Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies
Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools
Petra Seidlová
Advice-giving on Twitter
Master’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: Doc. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, PhD.
2018
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
I would like to thank my supervisor, Doc. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, PhD.,
for his valuable advice and support.
Table of conents
1. Introduction ...... 6
1.1. Social Media ...... 8
1.1.1. General characteristics ...... 9
1.1.2. Twitter ...... 9
1.1.3. Twitter facilities ...... 11
1.1.4. Privacy ...... 13
1.2. YouTubers ...... 14
2. Advice-giving ...... 16
2.1. Definition ...... 17
2.2. Phatic function ...... 18
2.3. Speech Acts ...... 20
2.4. Previous research in advice-giving ...... 21
3. Data ...... 26
3.1. Methodology ...... 27
3.2. YouTubers ...... 29
3.2.1. Dan and Phil ...... 30
3.2.2. PewDiePie ...... 33
3.2.3. Zoella ...... 35
4. Analysis ...... 38
4.1. Structural aspects of advice-giving ...... 38
4.1.1. Unsolicited advice-giving ...... 39
4.1.2. Solicited advice-giving ...... 51
4.1.3. Meta advice ...... 71
4.1.4. Follow-up ...... 72
5. Conclusion ...... 76
1. Introduction
Advice-giving is a part of language present in our everyday lives. We give and receive advice both in private settings and in public spaces – at home, at schools, in workplace.
As a future teacher, I consider the process of advice-giving to teenagers and young adults especially important and delicate at the same time. Moreover, I am also interested in social media and the communication occurring there, that is why I decided to combine these two areas in the present thesis.
It is generally known that social media have been a part of our lives. People share there almost everything – from their work profiles to the photos from their holiday and notes about everyday struggles. And many users have found a way how to make their living exclusively by using and taking advantage of the possibilities social media offer. A concrete group of young people which is gaining more and more attention, money and influence are Youtubers. They have become the new celebrities and idols of millions of teenagers and young people based on the content and activities they create on their own YouTube channels. YouTubers are, however, not only enjoying popularity and creating fun videos. They should be considered as one of the strongest influencers nowadays. Their videos have millions of views, the speed at which their videos and ideas are shared is immense and with the growing number of people who have internet access it has never been easier to address such amount of people. Due to the feeling of closeness and understanding they are slowly replacing authorities such as teachers, actors or any advisors the young generation may look up to and seek for advice. That is why I consider it beneficiary to observe how the psychologically complex process of
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advice-giving occurs, what are the strategies they use and whether they realize the role of an authority and behave accordingly.
Therefore, the aim of the present thesis is to observe and analyse the way in which they use another social platform, Twitter, as a place where the communicative channel between the celebrities and audience is open. Concretely, the present research focuses on the process of advice-giving within the context of phatic function. It is considered a strategy of establishing the relationship and looks into the structure of advice-giving that takes place on Twitter.
The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter outlines the background of social media, the specifics of Twitter and other describes the way Twitter works
(both on the level of its policies and on the interactional level), looks into the phenomenon of YouTubers and provides an analysis of a set of chosen Tweets depicting communication between YouTubers and their followers. The second chapter presents advice-giving from the linguistic point of view. Furthermore, it connects advice-giving with phatic function and presents the idea that it is related to establishing a relationship with the audience. In this chapter, findings from previous research in advice-giving are presented and the strategies that are relevant to the present research are emphasised. In the third chapter the collected data (i.e. the relevant tweets) are described. Moreover, the chapter also contains a brief introduction of the four YouTubers, on whose profiles I collected the relevant data. The fourth chapter presents the analytical part, where I observe the structural aspects of advice-giving on Twitter. It is further subdivided depending on whether the advice was unsolicited (4.1.1.) or solicited (4.1.2.). Each of these is further subdivided again to implicit and explicit advice-giving. Each of theses
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then contains subchapters that outlines the respective structural aspects of advice giving and also identifies mitigating strategies used there.
The following research questions are to be answered:
1. Are there any crucial differences in the behaviour of the YouTubers as
far as the structure and content of advice-giving is concerned?
2. What are the typical content structures in advice-giving? (Locher, 2007,
p.52)
3. What are the typical “syntactic realizations” (Locher, 2007, p. 52) of
advice-giving on Twitter?
4. What mitigating strategies are applied when YouTubers give advice to
their audience (and vice versa)?
