 1563

spot a subtle parallel between the curse of multilingualism in the Scripture and the resentfulness of Flemish citizens, who at the time were having (yet another) language imposed on them by the Spanish (Foote, 1972, p. 96). Further still, there are suggestions of an association between the portrayal of King Nimrod (depicted as standing taller than all others around him to the bottom-​left of the Tower) and that of King Philip, who had ‘grandiose plans of unifying the Netherlands’ (1972, p. 96)—​another layer of meaning. Layer by layer, what might initially look like a straightforward (albeit detailed) painting emerges as a complex web of meanings, rich connotations and shrewd challenges directed at political figures of the time. Looking beyond the obvious in the painting to the subtleties emanating from it allows the viewer to grasp multiple layers of the nuanced meanings conveyed. The same is true of the language seen in texts, which are conventionalised forms of language use with a particular communicative purpose. Much like Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, careful consideration of discursive elements can help illuminate hidden themes, carefully embedded messages and subtle interpretations. The field of discourse analysis takes this approach to language, looking ‘beyond the sentence’ (Schiffrin et al., 2003, p. 1) to a broader study of meaning, to consider ‘the actual use of language’ (Widdowson, 2007, p. 4). It concerns the intricacies of texts, paying special attention to the systematic organisation of clauses, in order to not only communicate literal messages but also enforce 144

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or destabilise existing ideologies, power mechanisms and social structures (2007, p. 4). This chapter delves into the study of discourse, introducing ways of ‘doing’ discourse analysis. The term discourse analysis is a broad cover term for a wide range of phenomena (see, for instance, Paltridge, 2021). In practice, performing discourse analysis can involve very different activities, depending on the analyst, the texts examined and the research questions posed. Here, I provide brief details of two methods of discourse analysis. The first is a top-​down approach exemplified by Move Analysis, a theory proposed by John Swales in the 1980s. The second is a bottom-​up approach illustrated by corpus techniques used to dissect news media, in relation to a murder and rape case (Paltridge, 2021, p. 155). Both methods are fruitful in their own right (Paltridge, 2021, Chapter 7), providing different insights into the mechanisms underpinning the structure of texts and allowing us a glimpse of the bigger pictures which lie beyond the sentence.

Move Analysis: a top-​down discourse analysis approach Top-​down approaches to discourse start with the text itself and break it down into component units, working from the top, down to the words. Among the most widely used top-​down approach is Move Analysis (Swales, 1981, 1990). Having taught around the world, in Italy, Libya, Sudan, the UK and the US, Swales (1981) initially devised his theory as a tool to help non-​native speakers wade through the recurrent and predictable components of an academic research article. Nearly half a century later, the success of his approach remains largely unrivalled, having been effectively applied to legal discourse, grant writing, philanthropic texts and even birth mother letters (Upton & Cohen, 2009 and references therein). One area which the theory lacks is an application to languages other than English (but see recent proposals by Moreno & Swales, 2018). As far as theories go, Move Analysis really is a theorist’s dream: it is intuitive, operationalisable and useful, not just for researchers but also for anyone required to produce a particular type of text for the first time, such as a CV, job cover letter, sale advertisement or wedding speech. So, how does it work? At the heart of the theory lies the extraction of a number of recurring and identifiable move types (or steps) which occur consistently in the majority of the particular category of texts analysed. For example, if we take a typical advertisement of the sale of a house, common move types might be a structural move detailing the number of rooms in the house and other features of the property (garden, garage, etc.), a location move detailing its location, a price move detailing the price or whether or not the house is to be auctioned, an availability move stating whether the house is available right away or not, and a viewing move detailing viewing opportunities (open homes or other ways to arrange viewings). There might be additional (optional) moves, such as an ideal buyer profile move. These five move types can be said to reasonably capture the information expected in the ad and its rough order in the text. 145

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Table 7.1  BCU implementation of Move Analysis Biber Connor Upton method 1. Communicative categories

Description of step

Examples from birth mother letter corpus

1a. What is the 1a. Letter addressing birth mother in order bigger picture to convince her of suitability as a parent. function of 1b. This is a complex task requiring the text? repeated reading and sifting through the 1b. Look for basic texts. For example, one common move move types within type identified was providing information the text and about the couple’s history prior to consider their local their marriage (details of the couple’s function. individual schooling, meeting and dating, getting married etc.). 2. Segmentation Perform inter-​ This is also a repetitive task requiring rater reliability researchers to read and re-​read the (checking whether data, formulate coding protocols and there is agreement recode problematic examples. For between analysts) example, some of the letters contained to ensure that information about adopting pets. One there is agreement decision involved considering whether the among researchers adoption of a pet should be included with with regard to a move detailing character and values identifying and of the couple or with a move detailing describing the the physical environment in which the move types found potential adoptive child would grow up in 1b. (e.g. around pets). 3. Classification Name the moves. Decisions need to be made in regard to the level of detail of individual move types; for example, profile of couple, character and values and so on. 4. Linguistic analysis Perform linguistic Consider the occurrence of specific words, of each unit analysis of each grammatical features and other linguistic move. information that can be used to identify moves (e.g. the use of pronouns, such as our baby, our dog, our house might occur in the character and values move). Interestingly, successful letters tended to have higher use of possessive pronouns (her, my). While it is impossible to establish a direct cause and effect (there are clearly several factors which go into the decision), the use of such pronouns may be suggestive of a stronger vision of what the life of an adopted child would look like. The language could be interpreted as indicative of the couple’s commitment to ‘seeing’ it happen.

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Table 7.1 (Continued) Biber Connor Upton method

Description of step

5. Linguistic description of discourse categories

Characterise the What kinds of language elements might we range of linguistic expect to find in the physical environment features that move, for instance? appear in each move. Return to the text For each letter, identify the type and order level and extract of occurrence of each move. actual moves used in each text. Look across the Each letter is now an ordered sequence moves found in of move types. These can be collated step 6 and provide at the corpus level to reveal the most global patterns frequent moves (which moves do all for the corpus as letters contain?), any optional moves and a whole, looking any notable correlations between the for typical move presence of particular move combinations structures. (for example, will there always be a physical environment move if there is a pet move?). One useful pattern involves establishing correlations between move types and the success of the text (where applicable). In birth mother letters, an example might be looking for typical moves in letters written by couples picked as adoptive parents.

6. Text structure

7. Discourse organisational tendencies

Examples from birth mother letter corpus

Source: Summarised from Upton & Cohen, 2009, pp. 588–​598

Upton and Cohen (2009) provide a comprehensive account of how Move Analysis might be implemented in a more detailed body of texts (called a corpus), namely a collection of birth mother letters written by prospective parents interested in adopting babies from soon-​to-​be-​mothers seeking adoptive families. The broad function of such letters is to convince expecting mothers of the authors’ suitability as parents. Using the Biber Connor Upton (BCU) implementation of Move Analysis, Upton and Cohen (2009) explain the seven major move steps encountered (see Table 7.1). Although the summary in Table 7.1 provides only a brief overview of the major steps of a typical move analysis, it gives an impression of how the analysis works. One important caveat is that its results are only as good as the corpus used to perform it. A corpus with adequate depth and breadth allows reliable identification of common moves, and an extensive classification and description of these. Conversely, one with poor representation of texts will provide limited insight. 147

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Figure 7.2  Amanda Knox

While Move Analysis helps to provide an overview of typical steps involved in a given type of text, this may not always be the intended end goal. Deciding whether to use Move Analysis or not requires consideration of what the analyst is trying to find out. Imagine, instead, a very different type of discourse analysis, in which the goal is not to search for recurrent moves, but rather to search for recurrent themes and to find out how these are expressed.

Corpus linguistics-​driven discourse analysis: a bottom-​up approach On November 1, 2007, Italian police from the picturesque town of Perugia discovered a gruesome murder: the body of a young British exchange student was found under her duvet, soaked in blood, having been stabbed and raped. The victim of this horrific crime sparked a media frenzy, which lasted many years and involved a confession, a wrongful conviction and imprisonment, an appeal, the acquittal of murder charges of two individuals (a young American woman, Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito) and further (re-​)conviction of a third (an Italian man). The Amanda Knox case, as it has become known, is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, it has been used to debate differences between the Italian and American judicial systems (Mirabella, 2012). Second, it involves an unprecedented role of character assassination by the media in a murder trial (Gies & 148

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Bortoluzzi, 2016). Third, it exposes the pitfalls of ‘trial by social media’ (Ponton & Canepa, 2020). In addition to the publicity that the case received in newspapers and magazines, on internet blog sites and social media alike, it also came under heavy scrutiny in scholarly work conducted by researchers in law, forensics, sociology and discourse analysis. Turning to language analyses, a number of close textual examinations have been put forward, probing various aspects of the case. A bottom-​up discourse approach was often enlisted in these analyses to unpick strategic word choices used by news media to evoke and trigger emotive public reactions. Dominant themes included sensationalised portrayals of Amanda Knox, in which she was vilified as a ‘femme fatale’ of dubious moral standing (Goulandris & McLaughlin, 2016), and critical portrayals of the Italian justice system, inciting outrage at a system that was poorly described and understood (Boyd, 2013). As the murder inquiry unfolded and an eventual confession surfaced on November 6, 2007, headlines rushed to present Knox’s confession as ‘fact’ (Boyd, 2013). Here are some examples cited in Goulandris and McLaughlin (2016, p. 27). The Daily Star headline read ‘Flatmate admits violent attack on Mez’; the Daily Mail wrote ‘Dark secret of flatmate who confesses role in Meredith murder’; The Independent led with ‘[F]‌latmate broke down during questioning and confessed to involvement in the killing, Italian police said’. The language of these headlines is noteworthy in its projected familiarity with the victim, often naming her by her first name or nickname (Mez, Meredith) thereby encouraging solidarity with her position. In contrast, the accused is presented from a position of distance, flatmate or girl, denoting a faceless and unknown identity not worthy of sympathy. The language describing the event is emotive (violent attack, dark secret), pointing incriminating and judgemental fingers at its purported perpetrator. Over time, as media articles about the case continued, headlines became even more lurid. We learned that the murder took place as ‘she [the victim] fought off repeated attempts to force her into the perverted group sex session’, from the Daily Express, and while ‘fighting off a group sex attack by 3 of her pals [in an] “Orgy of Death” ’, from The Sun (Goulandris & McLaughlin, 2016, p. 27). According to The Times, the victim was ‘Killed after refusing to take part in a violent orgy’ (Goulandris & McLaughlin, 2016, p. 27). Images of coercion (forced ) and unconventional sexual practices (group sex, Orgy of Death) invoke a highly incriminating character assessment of the alleged suspect (Amanda Knox), presenting her unrestrained behaviour as evidence of questionable morality. It is not a great leap from that assessment to the implication of murder. These headlines show that language is not neutral; its power to influence opinion can trickle into the subconscious in subtle, but strongly triggering ways. An additional media blow was delivered to Amanda Knox’s case when her publicly accessible social media account was combed for information, uncovering her childhood nickname ‘FoxyKnoxy’. This nickname was affectionately given to Knox on the basis of her fast football reflexes. However, in media hands, it was lifted from its original context and linked to sexual prowess, strengthening the 149

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image of a promiscuous irresistible temptress with an insatiable sexual appetite (Goulandris & McLaughlin, 2016). Two years later, the media began to shift its position. As the trial began and a conviction was made in December 2009, an eventual appeal (following a 3-​year prison term) followed (Boyd, 2013, p. 97). As 2009 drew to a close, the media began to swing from pointing fingers at Knox (and, to a lesser extent, her boyfriend) to pointing fingers at the Italian judicial system. The new villain become the faulty system which had allowed a wrongful conviction. (The couple’s murder conviction was overturned in October 2011.) But this time, the language tactics used by the media were different. As the narrative shifted from dubious sexual preferences to a complex legal discussion, so did the language. Authors oriented their efforts to establish themselves as credible and informed voices in the legal domain. To this end, they employed legal jargon as a strategic marker of expert knowledge. Having combed a corpus of newspaper articles from The Guardian and The New York Times, Boyd (2013) illustrates how journalists employed legal jargon as a way of turning the public against the Italian legal system and casting doubt on its ability to conduct a fair trial. Here are two representative examples: (1) The verdict and sentencing were delivered at midnight local time, capping a drawn-​out trial in which the jury—​made up of two judges and six civilians—​ was not sequestered. The proceedings were so distinct from the American justice system, and so confounding to some. (New York Times, December 5, 2009, quoted in Boyd, 2013, pp. 108–​109; bolding my own) (2) But for the people who still believe in a reasonable doubt, there’s considerable unease that the two young people may be spending a good portion of their lives behind bars because the jury, the prosecution, and Italian society did not approve of the lives they led, especially Amanda Knox. (The Guardian, February 25, 2010, quoted in Boyd, 2013, pp. 108–​109; bolding my own) Specialist words and phrases, such as verdict, sentencing, trial, jury, civilians, justice system and reasonable doubt, belong to a type of discourse that is associated with the legal profession. They suggest a technical understanding of precise legal terms, which are in stark contrast to ordinary, everyday language. Many of these words will be unfamiliar to the wider public beyond their association with the law. However, they serve an important purpose: to convince readers of expertise in the legal field. In example (1), the legal terms are accompanied by precise details of the time when the verdict was delivered (at midnight local time) and exactly how many people made up the jury (two judges and six civilians). This level of detail reminds readers that the decision was made far away (local time) but also helps to build 150

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trust in the information provided. The journalist went to considerable effort to uncover the full story. Whether or not readers understand the exact legal jargon they are presented with is not as important as it is to signal competence and trust in relaying the ‘facts’. The article then delivers its own assessment of the Italian justice system, first by placing the already physically distanced system in greater opposition to the American one (The proceedings were so distinct from the American justice system) and then by sealing its evaluation (so confounding to some). The Guardian is no less critical. Unpacking the excerpt in (2), we see that the Italian justice system is sarcastically mocked for its little concern for proper evidence (for the people who still believe in a reasonable doubt). The phrase reasonable doubt is strongly associated with a fair trial, referencing the high threshold required for a fair conviction. Emotive language is then used to summarise the outcome of the conviction (two young people may be spending a good portion of their lives behind bars). The phrase young people foregrounds the possibility of wasted lives should the accused be wrongly convicted. Similarly, the phrase behind bars paints a vivid and shocking picture of the restrictive reality of confinement induced by a guilty verdict. Finally, the strong disproval of the Italian justice system is delivered by the implication of a biased decision rooted in prejudice: because the jury, the prosecution, and Italian society did not approve of the lives they led. Another problem concerns the media’s portrayal of the two legal systems. It turns out that the American (adversarial) system and the Italian (combination of inquisitorial and adversarial) system represent two different and incomparable approaches to justice (see details in Mirabella, 2012, p. 232; Boyd, 2013, p. 103). For example, unlike American judges, Italian judges are not sequestered and are allowed access to media, including social media, so ‘the phenomenon of trial by media is extremely common’ (Ponton & Canepa, 2020, p. 19). Yet, the media gloss over differences between the two legal systems, making unwarranted comparisons. This misleading contextualisation of the (wrongful) verdict delivered by the Italian court was thus misrepresented in a bid to sensationalise events by eliciting public outrage and widespread condemnation. The discussion of the news coverage of the Amanda Knox case highlights the impact that language choices and the packaging of events can have on how the information is received. Emotive language, triggering phrases and jargon terms are examples of strategic tools that can be used to evoke associations, build trust, cast doubt and point fingers. Bottom-​up corpus linguistic analyses provide useful lenses for carefully scrutinising the hidden assumptions and implications that are built into texts.