5. What is the typical content structure of follow-up?
1.1. Social Media
This chapter is dedicated to short introduction of the two social platforms that are connected to the present research – Twitter and YouTube. I outline some general characteristics of social media and then summarize some of the most important features of Twitter, its facilities, terminology and the discrepancy between private and public space. Moreover, I also introduce the phenomenon of YouTubers who are the main protagonists and authors of significant part of the primary material. I consider such introduction relevant to the topic since each of the existing platforms has a different scope of freedom, has different approach to privacy and thus users act differently on each.
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1.1.1. General characteristics
It is without a doubt that the change in communication that was caused by the rise of new social media was immense. It all begin with the introduction of computers and new technologies in general. From what we can observe in various fictional books and movies, it was believed that the biggest technological advance would appear in the transport industry or artificial intelligence, whereas the progress that occurred on the level of communication was something quite unexpected. It all began with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1991 which “gave a new impetuous to the liaison between geek culture and counterculture. As the WWW consortium began to build global standardized infrastructure, communities of enthusiastic users began to churn out applications for the Web” (Van Dijck, p. 10, 2013). As Van Dijck (2013) further points out, their instant growth was not (as sometimes mistakenly supposed) based on their technological design, but rather on the “capacity for two-way communication” (p. 10), it gave the users the possibility to react, get involved and communicate with each other.
The inclusion of the readers and audience to the process was most probably an attractive and new way of social interaction, and therefore the spread of such applications emerged. For the first time in human history, it facilitated communication among people living at great distances in a very short period of time.
1.1.2. Twitter
Twitter is nowadays one of the most popular social platforms. According to its own statistics, it has more than 328 million active users every month (Twitter, 2017) and it is used for several different purposes. It was created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and it was first designed as an alternative to SMS messaging (Van Dijck, 2013, p. 69-70).
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“The terminology presumes Twitter to be a neutral platform upon which
users freely interact, much like the Web itself – an infrastructure that transports
streams of tweets, regardless of who its users are and indifferent to the contents
they exchange. (...) The infrastructure itself needs to fade into the background.
(...) Twitter presents itself as an echo chamber of random chatter, the online
underbelly of mass opinions where collective emotions are formed and were
quick-lived trends wax and wane in the public eye. Twitter presents the platform
as a carrier (...) but this objective is simultaneously challenged by the pressure to
make its content streams profitable. The paradox of enabling connectedness
while engineering connectivity, of propagation neutrality while securing
profitability, is played out in every aspect of the platform.” (Van Dijck, 2013, p.
69)
As she (2013) further points out, it has gradually changed into platform serving for several purposes to what is today called “microblogging” (Van Dijk, 2012; Van
Dijck, 2013) – stories and observations from real life mostly written by the wide public.
That is where one of its crucial characteristics, the limit of 140 characters used for one message (commonly known as tweet), originated. At the time of its formation, unlike other social platforms, Twitter’s first users were not young adults, it “attracted users mostly in business settings and news outlets, resulting in an early adopter profile of older (35 and up) professional users” (Van Dijck, 2013, p. 74). Nevertheless, Twitter caught younger generation’s attention during 2009 when also some of the new functions
(mentioned below) were introduced (Van Dijck, 2013). This is also the reason why
YouTubers’ audiences (which is believed to consist of teenagers and young adults) use
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it so frequently when communicating with their idol and why instances of advice-giving were identified there.
1.1.3. Twitter facilities
It is also considered important to outline Twitter’s facilities since, as has been outlined, they are the reason why this platform is apt for two-sided communication (and advice- giving in particular) between the YouTubers and their audience.
The platform started to grow steadily, thus new functions were needed for smoother and better communication. First, it was the @ symbol, which made it possible to address or tag a concrete user, then # symbol (so called hashtag) for topic trending or specific event (concretely YouTubers often use it for specific reactions to a particular topic), the possibility to retweet a post (RT), in other words – to share a tweet posted by another user or to send a private direct message to another user (DM) (Van Dijck,
2013). Nowadays, it is also possible to share photographs or other content, however, it is still believed that the primary function of Twitter is to create one’s own content.
Furthermore, another change of the platform’s affordances occurred in
September 2017, Twitter selected certain set of profiles and started to test 280-character long tweets and was followed by several discontent reactions from the user (Watson,
2017). All of the aforementioned syntactic and linguistic features are sometimes summarized as “twitter syntax” (Van Dijck, 2013, p. 72) that soon spread throughout the internet.
Another important phenomenon of Twitter (and social platforms in general) is the status of following someone. At this point, it is important to mention the difference
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in terminology here. While Twitter (and Facebook) use the verb to follow someone, that is to say, to have his or her posts, tweets, retweets or likes displayed by News Feed
(latest messages) or to see his or her contributions on our personal page. Subsequently, the people who follow somebody are called followers. On the other hand, YouTube uses the verb to subscribe (to the YouTube channel), therefore the noun subscribers started to be used for such community. However, it is important to note that the subscriber is still a different term than a viewer.
There is a significant difference in following posts of a certain user on Twitter in comparison with other platforms such as Facebook or Instagram (if private settings is applied). Twitter makes it possible for the users to simply click on the “follow” button displayed on the given user’s personal page without any permission requirements or the user’s approval. Therefore, it is much easier to follow somebody but also gain followers and thus build the community of followers. This is logically one of the reasons why is
Twitter so widely used among politicians, celebrities and companies – the access to their side is very simple and their messages can spread quickly. Thus, it is not surprising that YouTubers, who primarily focus on different platform, incline to using Twitter as a tool for short messages or promotions. They spread easily, reach wide audience and also resemble a shift from the original spoken and visual content to the written word. It may be assumed that their ability to write witty posts could be considered as another skill they have, which may even support their role of an authority or a role model. In connection with following, Van Dijck mentions (2013, p. 13) a key phenomenon connected to online following, it is “the popularity principle: the more contact you have and make, the more valuable you become, because more people think you are popular and hence want to connect with you.” It can be said that YouTubers and Twitter users
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are a canonical example of such an issue – it is mainly the number of followers that makes them influential and powerful not only over their audience but also over the platform itself.
1.1.4. Privacy
As has been already mentioned in the previous section, another key element of online communication is privacy. Social media has significantly changed the point of view on privacy of individuals. In his classification of communication, Castells (as cited in Van Dijk, 2012) introduced a new term for platforms such as Twitter, YouTube or others, which solves the discrepancy between mass and interpersonal and public and private communication, he (2009) defines it as “mass-self communication” (p. 182).
The term “mass” suggests that a message (a YouTube video, a tweet) sent from there have a potential global reach, but “it also is self-generated in content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many who communicate with many”
(Castells, 2010, p. 30). It means that it is created by a particular user, who directs it to another selected user(s) and also selects the communicative medium. As Van Dijk
(2012, p. 182) demonstrates, mass-self communication is basically built on the grounds of a private sender who sends a message to a public receiver.
To apply the term to the Twitter (and also YouTube) context, it is a common procedure to share personal content such as anecdotes, stories, pictures from family celebrations and holiday. Van Dijk (2012, p. 190) supports the idea that the image of a public space has shifted significantly. He (2012) suggests that today’s networking world it does not depend on the similarity of location as it used to do. Moreover, he (2012) adds another point of view:
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“What binds people in contemporary public space is not a fixed
number of common situations, views, habits and other social, cultural
and political characteristics. It is an extremely diversified and shifting
complex of overlapping similarities and differences, particularly in the
growing number of multicultural societies” (p. 190).
The statement can be directly related to the phenomenon of YouTubers. There are millions of people who do not share any specific set of characteristics, hobbies, social background or cultural preferences, however, they all follow a particular
YouTuber and watch the same content. Consequently, they have a shared interest that they can discuss, react on or share. These “shared values” (DeCapua and Huber, 1995, p. 120) create an intimate setting in which advice-giving and advice-requesting can take place.
The discrepancy between public and private sphere was also one of the areas of interest in Locher’s (2007) monograph, which I present in more detail in chapter 2.1.3., which supports the idea that this ambiguous sphere is a relevant aspect when considering advice-giving.
1.2. YouTubers
This subchapter outlines the history and origin of YouTube community. This short overview is an important introduction to who YouTubers are, how this community emerged and why they play such important roles in the lives of today’s teenagers.
As the online culture started to grow, YouTube emerged in 2005 in Silicon
Valley and started as a “platform for sharing self-made amateur videos, an ‘alternative’
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to watching television” (Van Dijck, 2013, p. 110). What may be interesting is the fact that YouTube was not one of the pioneering platforms who introduced a new way of content sharing from the technological point of view. What it did indeed brought was indeed streaming, uploading and social networking abilities (Van Dijck, 2013).
As has been already mentioned, YouTube emerged as a tool for the wide audience to upload and share their videos. Therefore, groups of viewers with similar hobbies emerged. Firstly, the name YouTuber was ascribed to all users of the platform.