7.2 Using social media to influence public opinion Having delved into the field of discourse analysis and discussed various approaches to analysing texts, we now consider two case studies from social media of how 151

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language is used to influence public opinion. The first details online reviews and responses to negative evaluations on TripAdvisor. The second examines hateful comments posted on YouTube in relation to (separate) videos of Greta Thunberg and Roma people.

Case study 7.2.1. Reviewing your experiences on TripAdvisor Given that even a trip to an airport toilet can elicit a user’s review, it is hardly surprising that online reviewing platforms are big business. TripAdvisor is one of the largest and most well-​known platforms to host travel-​related reviews: from hotels and resorts, to flights, experiences and restaurants, every trip imaginable will have likely been reviewed by someone. According to The Guardian reporter Linda Kinstler (2018), ‘every month, 456 million people—​about one in every 16 people on earth—​visit some tentacle of TripAdvisor.com to plan or assess a trip’. Founded in 2000, TripAdvisor has achieved phenomenal profits and reached the astounding figure of one billion reviews in February 2022 (TripAdvisor, 2022). Documenting travel is not a new phenomenon. It dates back to (at least) the second century AD, when the Greek geographer Pausanias published his guide to Greece (Kinstler, 2018). What is new, however, is the sheer number of reviewers motivated to voluntarily take to social media to recount their experiences and opinions. Although some few platforms offer minor benefits and recompense for reviews, much like Wikipedia writers (see Chapter 3), the bulk of online reviews are written free of charge by members of the public. In her book on online reviews, Vásquez (2014, Chapter 1) found that users gave a wide range of reasons for contributing reviews, including concern for other consumers and wanting to help them make informed choices, a desire to help companies

Figure 7.3  TripAdvisor stand in Berlin, 2014

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improve their services, the appeal of participating in an online community of like-​minded individuals, a desire to rant and vent, but also a drive to express positive recognition towards companies they were impressed by. TripAdvisor and similar online reviewing sites parallel the likes of Wikipedia and Reddit in that they focus on information rather than relational links between users. However, as Vásquez (2014, p. 10) explains, although the relational aspect is weaker on such platforms, it is nevertheless there, as users employ various discourse strategies to establish personal connections with their readers. Turning to the reviews themselves, we first reflect on the strategies that users employ to express evaluations of their experiences, followed by consideration of the discursive strategies adopted by businesses in response to negative reviews. Move Analysis offers a useful approach to the second issue, providing identifiable recurring moves found in responses posted by different companies, from hotels to restaurants, but there is a cross-​cultural twist (Zhang & Vásquez, 2014; Napolitano, 2018). In order for a review to be successfully interpreted as such, it requires two elements: first, there needs to be some evaluation, and second, the author needs to appear sufficiently credible as a reviewing authority. Having analysed over 1,000 online reviews posted on TripAdvisor as well as Amazon, Epicurious, Yelp and Netflix, Vásquez (2014) provides details of the language involved in both elements. What kind of language do online users employ to express their stance or evaluation in relation to a product or service? Common devices involve the use of evaluative adjectives (clean, nice, great, small ), often accompanied by intensifiers (very, really, rather, incredibly), and also stance adverbs (definitely, unfortunately, literally). Interestingly, the polarity of the adjectives is not always straightforward to extract (especially by computational tools). For example, the adjective good occurs in both positive evaluations (the location was very good ) but also negative ones, where it is downgraded (not very good ), and sometimes, it simply expresses an ‘ethos of the underwhelmed’ (Vásquez, 2014, p. 27), where a service is found to be acceptable but not remarkable. In comparison, the adjective delicious is more consistent in its positive association (Vásquez, 2014, Chapter 2). Larger fixed phrases are also used to express stance, such as can’t wait to go back or definitely give this one a miss (2014, Chapter 2). Other evaluation markers involve slang (meh and whatever), rhetorical questions (Why bother going there?), interjections (yuck, yikes, sheesh, wow), present tense use (This is the worst hotel in the world ) and reference to other people corroborating their own assessment (My husband and I agreed it was not worth the money). None of these choices is incidental. They are implicit strategies for strengthening the force of the evaluation provided. Opinions couched in present tense statements invite an interpretation of factuality. Additional assessments provided by others similarly encourage increased trust in the opinion given (‘everyone else thinks so too’).

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In a study of mobile phone reviews (posted on the video-​sharing platform YouTube, which we will discuss further in the next case study), Parini and Fetzer (2019) came across another type of review, namely reviews posted not in response to an ad for a product, but in response to a review of it. Here, Move Analysis proved a useful tool also. In addition to the evaluative stance expected of reviews generally, further moves could be extracted from such ‘follow-​up’ reviews. The ‘follow-​ up’, as termed by Parini and Fetzer (2019), comprises (up to) three moves: (1) the initiating move (a move which refers to the content of the primary review), (2) a response move (the user’s evaluation of the aforementioned content) and (3) an additional optional move (Parini & Fetzer, 2019, p. 113). Interestingly, the follow-​up also enlists a relational aspect, in its tendency to refer to other users and to previously posted comments. Given the interactive affordances provided by social media platforms, online reviews inform fast-​spreading eWOM (electronic word of mouth). This presents the chance of unprecedented capital for companies, whose image is constantly negotiated and renegotiated by the collective identities of online armies of willing reviewers. Indeed, it appears that reviewers invest considerable effort in constructing reviews. The average review on TripAdvisor was found to be 199 words long. Reflecting on the reviews as a corpus, Vásquez (2014, Chapter 2) notes that they betray a general preoccupation with the search for the perfect product or service, underlying a deep-​rooted consumerist tendency to view satisfaction through the lens of something that can be bought. As mentioned earlier, reviews can only be trusted if readers have confidence in the author’s expertise. Let’s turn to the second element of reviews, namely the strategies used by reviewers to position themselves as credible reviewers. Vásquez (2014, Chapter 3) explains that when readers search for (online) reviews, they seek reviewers whose needs, values and circumstance match their own. In other words, we tend to find people more credible when they seem more similar to us. Although many reviews are anonymous (written by users under pseudonyms), reviewers often provide ample clues to their gender, age, ethnicity, relationship status, occupation and city or country of residence, in a bid to increase credibility of their review (2014, Chapter 3). As regards TripAdvisor, the most frequently stated personal information revealed by reviewers was relationship status (married, couple, family with children), followed by gender information, and occupation (or level of education), see Vásquez (2014, Figure 3.1, Chapter 3). Revealing relationship status (All in all my fiancé and I enjoyed this place) and gender (5 girls getting ready for a night out and only 2 minors) makes sense in the context of TripAdvisor because readers may have different needs depending on their circumstances. The occupation and education characteristics are perhaps more puzzling, but they too function as markers of expertise and knowledge: I advise the travel industry, write for travel magazines, and do scenario planning for airlines and frankly this sort of treatment is unacceptable. I don’t know about you, but I would trust this person’s opinion!

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Reviewers also revealed clues about their lifestyle choices and hobbies (After a few rounds on the golf course I went retreated to my room where it was quiet and relaxing. Before hitting the course every morning …), and even physical appearance and personality traits, although admittedly, less often (I’m a friendly guy, but even I found the staff overly familiar; The shower was up to my chest and I’m 5’7” only). Finally, expertise is signalled both explicitly (for example, referencing ample travel experience), as well as implicitly (usually in the form of detailed narratives of the experience, verbosity being a signal of knowledge and credibility). Interestingly, some reviewers adopt the opposite tactic, constructing a deliberately non-​expert identity in order to signal solidarity with individuals in a similar position (Quite honestly this is my first time here and I can say …) or to appeal to their readers by invoking authenticity as a non-​complainer and thereby increasing the bite of their criticisms (I am NOT a fussy person at all. I am not the complaining type and just take things on the chin with my mouth shut. So it is a big deal for me to be writing this review); examples cited from Vásquez (2014, Chapter 3). When faced with a positive review, there is little expected from a business beyond gracious appreciation. However, what should one do when faced with a cutting complaint? Given the importance of ‘service recovery’, it seems valuable to consider how companies deal with negative reviews (Zhang & Vásquez, 2014, p. 54). To this end, Zhang and Vásquez (2014) sifted through TripAdvisor responses posted in English in response to negative reviews directed at Chinese hotels. They identified a number of recurrent moves present in a large proportion (80 per cent) of responses. These same moves were also corroborated by a body of responses to complaints received by UK and Italian restaurants (Napolitano, 2018). Table 7.2 provides an overview of the typical moves identified. However, when analysing restaurant responses, Napolitano (2018, p. 143) discovered a few additional recurrent moves. The three most frequent among these were claims that the review was untrue or unjustified, offensive comments against the review or reviewer, and general criticism of the review. Why these differences? Recall that Napolitano analysed not just English-​language responses posted by British restaurants, but also Italian-​ language responses posted by Italian restaurants. Many of the new moves showed up in the Italian responses. In general, British responses aligned with the ideology that the ‘customer is always right’, and tended towards politeness, acknowledging the complaint and making assurances that negative feedback would be addressed (Napolitano, 2018, p. 149). However, this attitude was not present in Italian responses, and Italian business owners seemed reluctant to accept blame and negative feedback, often responding with attempts to discredit the reviewer or their claims (Napolitano, 2018, p. 150). Example (3) illustrates the contrast between the Italian-​language reviews (3a–​c) and the English-​language ones (3d–​f).

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Table 7.2  Moves found in responses to negative complaints, ordered from most to least frequent Rank

Move

Description

1

Express gratitude

2

Apologise for inconvenience

3

Invite customer to revisit

4 5

Opening formula Proof of action

6

Acknowledge feedback or complaint Refer to customer review centre Closing formula Intention to avoid recurring problems

Thanking customer for visiting the establishment. Apologising for the problem identified by the customer. Inviting customer to give them another chance. Greeting pleasantries. Assuring customer that action has been taken, giving example of action taken. Expressing gratitude for the feedback.

7 8 9

10

Solicit further feedback

Promising to feed back to relevant people or department. Closing pleasantries. Assuring customer that their experience was an isolated event and that the problem would be fixed and taken seriously by management. Granting customer future opportunity for feedback or clarification.

Source: Compiled from Zhang & Vásquez, 2014, p. 58 and Napolitano, 2018, p. 139

(3) (a) Evidentemente è semplice criticare dietro ad un nickname [Apparently it is simple to criticise behind a nickname] (b) forse un uomo della sua età poteva anche averlo maturato un po di coraggio [perhaps a man of your age could also have acquired some courage] (c) mi lasci dire che sa la sua grammatica è pari alla sua ‘cultura’ culinarian, avevamo poche speranze di farla contenta [let me tell you that if your grammar is equal to your culinary ‘culture’, we had few hopes to content you] (d) I am sorry to hear that you did not enjoy your meal aboard (e) We are all hoping that you give us another chance (f) Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us (Napolitano, 2018, p. 144 and 147 respectively; formatting my own, translations as in the original) As these examples show, the language of the British responses is characterised by hedges and indirectness, showing remorse and deference, but at the same time, it is also generic and detached, often banally formulaic (such language 156

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Figure 7.4  Greta Thunberg, speaking in Montreal, September 2019, shortly after addressing the UN Climate Change Summit

could be used to respond to any negative review). In sharp contrast, the Italian responses are outrageously impolite, at times offensive, written in an emotional and informal manner, aligning with the Italian stereotype of being hot-​headed, but also betraying a more authentic and (ironically) real engagement with the criticism (despite a clear resistance to accept it). Numerous articles (too many to list here) have been written on the topic of cultural differences with regard to (im)politeness norms. Yet, it is difficult to fully capture the source of the differences found. One additional factor in the mix could be a difference in restaurant management between the two countries. While in Britain, restaurants are frequently part of large chains and their owners are not personally tied in with the identity of their businesses, in Italy, hospitality management is the exact opposite. Most restaurants remain micro-​level family businesses, passed down intergenerationally, and the identity of their owners is heavily invested with that of their restaurant (Napolitano, 2018, pp. 140–​150). In this landscape, negative feedback will clearly land very differently for these companies.

Case study 7.2.2. Evaluating perspectives on YouTube We now consider a more extreme case of impoliteness: online bullying and hate speech. It concerns a video of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg delivering her 157

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climate change speech to the UN Climate Change Summit of 2019, in New York. Her speech, which was posted on the video-​sharing platform YouTube, has since been viewed more than 5 million times (the exact count is difficult to obtain because a number of videos of the speech have been posted on YouTube). Greta Thunberg’s YouTube video has also attracted hundreds of comments, many of which have been analysed by Andersson (2021) and McCambridge (2022). YouTube—​arguably the most successful video-​sharing platform—​allows sharing of content (videos), as well as reactions (likes/​dislikes) and comments. It is once again worth considering the high number of user comments posted on such platforms every day. According to a large survey conducted by Khan (2017), the most common reason prompting YouTube users to comment on videos was the desire for social interaction and connection with other users. Conversely, readers of comments came on the platform in search of information. The language of online comments blends properties of both spoken and written language (see Chapter 3 for more on the Spoken–​Written Continuum). For example, analysing comments to online newspaper articles, Bruce (2010, p. 345) concluded that these constitute a ‘hybrid’ text type, blending features associated with writing but also speech. More specifically, comment threads present similarities with the genre of (online) reviews, in their propensity for expressing users’ opinion and stance (Bruce, 2010, p. 343). Evaluations posted by online users, on forums like YouTube, turn out to be socially influential because they are perceived by readers as a kind of ‘barometer of public opinion’ (McCambridge, 2022, p. 2). According to research cited by McCambridge, experiments indicate that content and users which attract polarising comments and ratings from the public are deemed to be less credible and convincing. Even more worryingly, there is also an indication that users take such comments and evaluations at face value, without bothering to analyse their validity to any rigorous extent (McCambridge, 2022, p. 3). So, how did the YouTube audience receive and evaluate Greta Thunberg’s speech and how were these evaluations expressed? Seeking answers to these questions, McCambridge analysed 2,000 comments, posted by 1,949 users. She concluded that the comments constitute an example of ‘rhetorical strategies used in online bullying’, being ‘nearly uniformly uncivil’ and jointly constructed as ‘a mass social judgement’ (2022, p. 7). So, reviewers who posted comments were clearly not in favour of the speech. But here is what a close textual analysis reveals: while emphatic and evaluative language was used to express fervent negative stance, this stance was not directed at the speech or at its content, but at Greta Thunberg herself (2022, pp. 4–​6). User-​posted comments painted her as ridiculous (589 instances), inauthentic (255 instances) or cognitively impaired (223 instances). Additionally, she was explicitly called out as being female (214 instances) and young (168 instances), which carried the implicit overtone of being incapable, overly emotional, naïve, spoiled and stupid. Some of the same values were also identified by Andersson (2021) in a large body of comments (33,770 comments) posted on YouTube in relation to ten 158

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video excerpts of the same speech. Using computational techniques, Andersson (2021, p. 101) found that attacks tended to question Thunberg’s authenticity and suggested that she was being controlled or manipulated by others. The next issue to consider is that of the linguistic strategies used to express these strongly negative evaluations. Drawing examples from McCambridge’s (2022) findings, I limit the discussion to three main strategies. First and most frequently encountered is the use of attitude markers. These involve strongly emotive language: repeated emojis and internet slang designating ridicule (LMFAO, hahahahahaha), profane name-​calling and insults (dumb, tard, idiot, pawn, brat, puppet), direct statements of hate or dislike (I despise her, I really hate this girl ) and expletives (wtf, omfg), among others (McCambridge, 2022, p. 5). Boosters played an especially significant role in this category, with ample use of superlative phrases (the worst face I’ve ever seen) and hyperbolic adverbs (so, such, complete, utter, way). A second strategy involved rhetorical sentences addressing either Thunberg or the reader directly, either by means of questions (4a) or directives (4b). (4a)   (4b) Why is her face like that?   Shut up Greta! Is she serious with that face?   Fix your face Greta! Why does she look like an old lady?  Go to school Greta! (McCambridge, 2022) The function of rhetorical questions is to draw the reader in an imagined dialogue and to increase social cohesion by building rapport. Directive clauses, which (fictively) address Thunberg are designed to have the opposite effect: to increase social distance between her and the commenter. Added to that, mimicry was also used to further create distance between in-​group (‘us’, the online users united in disapproval) and out-​group members (‘her’) (see example (5), from Andersson, 2021). The taunting tone of such directives contributes to the bullying voice. (5) Believe me, Greta, we ALL wish you were in school, on the other side of the ocean. LOL. How dare you! (Andersson, 2021, p. 103) The third strategy involves the use of pronouns to set up an ‘us versus them’ dynamic, whereby the ‘collective’ is deemed to be in apparent agreement in their denouncement. The use of we, no one, everybody and everyone in various statements (no one cares you idiot, everyone hates you) constructs a joint identity of the overwhelming majority (characterised by a predominantly hegemonic male persona, referenced by kinship terms like bruh, bro, guys, dude). This strongly opposes the object of ridicule (characterised by a female persona, referenced by derogatory use of terms like girl/​gurl, honey, hun, sweetheart)—​see Chapter 4 for a discussion of performative gender.

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In contrast, the few (only 16 from 1,000) positive evaluations posted were clearly influenced by the dominating presence of bullying language. Users who agreed with Thunberg’s message used more hedges and were exceedingly tentative and cautious, ‘not wanting to upset the group’ and signalling explicit awareness of the vastly opposed majority: to be honest, I know she’s weird, but I kinda agree with her (McCambridge, 2022, p. 6). Indeed, work by Seargeant and Tagg (2019) indicates that online users shy away from engaging directly with online conflict, which can leave ‘ “bubbles” of uncivil discourse on social media platforms that add to the impression of an apparent consensus of hate’ (cited in McCambridge, 2022, p. 8). In a similar vein, an analysis by Breazu and Machin (2021) of comments posted on YouTube in response to a news video about Roma people illuminates the subtle ways in which online users express hate speech. The authors argue that ‘racism is more than hate speech’ and that a sharper lens is required to uncover hidden ideologies that operate beyond ‘overt racist hate speech’ (2021, p. 16). Although social media has been linked to a fervent hotbed of hate speech, in their work Breazu and Machin (2021, p. 17) illuminate how online users are, in effect, echoing calls for hateful speech from the wider media (television news reports in this case), championing ‘ideological extensions of what we [they] see in the mainstream media’. The news video clip used in the study is a short report from the national Romanian TV station PROTV under the headline Țăndărei a intrat în carantină. Joc de-​a șoarecele și pisica între locuitori și polițiști (‘Țăndărei was quarantined. Cat and Mouse game between residents and police’). The story presented in connection to the eastern town of Țăndărei highlights the local population’s reluctance to comply with Covid-​19 measures of quarantine. Given the high concentration of Roma in the town, the complaints are directed at a specific group of people. The implication made in the report is that waves of Roma are returning from abroad to the small and overwhelmed town and not complying with Covid-​ 19 restrictions, while at the same time demanding lavish hotel accommodation (Breazu & Machin, 2021, p. 8). The news item portrays Roma in a manner representative of other news media and licensed by the dominant status quo, namely as a ‘threat to social order’ and a problem for the Romanian people (see Chapter 9 for a discussion of minoritized people). This implicit line of reasoning is extended and explicitly taken up in the comments posted in response to the news report on YouTube. One example is shown in (6) (translations are my own). (6) De ce v-​ați întors în România pe vreme de pandemie? ‘Why did you return to Romania during the pandemic?’ Morala Romului: Au zis că ne duc într-​un hotel “minim 3 stele”. ‘The Roma’s thinking: Because they told us they will take us to a hotel of minimum 3 stars’. Morala Romului: Când se termină cerșeala revenim în țara pe 3 stele la hotel. ‘The Roma’s thinking: When the begging finishes, we will come back in the country on 3 stars at a hotel’. 160

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Bine că pentru astfel de indivizi dispuneți de resurse, iar pentru alte priorități, fondurile sunt ca și înainte. Doar pe hârtie. ‘Great that you can find resources for such people [the Roma], but for other necessities, the resources are like before. Only on paper.’ As also noted in relation to comments made regarding Thunberg’s speech, linguistic strategies used include mimicry (mocking the imagined rationale of a ‘typical’ Roma), ridicule (‘they told us they will take us to a hotel minimum 3 stars’), the use of derogatory ‘us versus them’ distancing language (‘such people’) and insults (‘when the begging finishes’).

In a nutshell Language is neither impartial nor objective. Although we consider it a tool for transmitting information, the content that is being communicated is frequently imbued with the speaker’s attitude and stance towards it. It often involves nuances designed to sway opinion, to cast doubt, to criticise, to commend and to trigger emotive responses. Considering texts as coherent entities, with a communicative function beyond the literal and the referential, can illuminate the authors’ intentions. Move Analysis and close textual analyses provide useful tools for looking beyond the obvious and beyond the sentence. Despite its potential for being rushed and unedited, the language of social media, whether in product reviews or online comments, is no less ideological and persuasive than other types of language. Its propensity for influencing public opinion and capacity for ruining reputations of both businesses and individuals requires careful consideration.

Note 1 Although born Brueghel, he eventually dropped the ‘h’ from his name (Foote, 1972, p. 69).

References Andersson, M. (2021). The climate of climate change: Impoliteness as a hallmark of homophily in YouTube comment threads on Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism. Journal of Pragmatics, 178, 93–​107. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1016/​j.pra​gma.2021.03.003 Breazu, P., & Machin, D. (2021). Racism is not just hate speech: Ethnonationalist victimhood in YouTube comments about the Roma during Covid-​ 19. Language in Society, 1–​21. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S00474​0452​2000​070 161

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Boyd, M. S. (2013). Representation of foreign justice in the media: The Amanda Knox case. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 7(1), 33–​50. Bruce, I. (2010). Evolving genres in online domains: The hybrid genre of the participatory news article. In A. Mehler, & S. Sharoff (Eds.), Genres on the Web: Computational models and empirical studies (pp. 323–​348). Springer. Foote, T. (1972). The world of Bruegel, c. 1525–​1569. Time-​Life Books. Gies, L., & Bortoluzzi, M. (2016). Introduction: Transmedia crime stories. In L. Gies, & M. Bortoluzzi (Eds.), Transmedia crime stories: The trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the globalised media sphere (pp. 1–​ 13). Springer. Goulandris, A., & McLaughlin, E. (2016). What’s in a name? The UK newspapers’ fabrication and commodification of FoxyKnoxy. In L. Gies, & M. Bortoluzzi (Eds.), Transmedia crime stories: The trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the globalised media sphere (pp. 17–​46). Springer. Khan, M. L. (2017). Social media engagement: What motivates user participation and consumption on YouTube? Computers in Human Behavior, 66, 236–​247. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.chb.2016.09.024 Kinstler, L. (2018). How TripAdvisor changed travel. The Guardian. www.theg​ uard​ian.com/​news/​2018/​aug/​17/​how-​trip​advi​sor-​chan​ged-​tra​vel McCambridge, L. (2022). Describing the voice of online bullying: An analysis of stance and voice type in YouTube comments. Discourse, Context & Media, 45, 100552. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.dcm.2021.100​552 Mirabella, J. G. (2012). Scales of justice: Assessing Italian criminal procedure through the Amanda Knox trial. Boston University School of Law, 30, 229. Moreno, A. I., & Swales, J. M. (2018). Strengthening move analysis methodology towards bridging the function-​form gap. English for Specific Purposes, 50, 40–​63. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.esp.2017.11.006 Napolitano, A. (2018). Image repair or self-​destruction? A genre and corpus-​ assisted discourse analysis of restaurants’ responses to online complaints. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis, 10(1), 135–​153. Paltridge, B. (2021). Discourse analysis: An introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing. Parini, A., & Fetzer, A. (2019). Evidentiality and stance in YouTube comments on smartphone reviews. Internet Pragmatics, 2(1), 112–​135. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1075/​ip.00025.par Ponton, D., & Canepa, M. (2020). Trial by (social) media: Anglo-​Saxon and Italian practices in the digital age. In V. Bhatia & G. Tessuto (Eds.), Social Media in Legal Practice (pp. 18–​30). Routledge. Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., & Hamilton, H. E. (Eds.) (2003). The handbook of discourse analysis. John Wiley & Sons. Seargeant, P., & Tagg, C. (2019). Social media and the future of open debate: A user-​oriented approach to Facebook’s filter bubble conundrum. Discourse, Context & Media, 27, 41–​48. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.dcm.2018.03.005 Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press. 162

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Swales, J. M. (1981). Aspects of article introductions. University of Michigan Press. TripAdvisor. (2022). Travelers push TripAdvisor past 1 billion reviews & opinions! https://​ir.trip​advi​sor.com/​news-​relea​ses/​news-​rele​ase-​deta​ils/​travel​ ers-​push-​trip​advi​sor-​past-​1-​bill​ion-​revi​ews-​opini​ons Upton, T. A., & Cohen, M. A. (2009). An approach to corpus-​based discourse analysis: The move analysis as example. Discourse Studies, 11(5), 585–​605. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​14614​4560​9341​006 Vásquez, C. (2014). The discourse of online reviews. Bloomsbury. Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse analysis. Oxford University Press. Zhang, Y. & Vásquez, C. (2014). Hotels’ responses to online reviews: Managing consumer dissatisfaction. Discourse, Context and Media, 6, 54–​64. https://​ doi.org/​10.1016/​j.dcm.2014.08.004

What to read next Part 1. Paltridge (2021) provides a detailed overview of discourse analysis, whereas Schiffrin et al.’s (2003) handbook contains a worthy collection of research findings in the field. A constructive application of Move Analysis is given in Upton and Cohen (2009), but Swales himself is highly readable, even by beginners. Part 2. Turning to social media-​related research, thorough analyses of online reviews on various platforms can be found in work by Camilla Vásquez. Her detailed 2014 book on the subject is digestible by a non-​specialist readership and contains many examples from real reviews. Her 2014 article with Yi Zhang and that by Napolitano (2018) are also accessible but less detailed. There is a huge amount of work relating to hate speech online, particularly from a computational perspective; however, its main focus has been to automate detection of hate speech, rather than to deliver astute linguistic insights.

What to do next Discussion/​thought experiment. Have you ever encountered threads in which several users ‘pile on’ some specific person or company on social media? What kind of feelings did you experience while reading these posts and why? Data collection. Choose a reviewing platform of your choice for books (Good Reads or similar) or movies (Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb or similar) and look up the most recent ten reviews for a book or movie of your choice. 163

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Does the reviewer establish a relationship with their reader and, if so, how? How do they garner credibility as a reviewer? Pick out the exact sentences or phrases where this occurs and analyse the language involved. Be sure to select both positive and negative reviews if possible and to consider whether (and how) the strategies for building trust and credibility change with polarity.

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8

Using social media to amuse and entertain Introducing word-​formation and grammatical constructions

TLDR. Language plays a huge role in engendering entertainment, and social media is a regular arena for showcasing it. In this chapter, I focus on language play online and show parallels between its sources of creation and those involved in creating language structures more generally. I begin by considering words and how we understand them, and introduce various word-​formation processes: affixation, back-​formation, blending, clipping, conversion, compounds and suppletion. One key element in the formation of neologisms is analogy. Analogy is also important in building complex grammatical structures, which can be fully fixed constructions, completely open schemas or a mix of fixed and constrained slots. From words to grammar, analogy allows speakers to reuse existing material and adapt it for new meanings and associations. Two case studies from social media language are presented. First, hashtags raise interesting questions for the notion of word-​hood and present creative opportunities for wordplay. Secondly, internet memes leverage recurring schemas to amuse and create a shared sense of common ground. Both hashtags and memes make use of analogy and remix existing linguistics resources.

8.1 The structured lexicon In 1745, a Swedish naturalist published a most astonishing case study (Linnaeus 1745, cited in Östberg, 2003). Mostly known for his contribution to biology and his meticulous classification of animals, which eventually became known as the Linnaean system, Carl Linnaeus also worked as a physician. One day, he was presented with a fellow researcher from Uppsala University who, after being unwell, was then smitten with a severe case of foot gout. This particular form of gout eventually ‘struck his head’, according to Linnaeus (Östberg, 2003, p. 449). The patient fell into a long sleep, after which he was treated with

DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-8

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Spanish fly, a strong concoction made from blister beetles and once thought to be an aphrodisiac. Following this treatment, he woke up talking in what seemed to be an unknown language. This turned out to be Swedish, except that all the naming words (nouns) were made up. The ailing researcher seemed utterly unable to produce any nouns, including the names of his wife and children, even when asked about them directly. Curiously, he seemed to recognise the names, even though he could not pronounce them himself. This peculiar form of aphasia (the inability to understand or use speech) is the first known instance of a whole grammatical category being affected, in this case, nouns. Eventually, the patient recovered from his noun aphasia but died soon after, before any further study could document the extent and nature of his condition. Nevertheless, Linnaeus’s case study continues to captivate because the impairment seems so shockingly intrusive and its origin so puzzling. How can an individual forget how to utter the names of their family? Arguably, naming words constitute the most basic type of word. After all, what good is a language if it cannot name entities? Aside from the unanswered lingering questions, this example points to an important insight into how language is organised: words are grouped into categories (and not just by linguists) and they do not hang in a vacuum. For example, they might be grouped according to grammatical characteristics (see Chapter 2 for how we classify words into grammatical classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on) or how they are formed, as we will see in this chapter. It is this organisation of words in our minds, in terms of relationships they have with other words, that has led to the notion of the structured lexicon. One crucial thread, which is at the heart of how the lexicon is organised, is the principle of analogy.