However, it was soon discovered that only a fragment of all users actually creates content. It was soon discovered and later confirmed by research carried out by Ding et al. (2011) that majority of the content on YouTube is created by the most popular uploaders, concretely that “the most popular 20% of the uploaders attract 97.0% of views” (Ding et al, 2011, p. 363). Hence, the term “YouTubers” commenced to be used exclusively for the group of the most active users who actually create new video content and therefore contribute to the development of the platform.
The main reason why the particular group of young video makers has got that popular and influential is more complex, but one of the strongest points is certainly the fact that they deal with topics that are relatable to most of the teenagers and young people. Quite often they create so called “vlogs” (video blogs) with entertaining content, stories from everyday life or on specific topic that they specialize in. Google was interested in the success of these celebrities as well and carried out a survey, which indicated that “70% of teenage YouTube subscribers say they relate to YouTube creators more than traditional celebrities” and that “4 in 10 millennial subscribers say their favourite creator understands them better than their friends” (O’Neil-Hart,
Blumenstein, 2016). Such data supports the idea that YouTubers have taken over the
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role of a close person, older sibling, let’s say, who advises teenagers on everyday problems, gives them lifestyle and relationship tips, however, is not too old to be considered an irrelevant intrusion. In short, they clearly play an important role in the social and private lives of millions of young people. Moreover, the thousands of views, likes and comments below each video gives supports their status of a reliable person, of an authority, who has a large crowd of supporters and viewers. The popularity may serve here as a certain confirmation of relevance and authenticity. Therefore, unlike family members, teachers or friends, their statements are more likely to be considered confirmed and true.
The famous business magazine Forbes looked into the origin of the immense success of YouTubers and came up with three main reasons of their popularity:
“1. YouTube stars are better at developing relationships
2. YouTube stars drive more engagement
3. YouTube personalities set trends and shape pop culture” (Arnold,
2017).
The first two arguments are particularly important to the present thesis since the development of relationship with the audience is the issue that is looked into.
2. Advice-giving
In this chapter, I will define the concept of advice giving from the pragmatic point of view. Firstly, a definition of advice-giving is provided since it is crucial to determine the scope of the sample. Moreover, the main ideas and findings from other studies that have
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dealt with the topic of advice-giving in different environments are to be summarized and the strategies that I follow in the present research are outlined
2.1. Definition
In this section, different definitions of the word “advice” are compared. Despite the fact that most people can imagine what an advice is, it was crucial for the thesis to define the speech act, so that it was possible to search for the concrete instances in on the Twitter profiles of the YouTubers.
Online Oxford Dictionaries defines advice as “guidance or recommendations offered with regard to prudent future action” (Advice, Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.). This definition implies that advice and recommendation are synonymous concepts.
MacMillan online dictionary states that an advice is “an opinion that someone gives you about the best thing to do in a particular situation” (Advice, MacMillan Dictionary, n.d.). The performativity of this definition is not as strong as the previous one due to the use of the synonym “opinion” instead of “recommendation” (used further by Oxford
Dictionaries), which is naturally more binding than an opinion. Both definitions also accentuate the potential positive impact (“the best thing to do” and “the prudent future action”) on the hearer’s future. Moreover, Cambridge Dictionary explains advice as “an opinion that someone offers you about what you should do or how you should act in a particular situation” (Advice, Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.). This definition is the only one that admits the fact that advice can also include situations or recommendations how not to act or what to avoid.
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Since the platform is not an environment that serves primarily as a platform for advising and counselling, it was somewhat difficult to determine which posts contain a piece of advice. The aforementioned definitions suggest that advice and recommendation are overlapping terms, which is supported by the fact that MacMillan dictionary introduces them as each other’s synonyms (Advice, n.d.; Recommendation, n.d.). However, according to the same dictionary, the term recommendation, in contrary to advice, does not focus on the future actions, it is rather “suggestion or piece of advice about how to solve a problem, deal with a situation etc.” (Recommendation, MacMillan
Dictionary, n.d.). Therefore, I decided to follow DeCapua and Dunham (1993), who defined advice as “opinions or counsel given by people who perceive themselves as knowledgeable, and/or who the advice seeker may think are credible, trustworthy, and reliable” (p. 519). This definition is apt for the context of the present thesis especially due to its second part, where they stress the importance of the advice seeker’s acceptance and recognition of such advice. In the context of the thesis it is difficult to talk about “expert” opinions or knowledgeability, because the topics mostly concern fashion, lifestyle, relationships, etc. Therefore, it is purely upon the seeker whether he or she chooses to accept YouTubers as a reliable source of advice.