Words and how to find them As discussed in Chapter 1, although we all use language instinctively, we are often unaware of the deeper complexities inherent to our language system; we might not even know how to begin to analyse it. But there is one thing speakers of all languages seem to be able to do automatically, with no training: recognise words. We think we know what a word is, where it starts and ends, and how to split a particular text into words. I emphasise seem and think because this is the widely held perception, and probably true in many cases, but in general it is all less straightforward than it appears. In writing, many languages (but not all, e.g. Thai) separate words with spaces, but onecouldstillmakeoutthewords even if the spaces were left out. In speech, some words are separated by pauses, but not all. As anyone trying to learn a foreign language knows, pauses are not easy to identify if you don’t already know when to listen for them. Our heightened attention towards word-​hood as a unit of language analysis is all the more surprising given how differently a word might look from one language to another. In reality, the notion of a word is all but impossible to define adequately and some 166

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(for example, Haspelmath, 2017) have even proposed abandoning it as a unit of analysis. Be that as it may, in many cases it does make sense to talk about words as units, and I retain the concept in our discussion here. It turns out that, even though we may not be aware of it, words have an internal structure. For English speakers, it is intuitive to say that the word books is made up of two parts: book and -​s, where the -​s is added to indicate that we are dealing with more than one book. We can take words apart and split them into smaller building blocks, each with its own meaning, termed morphemes. Despite some problems with this term (Bauer, 2019), it does nevertheless provide a convenient way for looking inside words. Contrary to what many speakers believe, words are not the smallest units of meaning in a language: morphemes are. However, the number of words that can be segmented in this manner varies across languages. In some languages, such as Austronesian languages spoken around the Pacific (including Tongan, Samoan, Hawaiian and Māori), words have a relatively simple structure, predominantly encompassing single morphemes. For example, the following are what might be described as ‘typical’ words in Māori: wai ‘water’, hiki ‘to lift’, kura ‘school’, whare ‘house’ and kai ‘food’. This is in strong contrast to languages like Turkish, Swahili, Basque or Plains Cree where single words span what in other languages might be assigned an entire sentence. For instance, Nipēhānānak means ‘we await them’ in Cree (Bauer, 2019, p. 26), dakarkiguzu means ‘you (one person) bring her to us’ in Basque, and wasafika means ‘they are arriving’ in Swahili (Bauer, 2019, p. 33). So, it might be fair to say that in languages of the first type, words are indeed the smallest units of meaning, because they often coincide with morphemes. Of course, languages can fall anywhere in between these two extremes, and linguists disagree on where and how exactly to draw the line between the two types. Given such variety of word types, it is fascinating that speakers around the world are primed to recognise words as units of language. Two useful terms are in order at this point. Recall that the word books is obtained from a simpler form, book, to which the morpheme -​s is added. This simpler form is called a root and is itself a morpheme which cannot be segmented further, and which has the potential to give rise to new words that share its basic meaning by taking on additional morphemes: booked, booking, bookable, bookish and so on. All these words make up the book word-​family. Notice also that book can be used either as a noun (denoting an entity, it was a good book) or a verb (denoting an action, I booked a table for seven). The individual morphemes attached have their own meaning, which is incrementally added as new word-​forms are built: -​s attaches to nouns to indicate a plural form (multiple items), -​ed attaches to verbs to suggest the action took place prior to the time of speaking, -​able references the ability to do or become something, -​ish marks a characteristic or quality. In the following section, we discuss some common processes that give rise to new words (neologisms). The overarching point is that new words typically arise from reusing existing words, or bits of words, and their meaning is derived 167

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by a process of analogy. Analogy is the heart of language, not just in word-​ formation, but also as an important process in creating larger chunks of language (constructions).

Analogy in word-​formation processes So far, we have seen that some new words arise by means of affixation, a process in which existing morphemes are combined to create novel forms with related but extended meanings. Such a process gives rise to segmentable words. While some morphemes can occur on their own, without any other accompanying morphemes (free morphemes), others have to be attached (obligatorily bound morphemes). You might be forgiven for not recognising bound morphemes like -​s, -​ity, un-​, bi-​ as carriers of meaning, yet they are, and their meaning is consistent in the forms to which they attach; bi-​ carries the same recurrent meaning in bicultural, bilabial, bicycle, bilingual, bisexual, binary (bi +​X means ‘two X’). Therefore, on some (likely) unconscious level, when speakers encounter new word forms which consist of the morpheme un-​ and some other word, their instinct is to decode the meaning of the new form by analogy to other words in their lexicon. So, to unshare something makes a lot of sense (who hasn’t shared something they later wish they hadn’t?) but perhaps unidentifier makes for a less compelling candidate to be added to the English lexicon because its meaning is unclear. Good fake words (pseudo-​words) are hard to make! In English, morphemes can attach to the beginning of words (prefixes) or to the end (suffixes). And there are also circumfixes, which attach around the word (in German, ge +​verb +​en gives gefahren ‘driven’, gegangen ‘gone’ and gestorben ‘dead’; see Haspelmath & Sims, 2002, p. 20), and infixes, which attach in the middle of the word (in Tagalog, the root sulat ‘write’ becomes sumulat ‘wrote’ by inserting the infix -​mu-​ and sinulat ‘was written’ by inserting the infix -​in-​; see Bauer, 2003, p. 29). Employing morpheme segmentation, a widely shared language joke states that the past tense of William Shakespeare would be Wouldiwas Shookspeared (of course, nouns do not take the past tense form, only verbs do). In a similar vein, a riddle circulating on the internet is: What is the opposite of Microsoft Office? Macrohard Onfire. Staying with the topic of past tense, let’s consider how English forms past tense forms of regular verbs: walk becomes walked, talk becomes talked and arrive becomes arrived. These forms arise by adding -​ed to a root verb. Many different verbs take this suffix, meaning it is very productive. This is termed the past tense paradigm. However, not all verbs take -​ed. Consider the verb break: its past tense is not breaked but broken. Broke is clearly related to break but it is not clear what morpheme is added to break to get broke; the change seems to be internal to the root. Similarly, buy and bought have an alternation in the internal vowel, as do weep-​wept, teach-​taught, bring-​brought, sleep-​slept and so on. The pairs in (1) are known enemies of second language learners of English because they require rote learning. 168

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(1) A

B

C

D

weep-​wept sweep-​swept sleep-​slept keep-​kept

break-​broke speak-​spoke wake-​woke

buy-​bought catch-​caught teach-t​ aught fight-​fought

sell-​sold tell-​told

Although the past tense forms of the verbs in (1) do not follow the regular past tense paradigm (-​ed suffix), they do follow a certain sound alternation that appears to be consistent across a number of similar verbs. This is another paradigm. Alas, this paradigm too is not without exceptions: the past tense of peep is peeped, not pept, make does not turn into moke but into made, and rake turns into raked, not roke, take into took, not toke, spell does not turn into spold, but spelled, and neither does fell turn into fold. Words formed from weakly related or unrelated forms are suppletive, for example wept, swept, broke, bought. When the resemblance between existing and novel forms is faint but nevertheless there, this is termed weak suppletion. Strong suppletion also exists (go-​went), where the root and the new form are completely unrelated. Suppletion is not limited to verbs; for instance, good-​better and bad-​worse are also suppletive. Frustratingly for language learners, suppletive forms are often words with high frequency. Some morphemes ‘trick’ speakers into thinking that they are present in words that are in fact not segmentable (not to begin with, anyway). For example, the word babysitter is reminiscent of words obtained by adding the suffix -​er to verbs: writer, speaker, singer, listener, reader, drinker. The ending of babysitter has the right shape to be a morpheme and it could plausibly be used for the correct function (the person who does X, here, someone who babysits). This leads speakers to fill in the existing -​er paradigm and derive the novel word babysit by a process called back-​formation; rather than adding the -​er morpheme to an existing word, they remove it (Haspelmath & Sims, 2002, pp. 48ff.). Morphemes can be misleading, as Pinker illustrates in his book Words and rules (1999), in which a girl begins to use the forms downstair, upstair, len and Santa Claw, assuming that, if -​s can attach to words denoting entities (nouns), then, by extension, it must also be removable from them. Babysit is not the only case of back-​formation in English; other examples include form from formation, televise from television and beg from beggar. If suppletion makes life difficult by making it impossible to separate the root from the morphemes involved, the exact opposite problem arises with words that exhibit no change in form at all. For example, as discussed earlier, book can be a noun but also a verb; so, can dust, paint, salt, pepper, ice and walk. These are cases of conversion (Bauer, 2019, pp. 111 and 115). The comic Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson, 1993) is known for the conversion of the noun access into a verb, which, in turn, is described by another ‘conversion’ of the noun verb into a

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Figure 8.1  Calvin & Hobbes: ‘Verbing weirds language’ Source: CALVIN AND HOBBES © 1993 Watterson. Reprinted with permission of ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. All rights reserved

verb (which then allows the usual verbal morphemes, -​ed for past tense, and -​ing for progressive). It is debatable whether conversion gives rise to truly new words, but nevertheless this process does result in forms with different, albeit related, meanings from the original. Another word-​formation process is blending. Blends take the start of one word and the end of another, and join them together. Examples include brunch (breakfast+​lunch) which is a mid-​morning meal, often involving food consumed in both meals. Covidiot combines Covid and idiot to refer to a person who ignores health advice or behaves poorly in relation to Covid-​19 guidelines such as hoarding food and toilet paper. Hangry is a blend of hungry and angry and refers to a state involving both feelings. Although the internal structure of blends allows segmentation, the process is not without complications because the components do not really correspond to morphemes. However, what is clear—​with the help of analogy—​is the connection between the meaning of the blend and the meaning of the two words giving rise to it. Words like journo (for journalist), flu (for influenza), demo (for demonstration), lab (for laboratory), camo (for camouflage), bro (for brother) and sis (for sister) arise from a process termed clipping, in which forms are shortened by removing several sounds or letters of an existing word. There is disagreement here also with regard to whether the new forms are indeed novel. Once again, analogy helps to enable predictability of meaning. For example, clippings which take the -​ie ending, like foodie, postie, coldie, boatie, towie, rellie, littlie, townie and baddie, have a consistent meaning, in referring to a certain type of person or quality; a foodie is someone with a keen interest in food and cooking, a postie is someone who delivers mail, a coldie is a cold beer. The final word-​formation process discussed here, and arguably the most productive in English, is compounding. Compounds are words which consist of two (or more) free morphemes (existing words). Examples include tea-​towel, lipstick, clip-​on, douchebag, stir-​fry, blue-​green, northwest, hardware, lead-​free, 170

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bittersweet, singer-​songwriter, street sweeper, underdog, weekday, blackbird, blackboard, hands-​free, street seller, uphold, downgrade. As is immediately obvious from these examples, English spelling is completely unhelpful in identifying compounds and distinguishing them from regular phrases (more on that shortly): some compounds are spelled with a dash, some with a space, some without. In speech, compounds often bear a distinctive stress pattern aptly manipulated for comical effect in the line from the American movie Dumb and Dumber: ‘Cop to driver: Pull over! Driver: It’s a cardigan but thanks for noticing’. What about the meanings of compounds? In some cases, we can derive their meanings from the component parts. Some compounds fall into a structural pattern whereby one of the words acts as the head, designating the main meaning of the word and its grammatical category—​ endocentric compounds (Bauer, 2017, p. 110). So, a weekday is a kind of day, a drawbridge is a kind of bridge, blackboard is a kind of board, lipstick is (at a stretch) a kind of stick, apple pie a kind of pie, peanut oil a kind of oil. This does not entirely guarantee that the meaning will always be derived in a predictable way, as satirised in the old epigram (Wagner, 1986): if peanut oil comes from peanuts and olive oil comes from olives, how about baby oil? Note that in English, the heads of compounds—​for those that have them—​occur on the right. Other compounds fall into a different structural pattern where the relationship between the component words is not one of subordination, where one reigns over another, but is, instead, copulative (or appositive), such that all words contribute equally to the compound’s meaning and grammatical structure. Bittersweet is something which is equally bitter and sweet, northwest is halfway between North and West, stir-​fry is something cooked by both frying and stirring. But some compounds do not seem to follow any predictable structure and their meaning is not predictable from the individual parts either. Termed exocentric compounds, such compounds behave similarly to idioms. The more common derogatory meaning of douchebag involves neither a douche nor a bag, underdog is neither under nor a dog, offside is neither off nor a kind of side and a guinea pig need not necessarily be a pig, nor worth a guinea. With language constantly on the move, what may originally have been an endocentric compound is no longer one if the meanings of the parts shift. This is illustrated by the amusing quote attributed to the Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was married nine times: I’m a wonderful housekeeper. Every time I get divorced, I keep the house. The humour leverages differences between the two senses of the verb keep, namely ‘look after’ and ‘to take as one’s own, hold in possession’. From affixation, to back-​formation, blending, clipping, conversion, compounds and suppletion, the word-​formation processes reviewed here (summarised in Table 8.1) show that, although the details vary and the meanings of neologisms are not always transparent and predictable, by recourse to analogy speakers are able to grow lexicons in immensely vast and creative ways. In the next section, we will see that analogy also helps to build larger grammatical units associated with specific meanings, termed constructions.