2.2. Phatic function
Several linguists (Miller, 2008; Zappavigna, 2012; Radovanovic and Ragnedda, 2012, etc.) have noticed that microblogging is not only specific for the limited amount of characters (especially in the case of Twitter), but not always convey any meaning, which means it has a phatic function. Phatic function was fist defined by Malinowski
(as cited in Zappavigna, 2012) who introduced the term ‘phatic communion’.
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In phatic communion words “fulfil a social function and that is their principal
aim, but they are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they
necessarily arouse reflection in the listener. Once again we may say that
language does not function here as a means of transmission of thought.”
(Zappavigna, 2012, p. 249).
Later on, Roman Jakobson (1960) included so called phatic function in his overview of language functions, which focuses more on establishing a communicative channel or relationship rather than on conveying any meaning. Furthermore, Miller
(2008), who described phatic function in the context of social media, commented on phatic function the following:
“One should not assume that these phatic communications are ‘meaningless’, in
fact, in many ways they are very meaningful, and imply the recognition,
intimacy and sociability in which a strong sense of community is founded.
Phatic messages potentially carry a lot more weight to them than the content
itself suggests. (…) More important than anything said, it is the connection to
the other that becomes significant, and the exchange of words becomes
superfluous” (p. 395).
Moreover, according to Makice (2009) Twitter is phatic in its original sense, because it is based on what he calls “are-you-there Here-I-am mission” (p. 3). It officially claims to be monitoring “what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now” (Twitter About, 2017). In that sense, users are encouraged to share things that are happening around them without any specific appeal to
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communicate with each other. Therefore, some users use Twitter a tool how to share their world without any particular aim or need to get a response.
As far as advice-giving on YouTubers profiles is concerned, the hypothesis is that it is in reality one of the realizations of phatic function, contact function. It serves to both the YouTubers and the audience to maintain in contact with each other and it supports the feeling of reciprocal closeness and caring as well. In the case of
YouTubers, it is probable that the motives for establishing relationship with their audience are different. They act in the online world, which is their main domain, in the position of an authority that can give recommendations, share their opinions and even give advice.
To conclude, the phatic function performed via advice-giving is essential to most of the Twitter communication. It can be identified in both the Youtubers and their audience’s posts and behaviour since for the former ones it is a manner how to address and establish a fixed community of followers (and potential clients) and it also helps the latter group to stay in contact with their idols. In summary, advice-giving on Twitter creates the idea of intimacy between the celebrity and the audience.
2.3. Speech Acts
When considering the theoretical background of advice, it was necessary to revise
Austin and Searle’s Speech Act Theory. They established three categories of speech acts – locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Relevant to the present topic are particularly illocutionary acts as they focus on the speaker’s intentions. Searle
(1976) in his study presented a revised Austin’s taxonomy of illocutionary acts, he
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divided them into Representatives, Comissives, Directives, Expressives and
Declarations. He (1976) also stressed the fact that performativity of the verbs and utterances does not depend solely on the verbs themselves, but rather on the context and intended use.
The issue that emerges with the speech act theory in this particular case is that within the scope of my sample the communication is mostly condensed, and the receiver’s further actions are unknown. Therefore, it is not clear whether the concrete dialogues can be considered piece of advice and it is even more obscure whether he or she actually followed it. This is why it is assumed that advice-giving on YouTubers’
Twitter accounts has primarily phatic, contact function and that the performativity of the advice will oscillate depending on the seriousness of the topic, context and other extralinguistic features.
2.4. Previous research in advice-giving
This subchapter presents findings from other studies focusing on advice-giving that have been carried out. Some of the conclusions, strategies or objectives that are relevant to the present research are emphasized.
First of the significant studies in the field of advice-giving was conducted by
DeCapua and Dunham (1993) who investigated advice-giving in two radio programmes
(similarly to e.g. Hutchby, 1995). As the primary function of the radio programmes is to offer help or counsel, therefore they had expected to deal mostly with solicited advising.
To their surprise, in most cases they did not discover explicit requests for advice – the callers rather outlined their problem and expected the host to identify the request for
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advice by themselves (DeCapua and Dunham, 1993, p. 521). This is the reason why I included the two subchapters – explicit and implicit advice-giving as well. The reason is that the public environment of a radio programme can be considered similar to the environment of Twitter and therefore a comparable approach of the actors is expected.
As DeCapua and Dunham (1993) further observe, the advice is therefore not available exclusively to the advice seeker, but to wider audience.