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Table 8.1  Summary of common word-​formation processes in English Word-​formation process

Examples from English

Affixation

un-​kind, pre-​order, re-​do rest-​s, break-​ing, comfort-​able, nation-​al babysit (from babysitter), ush (from usher) cohese (from cohesion), beg (from beggar) brunch, Covidiot, hangry journo, demo, camo, ma, bro, sis walk (noun)–​walk (verb), salt (noun)–​salt (verb), access (noun)–​access (verb) drawbridge, blackboard, apple pie, weekday stir-​fry, bittersweet, northwest offside, underdog, guinea pig break–​broke, catch–​caught good-​better, go-​went

Prefix Suffix

Back-​formation Blending Clipping Conversion Compounds

Suppletion

Endocentric Copulative Exocentric Weak Strong

Analogy in grammatical constructions Compounds pose some difficulties in analysis, one of which is where to draw the line between a compound and a phrase. We have seen that spelling does not provide reliable clues for identifying compounds, and this makes it difficult to distinguish when two words occurring next to each other function as a (compound) word and when they function as a grammatical phrase (see discussion in Bauer 2017, Chapter 2). We might agree that a blackbird is different from a (generic) black bird, but is an iron deficiency just a deficiency which happens to involve iron (a grammatical phrase) or is it a single concept (a single word)? There are various criteria we could employ to determine boundaries between these notions. For example, we could compare the frequency of occurrence of a particular word combination (iron deficiency) against the frequency of the individual words occurring with other words (iron X and Y deficiency), or measure the duration of the pause between the two words in connected speech. However, whichever way we do it, there are always some word combinations where it is difficult to tell compounds apart from productive grammatical phrases. But is the difference between words and phrases quite so insurmountable? Do the structures which give rise to words differ radically from those that give rise to phrases, clauses and sentences? Typically, the study of words is assigned to morphology and the study of phrases, clauses and sentences comes under the umbrella of grammar. Although for many, grammar is synonymous with rigid rules, this is not the only (or the best) way to think of it. For instance, cognitive linguists Günter Radden and René Dirven (2007, p. XI) describe grammar as ‘a cognitive achievement: it is the solution that generations of speakers of a speech community have found to structure their thoughts with the intention to communicate them to other people’. According to them, grammars, like words, encode recurrent and generalised 172

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experiences, and they are themselves meaningful. In this view, grammar is not just a rigid collection of rules, but a meaningful component of language, where structures have associated interpretations. It is not difficult to envisage that units larger than individual words might have their own meaning. For example, idioms such as buck the trend or hit the nail on the head are well-​known for their opaque meanings. According to one widely used theory of grammar (Construction Grammar), languages consist of constructions, which are ‘stored pairings of form and function, including morphemes, words, idioms, partially lexically filled and fully general linguistic patterns’ (Goldberg, 2003, p. 219). Taking such a view of language, the distinction between morphemes, words and larger units becomes more fluid. For example, the word jog has its own independent meaning and can be used in various productive linguistic patterns, where the slots can be filled in a variety of ways: John jogs every night, look at that man jogging on the spot and so on. But it can also be used in the construction to jog someone’s memory. Here, jog is part of a schema [jog X’s memory] containing a combination of fixed items (various forms of the verb jog and memory, the possessive form ’s) and a lexically unspecified slot (X, where X refers to a human). Significantly, the construction [jog X’s memory] has an associated meaning which is not straightforwardly deducible from the meaning of the verb jog, namely, to remind someone of something. The associated meaning relies on the presence of the specific components (job, X’s and memory) and on their correct ordering. Such form and meaning pairings involve a certain degree of schematicity: certain elements have to be there, they need to be in the correct order and they may need to fulfil certain requirements (see also Cappelle, 2014; Zenner & Geeraerts, 2018, p. 174). If, for instance, we take the sentences in (2), it is clear that they instantiate similar schemas of a more general construction pattern: (2) (a) She was yelling her head off. (b) His mother works her butt off for that boy. (c) I’m freezing my arse off! In its most general form, the pattern is [Verb Possessive Noun off] (Cappelle, 2014). However, not every verb will do here; the verb must be intransitive, such as yell, work, shout. Intransitive verbs do not take a direct object (a noun expressing a directly affected entity). Similarly, not every noun is allowed to follow the possessive—​usually this is a body part. The meaning of the construction encompasses an exaggerated quality and an added sense of exhaustion in the action depicted. Through repeated use, the recurring construction schema becomes associated with these qualities, and speakers and listeners learn to immediately recognise them whenever they recognise the construction schema. Here also, the compositional elements of the construction are key in inducing its associated meaning, namely of excess or intensity (Cappelle, 2014, p. 258), 173

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and deviations from these can lead to ungrammaticality (the sentence is no longer structurally acceptable). For various reasons, the sentences in (3) deviate from the pattern and are hence problematic. (3a) is problematic because the verb cook is transitive not intransitive, meaning it takes a direct object (the food or meal being cooked), which leads to the assignment of the head as being the direct object and thus to being infelicitously interpreted as the item being cooked. (3b) does not work because the construction does not allow intrusion from additional elements. Although reliably can be used in similar constructions with more flexible slots, it cannot occur here. Finally, (3c) is odd because the verb freeze is typically coupled with the body part arse/​ass (or butt) in this constructional schema and any other nouns are awkward. (3) (a) *She was cooking her head off. (b) *His mother works reliably her butt off for that boy. (c) *I’m freezing my right toe off! As specified in Goldberg’s definition, constructions vary from entirely fixed to fully flexible, open slots. Some may look syntactically odd: for example, the incomplete clause If you don’t mind moving just a bit is left hanging in the discourse without an associated (main) clause (… I would be very grateful ). The main clause is implied but not explicitly stated. Others may be semantically odd: You’right? is a formulaic and entirely fixed construction, used as a greeting whose most appropriate response is You’right?, and neither is meant to be anything other than a simple greeting. As with word-​formation processes, analogy is hard at work in constructions too, allowing speakers to make inferences about possible meanings and uses of recurrent patterns of language. In other words, knowing the associated interpretation of she’s yelling her head off helps guide readers and hearers to what the similar schema he’s working his butt off might mean. They can infer the intended meaning of the latter construction by analogy to the former. The structure of languages needs to be sufficiently predictable to allow users to recognise form–​function pairs. But it also needs to be sufficiently flexible to allow them to create new patterns recycled from existing ones, by remixing them to express previously undescribed ideas.

8.2 Using social media for humour and wordplay The previous section has outlined the importance of analogy in creating new words or constructions by means of reusing, recycling and adapting existing parts of words or schemas, respectively. I now turn to two communicative phenomena which have their origins online and which are frequently shared on social media, namely, hashtags and internet memes. The discussion will show 174

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how both phenomena draw on the same processes as novel word-​formation and construction schemas for creative purposes, language play and humour.

Case study 8.2.1. Using hashtags for creativity and wordplay A hashtag is a string of one or multiple words without spaces, though in some cases, containing underscores where spaces between might have been, and preceded by the # symbol. It was proposed in 2007 by Chris Messina (see Figure 8.2) as a mechanism for tagging Twitter content, akin to ‘channels’ on Internet Relay Channels (see Scott, 2015; Messina, 2007). Although originally devised for Twitter, hashtags have spread to other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat and Flickr, and are now becoming more widely used, even in spoken conversation (Scott, 2018). The use of hashtags is varied. Some suggest that, in keeping with their original purpose, hashtags are used for categorising tweets within topics and communities, which makes them suited to searchability and discoverability (Caleffi, 2015; Zappavigna, 2012, 2014, inter alia). However, others have suggested that they serve a ‘conversational function’ (Huang et al., 2010), often prompting a response from readers, or an evaluative and pragmatic function (Scott, 2015) conveying additional commentary, parenthetical information, or emotive and emphatic content (Wikström, 2014). They have also been labelled ‘brand building narratives’ (Pérez-​Hernández, 2018). Finally, some hashtags are also used for humour and language play (see Wikström, 2014, p. 134; Trye et al., 2020, pp. 15–​16). But what are they really? Hashtags pose an interesting challenge for language theory because they are not straightforward to classify (as words or something else), nor is it clear what mechanism gives rise to them (compounding or some other entirely novel word-​formation process: ‘hashtagging’). Here again, there is disagreement among scholars on both counts. This is in part because the structure of hashtags varies. Some hashtags are single words, preceded by a hashtag symbol: #hashtag, #food, #happy. Others consist of several words glued together, reminiscent of compounds (Maity et al., 2016). The very first hashtag attested is of this type: #barcamp. #barcamp exemplifies what

Figure 8.2  First attested hashtag use on Twitter

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would otherwise (hashtag symbol notwithstanding) look like a classic English endocentric compound, being right-​ headed and composed of the word bar and camp. But what about hashtags like #thatshowyoudoit, #howImetyourmother, #resignKenney, #fortheloveofgod or #UkraineUnderAttack, which do not follow the structure and patterns of English compounds? For example, the hashtag #resignKenney does not follow English headedness rules, and the head, if there is one at all, looks to be on the left (resign). This looks more like a grammatical phrase than a word. So, on the one hand, hashtags are structurally agglutinating, composed of multiple morphemes (often, several words); on the other hand, they are functionally like words in that they capture a single concept or idea. Caleffi (2015) proposes that hashtags are not compounds, but something different, arising through a process termed ‘hashtagging’ which is distinct from existing word-​formation processes. Trye et al. (2020, p. 14) go further, questioning the status of hashtags as words, given that they violate criteria associated with word-​hood. Hashtags do not follow internal consistency rules, and, when uttered, they comprise pauses necessary for decoding meaning. Consider #thatshowyoudoit. In order to understand its meaning, an internal analysis of the component parts is required—​unlike typical English words, whose structure we do not necessarily unpack anew with each encounter. Studies that consider the life-​cycle of hashtags suggest that most hashtags arise and ‘die off’ quickly, having a very transient existence (Maity et al., 2016), which also sets them apart from conventional words (especially for words in print media). Regardless of what they are, hashtags constitute a new way of combining existing lexical resources to create novel forms with specific meanings. As mentioned above, in some cases, they constitute an act of wordplay. Wordplay, according to Winter-​Froemel (2016, p. 37) is ‘a historically determined phenomenon in which a speaker produces an utterance—​and is aware of doing so—​that juxtaposes or manipulates linguistic items from one or more languages in order to surprise the hearer(s) and produce a humorous effect on them’. Two key elements in her definition are the manipulation of linguistic items and the element of surprise. The element of surprise is reminiscent of work by Popescu (2018, p. 216), who studied Romanian brand names and concluded that advertisers set out to use ‘truly ingenious lexical creations’ for their brands, often humorous too, to catch and keep the reader’s attention and thus increase engagement. This provides clues as to the power of hashtags. In the context of a fierce competitive marketplace seen on social media platforms (see Page, 2012, and also the discussion in Chapter 3), in which users seek continued engagement (#lifegoals) from other users, the presence of humorous hashtags created through wordplay engenders an element of surprise (#surprise), which, it is hoped, will lead to increased engagement. Example (4) illustrates uses of humorous hashtags from various Twitter posts. 176

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Figure 8.3  Overview of hashtag types

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(4) (a) Once again everyone. I do not dye my hair. Not on my head anyway #scarydayglopubes (b) Having an Alan Partridge moment. Had a protein bar after my shower and got chocolate on my towel. What’ll housekeeping think? #dirtyprotes (c) I typed DONG and I meant it. #ownyourtypos (d) my kiwi1 brings all the boys to the yard…#replacesongwordswithkiwi (Wikström, 2014, pp. 144–​145, ex. 55–​57; Trye et al., 2020, p. 15; formatting my own) The ingenuity of hashtags is evident from the wide variety they exhibit and from their diverse, unpredictable internal structures; some of these options are summarised in Figure 8.3. One interesting aspect of hashtags relates to the fact that they can be formed by incomplete clauses left hanging in discourse but spelled as a unit (without spaces). For example, the hashtag #youknowyoureakiwiwhen occurs in tweets that poke fun at various aspects of New Zealand (kiwi) life, for example, #youknowyoureakiwiwhen someone gives you heaps but you’re not having a bar of it (referencing the novel use of the intensifier ‘heaps’ in New Zealand English). Although many hashtags have a relatively short life-​span, some still achieve widespread adoption, giving rise to micro-​memes, which are ‘small-​ scale meme[s]‌emerging around a Twitter hashtag’ (Huang et al., 2010, pp. 174–​175), especially those capturing generic topics or recurring events. Micro-​ memes denote ‘trending’ topics of interest: for example, #ihaveacrushon, #liesmentell, #igrewupon, #90stweet (2010, pp. 174–​175). Interestingly, some hashtags, such as #myfacewhen, #BadLuckBrian, #bitchesbelike and #distractedboyfriend, are themselves references to existing internet memes—​the topic of the next case study.

Case study 8.2.2. Sharing a laugh with internet macro-​memes The concept of meme is linked to Richard Dawkins, who coined it as a parallel notion to the term gene, the biological unit of replication (1976). According to him, memes are to cultural evolution what genes are to biological evolution. Dawkins defined memes as units of cultural replication, spread from person to person by a process of selection and modification akin to biological transmission. Typical examples of Dawkinsian memes include trends in baby names (Berger et al., 2012) and the evolution of canoe design (Rogers & Ehrlich, 2008). Human handedness presents an interesting example in its mix of cultural and biological influences (Laland, 2008): it turns out that being left-​handed or right-​handed cannot be fully explained by genes alone, and cultural transmission also plays a role. Last but by no means least, language itself exhibits evolutionary mechanisms as a cultural replicator (see, among others, Croft, 2008; Pagel, 2009). 178

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Figure 8.4  Dawkins meme

The focus of this section is on one particular type of meme, namely the internet meme. Here, too, there are a number of differences between Dawkins’s concept of meme and internet memes (Shifman, 2014), but the term internet meme is apt in capturing at least part of the original idea of a meme: the fact that such memes are transmitted from user to user (replication), with particularly successful memes being more likely to be shared and reshared (selection), and with some being ‘remixed’ or modified, giving rise to new yet related meme sub-​types (modification). It is difficult to pinpoint when internet memes first emerged; some suggest the first meme was the sideways smiley face emoticon, created in 1982 by Scott Fahlman (Börzsei, 2013). Others point to the Dancing Baby meme (also known as the ‘Baby cha-​cha’) in 1996 (Buhr, 2014). What is clear, however, is the central role that social media plays in sharing and propagating memes. In contrast to the original unit of cultural transmission proposed by Dawkins, which was envisaged as a slow and passive replicator, internet memes can be shared within days or even hours, with the potential to spread through social media with astounding speed. One type of internet meme that has proved particularly popular is the internet image macro-​meme: a meme comprising an image and some overlaid text. The remainder of this section will focus exclusively on internet image macro-​memes and on the linguistic strategies that imbue these memes with humour and memorability. Let us begin by reviewing the main components of internet image macro-​ memes. Like other regular constructions, internet image macro-​memes consist 179

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of specific components, some fixed elements and some open slots. Following Dancygier and Vandelanotte (2017, p. 573), ‘typical Internet image macros comprise a background image, top text (TT), which is often formulaic and easily recognizable, and bottom text (BT), which often delivers the punch line of the meme’. In addition, established memes will also acquire a meme name, which is conspicuous through its absence (meme names are given in italic font). As with other sources of in-​group humour, the names of internet memes are kept deliberately hidden to reward those with sufficient digital literacy (Shifman, 2014; Milner, 2013). For some memes, knowing the meme name is a prerequisite without which the humour becomes lost, while for others, the knowledge of the name merely enhances the enjoyment of the meme. All these elements have a role to play in the function of the meme and its successful interpretation. Figure 8.5 provides an example from the meme series the ‘Most interesting man in the world’. The ‘Most interesting man in the world’ meme originates from a beer advertising campaign for Dos Equis, which featured the slogan I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis (Dynel, 2016, p. 664). Memes from this series involve the same recurring background image, TT featuring productive uses of the construction [I don’t always X] and BT featuring the formula [But when I do I Y]. Crucially, X and Y share a specific semantic relationship, which relates back to the Dos Equis beer campaign. The Dos Equis campaign portrayed the man in the image as a sophisticated, upper-​class individual with refined (beer) tastes. As a satirical play on this ad, the ‘Most interesting

Figure 8.5  ‘Most interesting man in the world’ meme

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man in the world’ meme evokes a direct contrast to what the name suggests, achieved by the semantic interpretation of Y in relation to X, which comes in direct opposition to the characteristics portrayed in the image. X sets up a context (in this case, I use the stats feature) in which Y can only be interpreted as a most banal and trivial comment (I like it to be accurate), thereby implying the banality of the man in the image (akin to the inferred banality of the man who claims to prefer Dos Equis). The contrast between X and Y helps to present the man in the image not as the height of sophistication (as purported by the beer advertising campaign, or the expensive-​looking clothes of the man shown in the image), but precisely the opposite, as a most dull and inconsequential individual. This opposition—​termed incongruity-​resolution (Dynel, 2016, p. 672)—​is typical of meme humour, but not unique to memes, being present in various other humour genres. As with the [Verb Possessive Noun off ] construction (laughing my head off ), knowledge of the associated interpretation of the ‘Most interesting man in the world’ meme, as well as the meme’s name, are important to its meaning and humour. More generally, an important part of what makes a meme both memorable but also humorous is familiarity with its recurrent elements and its predictable structure (Dancygier & Vandelanotte, 2017; Zenner & Geeraerts, 2018). In Figure 8.5, these are: the identical repeated image macro, the same recognisable font characteristics (right down to size and typeface) and the recurrent linguistic constructions at the top and bottom of the image, encompassing open slots that are recurrently interpreted in the same way (Y is a most banal comment within X). We can argue that the individual elements, the image, the typography and the constructional schema, behave like morphemes, in that they are arranged in predictable orders and patterns, and together they generate a meaning of the meme which is greater than the sum of the individual parts. In general, memes resemble recurrent syntactic constructions in two ways. First, memes are productive (new meme variations arise within existing meme series) and they constitute form and meaning pairings (a certain image, font and other structural elements become associated with a particular punchline, and the TT and BT included are then interpreted with the expectation of this associated punchline). Secondly, the language involved in the TT and BT is itself constructional, involving a combination of fixed, recurring text and a sample of open, novel language. We have already seen this combination in the ‘Most interesting man in the world’ meme. Other examples include the ‘In Soviet Russia’ meme (Figure 8.6) and the ‘When’ meme (Figure 8.7). In Figure 8.6, the TT contains the fixed phrase In Soviet Russia, followed by a familiar role reversal, in this case Big Brother watch you which exemplifies non-​native speech (the verb does not take the standard -​s suffix, watches). The humour arises from the suggested role reversal that, while in America (or the UK), the public is watching the popular TV show Big Brother; in Soviet Russia, it is Big Brother (portrayed here by Russian President Vladimir Putin with Krasnodar 181

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Figure 8.6  ‘In Soviet Russia’ meme

Figure 8.7  Romanian ‘When’ meme by Tom Memarul Source: www.instag​ram.com/​p/​CVnO​reaP​klW/​ Note: Translation: ‘When Halloween has finished and your neighbour is still hanging from the tree’.

governor Alexander Tkachev) who is watching the public. Another facet of the meme is depicted in the image by the lack of sophisticated technological tools involved in the ‘watching’. Putin and Tkachev are shown in inexpensive outfits, clearly using their bare hands and eyes to ‘watch’ the people. This is in opposition to the technological advances required for screening the show Big Brother, 182

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or the original portrayal of the ‘watchful state’ in George Orwell’s novel 1984 on which the concept of ‘Big Brother’ is based. The ‘When’ meme (Figure 8.7) also involves a fixed component and recurrent structure, namely the subordinate clause [When X], which contains When at the start followed by X which could span one or several clauses. The English translation ‘When Halloween has finished and your neighbour is still hanging from the tree’ matches the original Romanian clausal structure in this example. Neither of the two clauses functions as a main clause, meaning that the [When X] chunk is left hanging (a bit like the example If you don’t mind moving just a bit). The humour of the When meme arises from the unfortunate event described by X. However, the humour is crucially dependent on the depiction of a familiar and accessible scenario that everyone can relate to. Interestingly, although humour does not generally translate easily across languages and cultures, the When meme is a counterexample to the trend. Figure 8.7 provides a Romanian version of the meme which references an unfortunate and ironic event surrounding Halloween (a celebration which commemorates the dead). Despite its origin in Romanian, the meme retains its humour when translated into English because the humour relies on the schema and the meaning of the parts, rather than on specific properties of the words involved. The background image used (depicting the ‘Tom & Jerry’ duo) would be familiar to many Romanians, as these cartoons are popular in the country. The reference to children makes clear the light-​hearted intentions of the meme creator. So far, we have seen that internet image macro-​ memes exhibit the same building-​block mechanisms we find in word-​formation and grammar more generally, namely, compositionality and recurring structures, which help to contribute to the overall function (amusement). The elements are conventional and acquired through repeated online sharing (online users know what each image is associated with and which concept it stands for), but they can be creatively ‘remixed’ (Zenner & Geeraerts, 2018, p. 171) to generate new memes and, thus, give rise to new but related jokes. Humour can arise in different ways, such as from absurd scenarios illustrated by memes like the ‘Said no one ever’ meme (I love the sound of my alarm clock, said no one ever), or from an incongruity between two opposing ideas as exemplified in the ‘Most interesting man in the world’ meme. Another way in which humour arises is from making explicit known but unspoken and incongruent stereotypes associated with particular groups in society. The definition meme in Figure 8.8 also has a recurrent structure, namely six images laid out in a 3 × 2 format, each with a caption underneath. The captions involve the same recurring hanging clause [What X think(s) I do] where X denotes a social group, for example, What the Lutherans think I do, What the media thinks I do, What my neighbours think I do and so on. The humour emerges from the common shared experience of the general beliefs depicted in the pictures and the various contradictions among these. One final linguistic strategy involves the use of non-​standard grammar to symbolically evoke cuteness and anthropomorphism; that is, transferring human-​like 183

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Figure 8.8  PAGAN definition meme

Figure 8.9  LOL cat meme (1)

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Figure 8.10  LOL cat meme (2)

characteristics to pets and animals (Wille, 2021). The best-​known examples come from LOL cat memes (Figures 8.9 and 8.10), which involve what has become known as LOLspeak; a language associated with the cats in LOL cat memes. Examples include changes in spelling of certain words, ‘s’ is replaced by ‘z’ (I can has cheezburger), various vowel changes (chonky, cronch) or non-​ standard verb forms. The use of non-​standard grammar stands in contradiction with the meaning of the text, the former being associated with low prestige, and the latter with sophistication (Figure 8.9) or professionalism (Figure 8.10). Dog lovers can also enjoy dog-​related (Doggo) memes, which exhibit Doggo-​speak, a different take on non-​standard English grammar with its own idiosyncratic word order and symbolic morphological changes (Punske & Butler, 2019; Golbeck & Buntain, 2018), for example, am here to do u a rescue (‘I am here to rescue you’). 185

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In a nutshell The human propensity for creativity never ceases to impress. We revel and delight in making each other smile: from creating new word-​like tags (hashtags), used for various purposes, including humour and amusing commentary, to remixing internet memes that poke fun at commonly shared frustrations and everyday life experiences. These elements have either arisen on social media in the first place (in the case of hashtags) or found a new viral existence on it (in the case of internet memes). Looking deeper into the linguistic strategies which give rise to hashtags and internet memes, we find many parallels with existing mechanisms involved in the general creation of neologisms, as well as mechanisms used in the construction of more complex language structures. Many of us enjoy the humour which these affordances allow, giving us a sense of a shared and mutual understanding of the human condition, imbuing what might otherwise be the dull daily grind with a touch of light-​hearted joy.

Note 1 The word kiwi is a borrowing from Māori, used to refer to people of New Zealand (alongside its reference to kiwifruit and a New Zealand flightless bird—​the latter being a symbol of New Zealand identity).

References Bauer, L. (2019). Rethinking morphology. Edinburgh University Press. Bauer, L. (2017). Compounds and compounding. Cambridge University Press. Bauer, L. (2003). Introducing linguistic morphology. Edinburgh University Press. Berger, J., Bradlow, E. T., Braunstein, A., & Zhang, Y. (2012). From Karen to Katie: Using baby names to understand cultural evolution. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1067–​1073. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​09567​9761​2443​371 Börzsei, L. K. (2013). Makes a meme instead: A concise history of internet memes. New Media Studies Magazine. Utrecht University. www.acade​mia.edu/​3649​ 116/​Makes_​a_​Meme_​Instead_​A_​Concis​e_​Hi​stor​y_​of​_​Int​erne​t_​Me​mes Buhr, S. (2014). A brief history of the dancing baby meme. Techcrunch. https://​ tec​hcru​nch.com/​gall​ery/​a-​brief-​hist​ory-​of-​the-​danc​ing-​baby-​meme/​ Caleffi, P. M. (2015). The ‘hashtag’: A new word or a new rule? SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 12(2), 46–​69. Cappelle, B. (2014). Conventional combinations in pockets of productivity: English resultatives and Dutch ditransitives expressing excess. In R. Boogaart, T. Colleman, & G. Rutten (Eds.), Extending the scope of Construction Grammar (pp. 251–​281). Mouton De Gruyter.

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Croft, B. (2008). Evolutionary linguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology, 307, 219–​234. https://​doi:10.1146/​annu​rev.ant​hro.37.081​407.085​156 Dancygier, B., & Vandelanotte, L. (2017). Internet memes as multimodal constructions. Cognitive Linguistics, 28(3), 565–​598. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1515/​cog-​2017-​0074 Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford University Press. Dynel, M. (2016). “I has seen image macros!” Advice Animal memes as visual-​ verbal jokes. International Journal of Communication, 10, 660–​688. Golbeck, J., & Buntain, C. (2018). This paper is about lexical propagation on Twitter. H*ckin smart. 12/​ 10. Would accept! IEEE/​ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM) (pp. 587–​590). IEEE. Goldberg, A. E. (2003). Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 219–​224. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​ S1364-​6613(03)00080-​9 Haspelmath, M. (2017). The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax. Folia Linguistica, 51, 31–​80. https://​doi. org/​10.1515/​flin-​2017-​1005 Haspelmath, M., & Sims, A. (2002). Understanding morphology. Routledge. Huang, J., Thornton, K., & Efthimiadis, E. (2010). Conversational tagging in Twitter. Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, pp. 173–​178. ACM. https://​doi.org/​10.1145/​1810​617.1810​647 Laland, K. N. (2008). Exploring gene–​culture interactions: Insights from handedness, sexual selection and niche-​construction case studies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Biology), 363, 3577–​3589. https://​ doi:10.1098/​rstb.2008.0132 Linnaeus, C. (1745). Glömska af alla Substantiva och i synnerhet namn. Kungliga Svenska Vetenskaps-​Akademiens Handlingar, 6, 116–​117 (in Swedish). Maity, S. K., Saraf, R., & Mukherjee,A. (2016). #Bieber +​#Blast =​#BieberBlast: Early prediction of popular hashtag compounds. In CSCW ’16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-​Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 50–​63). https://​doi.org/​10.1145/​2818​048.2820​019 Messina, C. (2007). Groups for Twitter; or a proposal for Twitter tag channels. https://​fac​toryj​ oe.com/​2007/​08/​25/​gro​ups-​for-​twit​ter-​or-​a-​propo​sal-​for-​twit​ ter-​tag-​chann​els/​ Milner, R. M. (2013). Pop polyvocality: Internet memes, public participation, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. International Journal of Communication, 7, 2357–​2390. Östberg, P. (2003). 18th century cases of noun–​verb dissociation: The contribution of Carl Linnaeus. Brain and Language, 84(3), 448–​450. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1016/​S0093-​934X(02)00552-​7 Page, R. (2012). The linguistics of self-​ branding and micro-​ celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags. Discourse Communication, 6, 181–​201. https://​doi:10.1177/​17504​8131​2437​441

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Pagel, M. (2009). Human language as a culturally transmitted replicator. Nature Reviews Genetics, 10, 405–​415. https://​doi:10.1038/​nrg2​560 Pérez-​Hernández, L. (2018). Building brand narratives with hashtags on Twitter: A cognitive-​pragmatic analysis on the emergence of a new advertising subgenre. Pragmatics & Cognition, 25(3), 515–​542. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1075/​pc.18020.per Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules: The ingredients of language. Basic Books. Popescu, R. A. (2018). On the portmanteau words based on commercial names in current Romanian advertising. Diversité et identité culturelle en Europe, 12(2), 215–​232. Punske, J., & Butler, E. (2019). Do me a syntax: Doggo memes, language games and the internal structure of English. Ampersand, 6, 100052. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1016/​j.amper.2019.100​052 Radden, G., & Dirven, R. (2007). Cognitive English grammar. John Benjamins. Rogers, D. S., & Ehrlich, P. R. (2008). Natural selection and cultural rates of change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(9), 3416–​ 3420. https://​doi.org/​10.1073/​pnas.071​1802​105 Scott, K. (2018). “Hashtags work everywhere”: The pragmatic functions of spoken hashtags. Discourse, Context & Media, 22, 57–​64. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1016/​j.dcm.2017.07.002 Scott, K. (2015). The pragmatics of hashtags: Inference and conversational style on Twitter. Journal of Pragmatics, 81, 8–​20. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.pra​ gma.2015.03.015 Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in digital culture. MIT Press. Trye, D., Calude, A. S., Bravo-​Marquez, F., & Keegan, T. T. (2020). Hybrid hashtags: #YouKnowYoureAKiwiWhen your tweet contains Māori and English. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 1–​19. https://​doi.org/​10.3389/​ frai.2020.00015 Wagner, J. (1986). The search for signs of intelligent life in the universe. Harper & Row. Watterson, B. (1993). Calvin and Hobbes –​Verbing weirds language, January 25, 1993. www.gocom​ics.com/​calv​inan​dhob​bes/​1993/​01/​25 Wikström, P. (2014). #srynotfunny: Communicative functions on Twitter. SKY Journal of Linguistics, 27, 127–​152. Wile, C. (2021). Not angry but angy: The rhetorical effects of non-​standard language in memes. Doctoral dissertation, Eastern Kentucky University. Winter-​Froemel, E. (2016). Approaching wordplay. In S. Knospe, A. Onysko, & M. Goth (Eds.), Crossing languages to play with words: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 11–​46). Walter de Gruyter. Zappavigna, M. (2014). Enacting identity in microblogging through ambient affiliation. Discourse & Communication, 8(2), 209–​228. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1177/​17504​8131​3510​816 Zappavigna, M. (2012). Discourse of Twitter and social media: How we use language to create affiliation on the Web. Continuum.

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Zenner, E., & Geeraerts, D. (2018). One does not simply process memes: Image macros as multimodal constructions. In E. Winter-​ Froemel & V. Thaler (Eds.), Cultures and traditions of wordplay and wordplay research (pp. 165–​ 193). Mouton De Gruyter. https://​doi.org/​10.1515/​978311​0586​374-​008

What to read next Part 1. The theories mentioned in this chapter are varied and span a wide range of research fields. Excellent morphology textbooks documenting word creation processes are Bauer (2019) and Haspelmath and Sims (2002). There are hundreds of articles about constructional grammar: a seminal but technical book is Goldberg’s monograph (1995, Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure, Chicago University Press), whereas her 2003 review article provides a more concise overview. Cappelle (2014) is insightful but technical. Part 2. Hashtags have been studied extensively from a discourse perspective; see, for example, work by Michele Zappavigna. The humour of memes is a relatively new topic for linguistics research, but a growing one. One particularly relevant aspect that is not discussed in this chapter is humour arising from wordplay that makes use of semantic relationships between words (opposition of meaning, homonymy, polysemy and so on). The articles by Dancygier and Vandelanotte (2017) and Zenner and Geeraerts (2018) are seminal works in this area.

What to do next Data analysis 1. Assuming you have an account on Twitter or Instagram, scan your feed and pick three English language hashtags, preferably with varied internal structure. Search for posts containing each of these hashtags and analyse how they are used. How do the hashtags function in your data? Are they used for categorisation purposes, for commentary, humour or something else? Consider the position of the hashtags in the posts you collected also. Do your hashtags resemble traditional English compounds or are they different? Discuss. Data analysis 2. Consider the popular meme: ‘Success Kid’ (see Figure 8.11) Find three variants of it and describe the components of each one, considering the picture, the colours, the font size and the two types of text (TT and BT). For each variant, explain how the top text relates to the bottom text. What

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Figure 8.11  ‘Success Kid’ meme

considerations are required for engendering a humorous reading? Explain the mechanism which connects the three variants and how the humour arises in these.