Another interesting observation is that “and even general talk show hosts avoid showing empathy or affiliation with the interviewees or their situations, again in direct contrast with radio advice program hosts” (DeCapua and Dunham, 1993, p. 528) which implies that “the medium of broadcasting is less relevant than the type of speech event taking place” (DeCapua and Dunham, 1993, p. 528). This can be also observed in my sample. There are different instances of advice-giving varying from one-word interactions to more direct and personal pieces of advice.
In another study, DeCapua and Huber (1995) determined two main units – solicited and unsolicited advice, which is a strategy that is applied in the present research as well. They observed these two types based on the role and position of and advice giver and advice seeker, their intimacy and position of power, which is particularly relevant (DeCapua and Huber, 1995). They also conclude that “advice serves to establish or maintain rapport, to flatter, to help, to reprimand, distance and dominate” (DeCapua and Huber, 1995, p. 128). This clearly connects their ideas to the phatic, contact function, as stated in the present research.
They (1995) also focused on the psychological background of advice-giving and remarked that “in order for advice-givers to know what is helpful or beneficial for
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another person, there must be some assumption of either intimacy or shared back- ground between advice-givers and -receivers” (DeCapua and Huber, 1995, p. 120). This clearly defines the situation between YouTubers and their audience – the young adults follow the content published by the YouTubers, know details from their personal lives since they follow them on daily basis. Unlike in the definition by DeCapua and Huber
(1995), who state that “in public, advice-givers and advice-seekers are strangers” (p.
121), the relationship in my sample is believed to be intimate at least from the audience’s point of view and based on the YouTubers’ reactions, they feel certain closeness to their audience as well. Therefore, one of the hypothesis is that YouTubers will mostly appear in the position of advice-givers.
In another study, DeCapua and Dunham (2007) also cooperated on an article that addresses the cross-cultural aspect of advice-giving, in other words compared advice by native English speakers, English learners and proficient non-native speakers.
They also looked into the linguistic patterns that can be used for advice-giving
(similarly to latter groups use similar grammatical patterns to express advice. While
“Learners of English are generally taught to associate should + VP with advice”
(DeCapua & Dunham, 2007, p. 336), according to the findings from DeCapua and
Huber (1995) and DeCapua and Dunham (1993) previous research, native speakers
“rarely used specific grammatical forms such as should I + base verb? or you should + base verb” (DeCapua & Dunham, 2007, p. 336). The difference between native and non-native speakers can be observed in the present sample only partially since the nationality of the followers is not known. Moreover, the general tendency in the online communication is to use condensed language. Within the sample of YouTubers, one non-native speaker (PewDiePie) is included, therefore I will try to analyse whether his
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advice giving diverges from the rest of the sample in the context of his slightly different pragmatic and cultural background.
Research conducted by Dana Boatman (1987) A Study of Unsolicited Advice focuses on advice in an entirely different environment – everyday communication on a university campus. Her findings are still of interest. To collect her data, Boatman (1987) used three different sources – she used her handwritten notes, questionnaires and observation. She mostly focused on the pattern that contains should or conditional form
(if I were you…) to limit her research, which is not exactly relevant to the present thesis since most of the advice is provided indirectly via various pragmatic strategies. I observe these grammatical patterns in the two subcategories – explicit unsolicited and explicit solicited advice, where the structure itself prefigures the presence of advice within the discourse. Another objective of Boathman (1987) that can be considered relevant to the present thesis was to observe the relationship between the social status
(in her study it was the year at university) or gender and the positions in advice-giving.
She concluded that first-year female students were more sensitive about their social status (in comparison with their male counterparts) (p. 47).
Moreover, female students preferred to give unsolicited advice to their female fellow students than to the male ones. In contrary, “first-year male students (…) give unsolicited advice to females regardless to their status, while females rarely give unsolicited advice to the males of the same status and, with only one exception, never to males of a higher status” (p. 52). Since the age of the users is not known, I will only observe the difference of male and female advice givers on the position of the
YouTubers and analyse whether a similar tendency in the balance of power between male and female advice givers emerges there.
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The most extensive and significant study of online advice-giving is probably the monograph by Miriam Locher (2007) Advice Online: Advice-giving in an American
Internet Health Column. She dealt with online advice-giving in an American online health forum ‘Lucy Answers’. She also followed Heritage and Sefi’s (1992) research, in which they focused on medical advice as well. Firstly, it is of importance that she focused on the same medium and form of advice-giving – online written interactions.