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9

Using social media to rally for your language Measuring linguistic vitality and language endangerment

TLDR. How much would have to change about you before you are no longer you? Getting a new haircut? Waking up in a new country? Speaking a different language? Many people feel that losing their (first) language would affect them irrevocably. Yet, for many, maintaining a link to their heritage language is not even an option. They grow up speaking someone else’s language, even if they are born on home territory. For others, speaking their mother tongue comes with a strong feeling of inferiority because that language is judged an irrelevant relic of a primitive past. This chapter examines the concept of linguistic vitality and presents three case studies of how social media is used to rally for minoritized and marginalised languages in a space which is still ruled by largely dominant languages (e.g. English). First, we consider how YouTube videos stir up language debates and ideology in regard to Irish, Welsh and Sámi. Next, we consider ways in which Facebook creates ‘breathing spaces’ for West and North Frisian. Third, we reflect on how Twitter is used to expand the language classroom for students of Zapotec languages.

9.1 How to tell if your language is thriving We often judge the state of our own health by comparing it to that of others, the majority group, the dominant norm. In one of the best known neurology texts—​ The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales (1985)—​neurologist Oliver Sacks unpicks the notion of ‘deficit’ in studies of the human brain. At the time of his writing, cognitive impairments were seen as either some kind of deficit, for example, loss of vision, hearing, or even loss of language, or alternatively, as an unwanted excess, for instance, hyperactivity. Inevitably, these conditions were understood to unleash a series of negative consequences. But Sacks believed that ‘a disease is never a mere loss or excess’ because he thought the body always presented a way of compensating for these differences (1985, p. 6). He saw his patients as more than just deficient; he saw them as humans. Challenging prevailing views of the time, Sacks wrote a book of 24 case studies documenting and humanising the lives of his patients, proposing a more nuanced approach to cognitive afflictions. DOI: 10.4324/9781003321873-9

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The most famous case study he documented, which also gave the book its title, is that of Dr P., a respected musician and music teacher. Although able to converse well enough during the initial consultation, Sacks found something amiss about him. And, sometimes, as Dr P. admitted himself, he made mistakes. One such mistake occurred when he attempted to leave the neurologist’s office and started to look around for his hat. ‘He reached out his hand and took hold of his wife’s head, trying to lift it off, to put it on’ (Sacks, 1985, p. 11). Dr P. seemed able to perceive abstract shapes (the shape of a head-​like object) but not to link them to meaning or function. He was unable to distinguish between something to put on his head (the hat) and something which had the same shape (his wife’s head). This behaviour inspired the intriguing title for the chapter describing his condition. In his diagnosis, Sacks surmised that the man who mistook his wife for a hat could still perceive the world around him. But he understood this world as a computer might, in terms of features and abstract characteristics, unable to connect it to meaning. However, there is more to it than just the ‘abstract and mechanical’; the human brain also involves feelings and ‘the personal dimension’ (Sacks, 1985, p. 20), which Dr P. was lacking. Crucially, by considering only what Dr P. was unable to do, other astounding abilities he possessed would have been missed. Dr P. kept his teaching job and maintained astounding musical ability, with perfect ear and pitch. Everything in his life revolved around music and, so long as he could hum to himself, the music appeared to guide his behaviour more or less as required. As we will see in this chapter, the feeling ability of our human brain plays an important role in how we relate to the language(s) we speak. Our emotional connection with our first language or with that of our ancestors matters a great deal to who we are. When thinking about languages, it is equally important to look beyond one single aspect, for example absolute numbers of speakers, and to consider not just the most ‘useful’ language for a job, but also the emotion and feelings it stirs. The story of the man who mistook his wife for a hat illustrates the misguided deficit perspective that is sometimes invoked in relation to language. It might be tempting to see languages with fewer speakers (or Indigenous languages) from a deficit perspective, questioning their ability to bring financial gain or political power, maybe also questioning their relevance in a modern world. But such a perspective misses the crucial role of a language, which is to bring people together, to give voice to different ways of seeing the world, a diversity of opinions and knowledge. In this chapter, we consider the ways in which speakers rally for the languages they love and the codes they see as inextricably linked to their identities. We begin by discussing how we might assess the state of health of a language and probe whether it is thriving or not.

Measures of linguistic vitality The term ethnolinguistic vitality (or linguistic vitality) is used to ‘measure the strength and liveliness of a language, usually a good indicator of the likelihood 192

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that it will gradually die out or continue to be used as the living language of a community’ (Meyerhoff, 2019, p. 120). In essence, languages with high linguistic vitality are spoken widely and are seen as thriving. Conversely, languages with low linguistic vitality are not widely used and might be endangered. But language fitness does not rest on numbers of speakers alone. Following Giles, Meyerhoff (2019) describes three main pillars of linguistic vitality: status, demography and institutional support. The status of a language, both within and outside of the community of speakers, is important to its strength and liveliness because its chances of being retained and passed on hinge on how it is perceived. The economic and social status of the speakers of a language are linked to its status: if, in general, the speakers occupy high-​power positions, socially and economically, then the language is also likely to enjoy a position of high prestige. The second factor, demography, relates to the expected number of speakers of the language: the higher, the better. However, there are finer details that also come into play. It is not just about absolute numbers of speakers acquiring the language from birth, but also about the number of mixed marriages, net immigration and emigration rates, and proportion and concentration of speakers. Geographically dispersed populations of speakers will have a tougher time maintaining their language than highly concentrated populations. Ages of speakers matter too! Thirdly, the level of institutional support that a given language enjoys will affect its chances of survival and success. Such support can be garnered from both formal institutions, such as mass media, education, court and justice services, and government communication, and informal institutions, like religious organisations and cultural groups. The various contexts in which a language is used are termed language domains. For instance, when a language is used in schools and tertiary institutions, we might refer to that as the educational domain, and when it is used in newspapers, on television and radio, we speak of the media domain. As expected, a wider range of domains correlates with increased linguistic vitality. Unsurprisingly, the three branches of linguistic vitality influence one another. When speakers of a language enjoy high-​status positions in society they are also likely to increase institutional support opportunities for their language by using it in domains associated with power and prestige. Conversely, when speakers occupy non-​prestigious positions and have comparatively low economic status, their language is less likely to receive institutional backing and demographic uptake. This cycle of interconnected factors has been playing havoc with our planet’s linguistic diversity for some time now, leading to enormous loss of languages. A significant decrease in vitality can lead to language endangerment, and severe endangerment can ultimately lead to language death (extinction), meaning a language has no speakers left at all. From Vanishing voices (Nettle & Romaine, 2000) to Dying words (Evans, 2010), the story of language loss predicts that 90 per cent of the languages spoken around the world today will disappear within the next 100 years. 193

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Figure 9.1  Scale of linguistic vitality proposed by UNESCO

In order to counteract some of this anticipated linguistic loss, UNESCO launched the World Atlas of Languages in 2021, an initiative ‘to preserve, revitalize and promote global linguistic diversity and multilingualism as a unique heritage and treasure of humanity’.1 In a 2003 document, experts in the field came up with nine evaluative factors of language vitality and a scale of endangerment. They proposed that languages cannot be simply reduced to ‘safe’ or ‘endangered’, arguing that a continuum across these binary opposites is needed to accurately capture their status (see Figure 9.1). Although no single factor provides a precise measure of language vitality, taken together they can paint a realistic picture. Table 9.1 provides an overview of the factors identified, together with their associated scales of language endangerment. The labels of the scale vary depending on the factor (and sometimes there are no labels at all, just extreme ends of the scale), but their score is always consistent (given in brackets) between 1 (low vitality) and 5 (high vitality). (One of the factors has no scale: the number of speakers.) The complexity of information required to glean an accurate picture of linguistic vitality is astounding. The table shows that looking at absolute numbers of speakers alone provides a simplistic impression, and, like Dr P.’s health assessment, a more holistic approach is required.

Language policies and planning Although humans have been organising and regulating language use and communicative practice since ‘time immemorial’ (McCarty, 2018a, p. 22), the field of inquiry tasked with this pursuit, language planning, is relatively young. Language planning involves ‘deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure, or functional allocation of their language codes’ (Cooper, 1989, p. 45, as cited in McCarty, 2018a, p. 22). Language planners achieve these goals by engaging in a number of activities (McCarty, 2018a, p. 23): (a)

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status planning: organising and planning which language domains a given language might be used in

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Table 9.1  Summary of UNESCO factors of language vitality assessment Factor

Type

Scale

1

Intergenerational transmission: is the language transmitted from one generation to the next?

2

Absolute number of speakers Proportion of speakers within the total population

Safe (5): the language is used on a daily basis and spoken by all generations of all ages Unsafe (4): some children use it in all domains Definitively endangered (3): the language is used mostly by parental generation and up Severely endangered (2): the language is used mostly by grandparents’ generation and older Critically endangered (1): the language is used by very few speakers, and generally by older ones Extinct (0): there are no speakers left Fewer speakers–​lower vitality More speakers–​higher vitality Safe (5): all speak the language Unsafe (4): nearly all speak it Definitively endangered (3): a majority speak it Severely endangered (2): a minority speak it Critically endangered (1): very few speak it Extinct (0): no one speaks the language Universal use (5): used in all domains for all functions Multilingual parity (4): two or more languages are used in social domains for most functions Dwindling domains (3): mostly used at home and even losing home ground to other language(s) Limited or formal domains (2): limited social domains Highly limited domains (1): very restricted and few functions Extinct (0): not used in any domain or function Dynamic (5): language is used in all new domains Robust/​Active (4): used in most new domains Receptive (3): used in many new domains Coping (2): used in some new domains Minimal (1): used in only a few new domains Inactive (0): not used in any new domains

3

4

Trends in existing language domains: with whom and for what function is the language used?

5

Response to new domains and media: is the language used in new domains, e.g. new technologies, new media? Materials for language education and literacy: how prevalent is literacy in the community?

6

Highest (5): there is an established orthography, documentation, dictionaries and grammars (4): some written materials exist, children are developing some literacy in the language (3): some written materials exist and children are exposed to them but literacy is not promoted through the media (2): some written materials exist but are limited mainly to symbolic significance (1): a practical orthography is known to the community and some limited material is written Lowest (0): no orthography is available (Continued)

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Table 9.1 (Continued) Factor

Type

Scale

7

Official status and use: what government and institutional support is there?

8

Community members’ attitudes toward own language: how do speakers feel about their own language? Amount and quality of documentation: what resources are available for the language currently?

Equal support (5): language is protected Differentiated support (4): language is protected primarily as the language of private domains Passive assimilation (3): no explicit policy exists and dominant language prevails over all others Active assimilation (2): government encourages active assimilation to dominant language while offering no protection to minority languages Forced assimilation (1): dominant language is sole language recognised, no protection for others Prohibition (0): language is prohibited Highest (5): all speakers value their language and wish to see it promoted (4): most members value it (3): many but not all members value it (2): some value the language, others do not (1): only a few members value it Lowest (0): no one cares if the language is lost Superlative (5): a wide array of resources is available: comprehensive dictionaries, grammars, extensive texts, constant flow of language materials, high-​quality audio and video with good quality annotation Good (4): one good grammar perhaps and some adequate dictionaries, texts and literature, some good quality audio and video recordings with varying degrees of annotation Fair (3): some grammars, dictionaries and texts, but no everyday media Fragmentary (2): some grammatical sketches, word-​lists, some texts for limited linguistic research but no high-​ quality recordings, no annotation Inadequate (1): only a few grammatical sketches, short word lists, fragmented texts, no recordings Undocumented (0): no material exists

9

Source: UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group, 2003, pp. 7–​17

(b) (c)

corpus planning: deciding how the language might be represented, developing grammars, orthographies, language teaching materials, children’s picture books, and even planning new vocabulary acquisition planning: planning acquisition opportunities and deciding who will learn the language and how.

We often see language planning activities as being undertaken by governments and official institutions. But, in practice, anyone can ‘do’ language planning by taking an active role in the use of their language(s). In cases of severe language 196

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endangerment, planning activities may involve a strategy for language revitalisation, which is an effort to cultivate new speakers of the language to disrupt the loss of language vitality (McCarty, 2018b, p. 358). Sometimes language reclamation is needed, which is a ‘larger effort by a community to claim its right to speak a language and to set associated goals in response to community needs and perspectives’ (Leonard, 2012, p. 359; see also Zuckermann, 2020). But how do languages come to be endangered in the first place? Like people, languages do not exist in isolation. As Meyerhoff (2019, p. 103) points out, ‘no nation in the world is completely monolingual’. When multilingual speakers meet and have contact with one another, so do their languages. The trouble is that languages do not enjoy equal status in this linguistic ecosystem, with some occupying a more prestigious position than others. Such unequal footing can lead to elite multilingualism. Elite multilingualism is ‘a phenomenon that imbues social and/​or material capital, prestige, excellence, privilege, and access to linguistic resources in certain groups of speakers’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019, p. 365). This is a situation in which speakers of one language feel compelled to acquire another because of financial or material reasons, in order to improve their social standing, relegating language to a commodity that can be traded (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Reducing language to a Bourdieusian capital with marketplace value (Chapter 3) runs counter to most language revitalisation efforts. In many cases, elite multilingualism can lead to language shift, a situation where speakers abandon speaking their mother tongue in favour of a more dominant language. When languages are spoken on a large scale within the borders of one country, nation-​states make official linguistic provisions for the language(s) used within their territory. Their constitutions specify one or several national language(s) (in some cases, the term ‘official language’ is used instead, but countries vary in their interpretation of the terms), in which formal business of the national government is to be conducted. Sometimes the national language may not coincide with the language that people use in their day-​to-​day activities (but which is not mandated by law)—​this is termed the de facto national language. The Ethnologue lists 15 terms to describe the various levels of recognition a particular language might have.2 For example, in New Zealand, the official languages are Māori (since 1987) and New Zealand Sign Language (since 2006) but English is a de facto official language. In this case, English is not listed as an official language given its (already penetrating) dominance. So, what happens to languages spoken in a country that are not mandated by law?

Ticking the ‘other’ box: minoritized languages When languages are either invisible or marginalised, they lose status, power and legitimacy. The details and degree of loss vary markedly from case to case but what they share is the aspect of loss. Marginalisation features in the story of Catalan, Basque and Galician in Spain, the story of Celtic languages in nearby English-​ speaking Britain, and the situation for Breton, Occitan, Picard and Alsatian in France (O’Rourke, 2018, p. 266). We uncover similar narratives 197

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in the Indigenous people of Hawai‘i, among Māori speakers of New Zealand, Aboriginal peoples of Australia, First Nations Peoples in North America, and Indigenous people of South America (McCarty, 2018b). As O’Rourke explains (O’Rourke, 2018, p. 266, bolding my own), ‘removed from the echelons of political and economic power, for the speakers of these “minoritized” languages there were few economic incentives to use them or for the need to teach the language to their children’. Again, it is relevant to remember the patients described by Oliver Sacks and his call for a more holistic view of their situation. By moving beyond the singularity of their condition, it is possible to recognise their additional attributes and advantages. The use of the word minoritized is significant and deliberate because it replaces the notion of a minority language (a language which is inherently minor in some sense) with a dynamic quality of being on the receiving end of an action: it is being minoritized. Minoritized languages need not necessarily be spoken by very few speakers, as discussed in Table 9.1, though this is often the case. Minoritized languages can simply be languages that operate at the margin of a nation-​state. This mode of operation triggers a number of consequences, many of which can lead to endangerment. The nation-​state can be a powerful entity whose tentacles assert the nation-​state’s legitimacy in both very mundane, barely noticeable acts (like public signage), termed banal nationalism, as well as in overtly patriotic acts (such as international sports competitions), termed hot nationalism (Billig, 1995). There are problems with aligning language use along nation-​hood boundaries. Chief among these is the fact that as soon as nation-​hood is invoked, the notions of power and legitimacy are placed in the hands of the politically and economically dominant group (O’Rourke, 2018, p. 266). Language alliance becomes heavily intertwined with economic and political gain, not with social benefits. Such alliances are at odds with maintaining a heritage language—​a language that is passed onto children in the home and which is distinct from the dominant (typically national) language. Moreover, nations operate at the level of large social structures preoccupied with majority characteristics, for example extracted from census data. Census data presents a skewed picture of language use. This is because questions probing language use do not dig sufficiently deep to understand the complex needs of multilingual speakers and because large-​scale surveys obscure the small-​scale spaces that minority languages inhabit (in the home and, often, in less prestigious domains). Census data also privileges language purist ideals which do not fit the practical context of many endangered languages. Within purist ideologies, ‘ideal’ language speakers are those individuals who acquired their language from birth, and who sound and write like a native speaker. But what counts as a ‘native speaker’?

Could the native speaker please stand up? The term native speaker is highly problematic. Traditional accounts of native speakers present these as proficient and legitimate guardians of a language, 198

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thereby presupposing a non-​native counterpart who is viewed as an inauthentic, second-​hand owner (think: second language speaker, L2). Frequently, such individuals do not fit the purist ideal of abstaining from mixing languages, not to mention their inability to tick the language-​from-​birth box. But some highly endangered languages may have no L1 speakers (people who learnt the language from birth) left at all. In an effort to overcome the deficit position (O’Rourke, 2018, p. 267) to which non-​native speakers are confined, much like Sacks’s manifesto arguing for a non-​deficit perspective of his patients, O’Rourke and colleagues support a new speaker movement, in which the terms new speaker, new speakerism and new speakerhood refer to legitimate and authentic speakers who come to acquire their language outside the home, as adults, and who can still be considered rightful guardians and owners of it. By transcending ideals of nation-​hood and purity, new speakers can feel a sense of entitlement and pride in their active roles of maintaining and revitalising their languages, regardless of when and how they began their language-​learning journeys. The new terms are meant to also allow greater ease of traversing the speaker–​learner continuum; the point at which a language learner becomes sufficiently proficient to earn the label of ‘speaker’ is unclear. The term ‘new speaker’ helps to alleviate the predicament of having to make such decisions.

9.2 Using social media to rally for your language In Part 1, I introduced the notion of linguistic vitality and discussed how we might assess the vitality of a given language, looking beyond absolute numbers of speakers. Being dynamic, living entities, languages have a history, a present circumstance and a future direction. The status of any language is continually shaped and re-​imagined, as speakers negotiate and re-​negotiate their relationship with it. The following case studies document ways in which speakers of minoritized languages actively take part in such re-​imaginations on social media. We first consider the presence of Irish, Welsh and Sámi in YouTube videos. Despite the fact that social media is flooded with dominant languages (often English), the second case study illustrates how ‘breathing spaces’ can help minoritized languages flourish on Facebook. The chapter ends with a short discussion of the potential benefits of expanding pedagogical practice to include social media use.

Case study 9.2.1. Re-​evaluating minoritized languages on YouTube In April 2005, an 18-​second video was uploaded on what was to become one of the most successful video-​sharing platforms of all time: YouTube. The video showed a man standing in front of an elephant zoo enclosure (Figure 9.2), talking 199

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Figure 9.2  First video uploaded to YouTube (April 2005)

about the elephants’ trunks (Johansson, 2017, p. 177). Later that year, a rap song entitled ‘Lazy Sunday’ went on to rake in more than 1 million hits, before being taken down for copyright breaches (Johansson, 2017, p. 178). These activities marked the beginning of a video-​sharing explosion. Music videos still feature as the most popular videos currently shared on YouTube, alongside news reports, movie trailers and children’s programmes. The content generated is produced by both individuals and professionals, and the platform provides functionality for viewers to engage with the videos (as long as this feature is enabled by those posting the content). Unsurprisingly, the most viewed videos are professionally made. Topping that list is the music video ‘Gangnam style’ produced by Korean rapper Psy and posted on YouTube in 2012 (exact viewing figures are difficult to come by because there are several versions on YouTube; in 2016, Fox News deemed it the most watched video on YouTube, with 805 million views, and a year later, Johansson cites the count at 2.7 billion hits; 2017, p. 178). YouTube gained popularity at the same time as two other social media giants: Facebook and Twitter. However, while there is ample research analysing the language of these platforms, YouTube has received comparatively little attention. Staying on the topic of music videos, this case study considers the use of three minoritized languages (Irish, Welsh and Sámi) on YouTube. One main thread of discussion involves the everyday use of these languages online and how this use contributes to a re-​evaluation of their status in the context of a globalised modern world. Before reflecting on their presence on YouTube, we consider the status of each language in turn. Irish is the national language of the Republic of Ireland. Its history is marked by a long and painful past involving conflict, colonialisation and language 200

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Figure 9.3  St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Dublin, 2010

attrition. Much scholarly work has detailed the tumultuous situation that has led to the minoritization of the Irish language. Here, I limit the discussion to a few key points. Despite the fact that Irish is a required school subject throughout compulsory schooling, census data suggest that only 39.8 per cent of the population (1.76 million people from the country’s total population of 4.76 million) speak the language (Central Statistics Office, 2016). This is attributed to (at least) three crucial factors. First, Irish is strongly connected to schooling and thus seen as less applicable to everyday life. Second, and relatedly, Irish occupies a marginal role compared to English, particularly as far as business and media are concerned (Dlaske, 2017, p. 454). This position encourages negative language attitudes towards the relevance and modernity of the language, leading to perceptions of Irish and, by association, of its speakers as being increasingly old-​fashioned, out of touch and irrelevant in a modern world. Third, there is a strong ideological division in regard to language proficiency. The committed and vocal contingent of Irish language advocates adopt an all-​or-​nothing approach 201

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to speaking Irish and rely on traditional notions of native speakerhood (Dlaske, 2017, p. 454). They propose that speakers occupy one of two possible positions, either being fully proficient in Irish or entirely unable to speak it. This intolerant stance towards varying levels of aptitude may be, in part, responsible for the self-​ reported lack of proficiency rates in the census data and for the reluctance to use the language due to fear of being criticised or shamed (2017, p. 454). Dlaske (2017) provides a discussion of the music video ‘Avicii vs Lurgan—​ “Wake me up” as Gaeile’, which is a remake of the original English language Avicii song, using Irish lyrics. The video was originally posted on YouTube in July, 2013 and has since attracted 8 million views (as of September 2022). As the original song is popular with teenagers and young adults, its remake enlisted it as a way of bringing Irish out of dated classrooms and into modern homes. Dlaske’s (2017, p. 455) findings suggest that this aim was amply achieved. The Irish remake was featured in newspapers and online magazines, circulated widely on other websites, and played on Irish language TV and on various radio stations, which included it as part of their regular playlists. Even Australian and Canadian media picked up the story of the Irish remake and reported its success. A second indicator of success is the high engagement of comments (more than 5,550) and discussions posted on YouTube itself. Here are some examples. (1) C4–​LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! C5–​Omg I love this video sooooooooo awesome! C6–​Is Aoibheann liom ea!!!!!!!!!!! (I love it) C7–​Absolutely unreal (Dlaske, 2017, p. 459; formatting as original) Sifting through these, Dlaske notes the frequent use of affective language in relation to both the performance and the performers, suggestive of a heightened emotional connection; for example, the use of words like love, proud, glad, beautiful. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of comments posted were positive (2017, p. 460). The language choice of the comments varied: some were in Irish and some in English, but several other languages were also used. The global support voiced for the remake widens its audience, taking it from a niche and localised audience to an international one, thereby imbuing Irish with a flavour of modernity and relevance. Dlaske argues that the comments and discussion go beyond the song and its performance, also hinting at ‘an aspiration to linguistic decolonisation’ (2017, p. 460), as exemplified by one comment proposing the song ought to be submitted for Ireland in the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest. Additionally, the feedback indicates that the overwhelming support for the Irish version is directed at more than just the song itself, being tied in with what the song represents: a nationalist commitment to promoting Irish language and sovereignty. Speaking Irish ‘emerges as a node of affective investment in its own right’, linked to feelings of pride, joy, solidarity and defiance. 202

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(2) C66–​I’m proud to be able to speak fluently Irish and although I agree that not many people speak Irish. We are still pushing through and more and more people are speaking the language. C67–​Tá sé se oar cheann de na hamhráin is fearr na hÉireann, Is féidir aon rud stop a chur leis an Gaeilge go bhfuil muid i gcónaí ar bun le haghaidh troid! Labhaurt liom i bhfad Gaeilge agus tá mé Gaeilge [‘This is one of the best songs of Ireland, nothing can stop the Irish that we are always up for a fight! I speak much Irish and I am Irish’]. C68–​I know how to sing the hole song because I speak IRISH C69–​This is the language of my people! C70–​say tá [‘yes’] if you live in Ireland and can speak Irish or can speak a little bit of Irish (Dlaske, 2017, p. 466; formatting as original) The comment in C70, directed at the full proficiency view backed by the Irish-​ speaking elite, echoes a subtle challenge. Speaking a little bit of Irish is legitimised by its inclusion alongside those who can speak Irish [fluently]. The sentiment is also emblematically represented by the mix of languages: the Irish word tá (‘yes’) occurs among English words. A study of posts from Twitter (Lynn & Scannell, 2019) also shows the presence of Irish/​English mixed-​language tweets (see Chapter 3 for more on language mixing and code-​switching). As argued by others analysing code-​switching, Lynn and Scannell (2019, p. 38) conclude that mixing Irish and English words in tweets is motivated not by linguistic reasons (alone) but by a desire to signal bilingual identity. In sum, the popularity of the ‘Avicii vs Lurgan’ song, its media attention and overwhelmingly positive comments suggest that everyday acts of banal

Figure 9.4  St David’s Day celebration in Cardiff, 2009

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nationalism can be recruited as agents of national pride and language revitalisation. They challenge and disrupt colonial discourses. The metalinguistic debate which they engender illustrates how minoritized languages can be re-​imagined and re-​contextualised in modern times. This case study shows ways in which the affordances of social media allow the wider public to interact with Irish directly, thereby not relying exclusively on the institutional opportunities support provided by governments and other formal organisations. An initial investigation of the use of Welsh-​language videos on YouTube also corroborates some of these same trends. Spoken in Wales, the story of Welsh parallels that of Irish in many ways. While the details differ, its trajectory is also one of colonialisation, loss and attrition, followed by a desire for revitalisation fuelled by nationalist sentiments (Cunliffe & ap Dyfrig, 2013). Cunliffe and ap Dyfrig (2013, p. 136) investigated the use of Welsh on YouTube, reporting that the platform contains Welsh-​language videos on a wide array of topics, including music, art and culture, narratives, activism, environment and human rights, sport and religion. Some videos explicitly reference their purpose in maintaining cultural identity. Somewhat unexpectedly, subscribers to Welsh-​ language content were not always speakers of Welsh themselves. Users posting Welsh-​language content did not seem concerned with their audience’s language ability and, in fact, the audience effect (see Chapter 3 on Audience Design) seemed to be less influential for YouTubers compared to bloggers (Cunliffe & ap Dyfrig, 2013, p. 142). In a similar vein to the Irish case study, Cunliffe and ap Dyfrig (2013, p. 143) concluded that ‘YouTube is one of a number of technologies that have the potential to benefit the Welsh language and other minority languages’, providing ‘a space for user-​generated Welsh language media, expanding the range of materials available’. The final YouTube example discussed here comes from Sámi, a group of nine minority languages spoken in parts of Finland, Norway and Sweden. The number of speakers of these languages varies according to how they are defined, ranging from 30,000 speakers for Northern Sámi, to only a couple of hundred speakers for other Sámi languages (Dlaske, 2017, p. 454). Only half of Sámi people speak their mother tongue. All nine Sámi languages are endangered, and their history bears the same scars as many other endangered languages. According to Dlaske, despite a shift in status of the Sámi languages in Finland, much like Irish in the Republic of Ireland, they remain marginal in public domains, especially in the media, which persists in portraying Sámi people negatively, as being backward, primitive and disconnected from modern civilisation. Alongside Lurgan’s Irish remake of the Avicii song, Dlaske (2017) also analysed a Sámi song, posted on YouTube in 2011: a remake of the Finnish popular love song by Jenni Vartiainen, entitled ‘Missä muruseni’ on (‘Where is my sweetheart’). Produced by two Sámi women, the song is entitled ‘Leivänmuruseni’ (‘My breadcrumb’) and features Sámi lyrics and Finnish subtitles. ‘Leivänmuruseni’ is a parodic take on the difficulties of traditional Sámi life and was used to advertise the first Sámi comedy show screened on national Finnish TV. Despite its satirical 204

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Figure 9.5 Sámi family at spring celebration

function, the song presents Sámi in sharp contrast to typical media stereotypes, namely as beautiful, sexy, young and ‘mediatisable’ (Dlaske, 2017, p. 457; Kelly-​ Holmes, 2011, p. 511). The YouTube post of the Sámi song has attracted 439,000 views (as at September 2022) and, at the time of Dlaske’s analysis, it had received 230 comments (mostly in Finnish, a few in Sámi and English and one in Spanish). Reactions to the Sámi song and performance parallel those discussed in relation to the Irish song. Like Lurgan’s remake, ‘Leivänmuruseni’ attracted commendations for its role in language revitalisation: ‘This was nice to watch. Great way to introduce Sámi to the grey mass:)’ (Dlaske, 2017, p. 459). And like the Irish example, it also received comments infused with positive language attitudes. 205

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(3) C51–​Sámi language does sound beautiful although I don’t understand any of it :) C52–​sounds grand that Sámi language (Dlaske, 2017, p. 464) Linked to the positive assessment of Sámi as beautiful and grand, and perhaps as an object of interest and desire, users posted comments declaring their eagerness to learn the language. (4) C93–​Thanks girls! Hey, you need to teach that language to us! C94–​Oh, it would be lovely to be able to speak Sámi or Japanese :) C95–​That’s it. I’ll start learning Sámi:D C96–​Are there lyrics available to this?? :DD Would like to learn myself that grand, beautiful language