Locher (2007) investigated in particular the “typical content structure of responses and the realization of advice (p. 55), “aspects of relational work and advice” (p. 55) and “the personal and public dimension of advice-giving” (p. 55). I specifically follow her study in the division of advice to solicited and unsolicited advice, moreover, I added two subcategories of both – implicit and explicit advice. The reason is that YouTubers occasionally publish a post that does not primarily serve as a piece advice, however, the audience’s reaction implies that they perceive it as a piece of advice on what they should do or what can be beneficial to them (especially if they want to follow the
YouTuber’s lifestyle).
Similarly to Locher (2007), my research is qualitative and I will follow her strategy of close reading. In comparison with her research, my sample is too small to lead to some definite quantitative findings, but it can still help to understand the way in which YouTubers communicate with their audience, what pragmatic strategies they use and therefore influence the lives of young adults. Another aspect in which I follow the findings of Locher (2007) and Hudson (1990) is that I observe the structural aspects of advice-giving. However, due to the fact that most of my sample are chunks of text or simple sentences (sometimes without a verb), it is impossible to analyse the discursive moves and practices in the same way as she did. The categories identified by Locher
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(2007) and Hudson (1990) differ since their sample consisted of significantly longer and more structured texts. However, similar structures to those identified by Hudson (as cited in Locher, 2007, p. 33) were discovered (e.g. non-subject infinitive, modal verbs, conditionals, etc.). Tables summarizing the identified discursive moves are provided at the end of subchapters 4.1.1, 4.1.2.
Furthermore, I appreciate Locher’s (2007) focus on face-threatening strategies.
She was inspired by research by Goldsmith and MacGeorge (2000) and Hudson (1990).
Especially in the case of young adults (who comprise most of my sample), who are rather sensitive about social status and image, I find it crucial to observe the mitigating strategies that may be present in the pieces of advice given.
To summarize, all of these studies are relevant to my research since they all focus on giving advice in public environment. I have decided to divide my analytical part based on model proposed by DeCapua and Huber (1995) and Locher (2007) where they deal with solicited and unsolicited advice and what pragmatic and discursive markers are used there. In the case of explicit advice-giving I also focus on the grammatical patterns that may reappear within the sample. Moreover, I will also observe the follow-up of advising, which is also included in Locher’s (2007) research.
3. Data
This section introduces the collected data, concretely the tweets posted by the chosen
YouTubers. Firstly, it gives details on the collected data, furthermore, this chapter also describes where and when the data was collected. Lastly, it also presents an outline
YouTubers’ identities, where two points of view taken into consideration – the
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real-world identities and the online identities they create on the social platforms, because it is crucial for understanding the interactions between the YouTubers and their audience.
Firstly, details on the relevant data are presented. The data, concretely the tweets in which advice-giving was identified, was collected between 1 September and 1
November 2017 on the Twitter. I chose four YouTubers whose communication patterns
I observed – Daniel Howell (@danielhowell), Phil Lester (@AmazingPhil), Zoe Suggs
(@Zoella) and Felix Kjellberg (@PewDiePie). Altogether 67 tweets that contain request for advice, advice or follow-up reaction were identified and presented.
3.1. Methodology
In this subchapter I describe the origin of the data in more detail, the place of their collection and also the time period in which they were collected. I also note the manner in which the data was processed. Firs of all, it is important to note that due to the limited amount of the collected data this work certainly cannot be considered to be a quantitative research, however, some quantitative conclusions will occur. However, in general the thesis presents a qualitative analysis of a limited sample of Tweets.
To specify the collected data, it is also important to outline the platform on which it was published. The collection of data consists of Twitter posts or comments that were found on the given profiles within a period between 1 September 2017 and 1
November 2017. As has been mentioned, not all of phatic tweets were taken into consideration, most of the phatic interactions contained requests for clarification or additional information about the given anecdotes. These, however, do not fall within the
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scope of the research, I focus only on instances that contain an opinion or recommendation (see 2.1).
As mentioned in section 2.1.3, I mostly follow analytical methods applied by
Locher (2007). I firstly categorize the advice according to their origin to solicited and unsolicited (4.1.1., 4.1.2) and further subdivide them according to their realization to implicit and explicit instances. Explicit instances are these that provide a direct counsel on “prudent future actions” (Advice, Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.). From grammatical point of view, these are mostly constructions that contain imperatives, modal verbs
(should, might) or conditional constructions (e.g. If I were you, which are typically used for advising (DeCapua and Dunham, 2007; Boatman, 1987; see Chapter 2.1.3) and group them into these categories. Implicit advice covers posts that do not contain grammatical structure that would signalize advice-giving, but either the reactions or context imply that their function complies with the definition.
Furthermore, I observe the structure of the advice by close reading, analyse whether mitigating strategies are applied for I assume that within this young community they can be crucial for face-saving of the individuals. Chapter 4.1.3 is dedicated to the follow-up, which is also another phatic aspect of advice-giving, provides space for evaluation of the advice or expressing gratitude.
For more clarity, the concrete examples are presented within the text of the thesis and not in the appendixes (as in Locher, 2007; DeCapua and Huber, 1995; etc.).
Having consulted the guidelines of Association of Online Researchers, the Twitter names were kept in their original form since there is no sensitive or private content included and is available to the wide public.
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3.2. YouTubers
This subchapter deals with general characteristics of the authors of the tweets that are analysed in chapter four. It provides a short introduction of the four celebrities, the real-world background about their lives and relationships that can be relevant here. I also outline their typical behaviour on Twitter concerning activity, interactions and typical topics. The information is supported by a statistic (summarized in a table) about the types of posts they shared between 1 September and 1 November 2017.
As has been mentioned in the introduction, the present thesis focuses on Twitter accounts of four influential YouTubers – Dan and Phil (a YouTube duo), PewDiePie and Zoella. The decision was based on their popularity among young people and teenagers, but also other aspects that are further outlined. Most of the information about their private and online lives that is further outlined come from their videos and online posts.
As far as the online opinion-giving in general is concerned, Thornborrow (2015) remarked that unlike on TV or on the radio, in online opinion-giving “identity attribution is minimal, partly due to the technology format (in which individual poster identity is only given in their screen names) (…) the online activity consists of the delivery of questions and opinions that are largely disconnected from any form of relevant speaker identity or situated expertise” (p. 112-113). She also adds that based on her data, “online opinion-giving is rarely framed by any relevant identity work (…) it is often between individual posters, in non-sequential exchanges over an extended period of time.” (p. 117). As far as the present sample is concerned, only the YouTubers’ identities can be observed since, as Thornborrow (2015) stated, only screen names of
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the audience are present. That is why the online identities of the YouTubers are outlined since it presents an insight to into their social group.
3.2.1. Dan and Phil
A presentation of Dan and Phil YouTube duo follows. The section provides an outline of the background of their relationship, which is probably also one of the keys of their success. It has already been mentioned that members of a cooperating duo cannot be considered a prototypical example. There is not a usual celebrity-audience relationship, a third party, in this case the other member of the duo, joins the dialogue as well. To put it simply, they interact with the audience, but also with each other, which means that two communicative channels emerge – the one between themselves and the one of the duo with the audience. Therefore, most of their videos does not contain a simple monologue (unlike in the case of Zoella and PewDiePie), but it is built on their interactions. They moderate the other one’s behaviour, make jokes or tell their stories, which can potentially make the videos more attractive and entertaining.
Moreover, in this close friendship, a tension of the two different personalities emerges, Dan is the more passive and intellectual one and Phil is more active, entertaining and contact. This tension is apparent even in their Twitter behaviour.
3.2.1.1. Real-world identity
The identity and background of the first two YouTubers is to be outlined. Daniel
Howell and Philip Lester are rather specific group for several reasons. Firstly, they are one of a few YouTubers working on videos together, therefore, the dynamics of the videos is specific. The way how their cooperation emerged is rather peculiar. In their
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videos they revealed that they when they started to cooperate, Daniel was Philip’s fan, approached him and since that time they have been united by both their professional careers and by their personal friendship. Such an example could be attractive to the audience, because it gives the impression that it is possible even for a common teenager to approach a YouTuber, become acquainted and even be a part of his or her personal life.
Nowadays, the duo lives in a shared flat in London together, therefore, it is easy to sense the feeling of a familiar, friendly atmosphere that is usually present in the videos. As far as their strategy for communication with the audience is concerned, they have two separate Twitter accounts (@danielhowell and @AmazingPhil), which they use for video announcements, short anecdotes or promotions. It is not surprising that they retweet each other’s post quite frequently, tag each other in some of the tweets that promote their shared videos or comment on each other’s post in a friendly tone. Such cooperation is not unusual, there are several other British YouTubers working together.
3.2.1.2. Online identity
Now, the online identity, their behaviour and general online tendencies are outlined. The online identity of the two YouTubers is based much on their cooperation and interconnectedness of their online activities. They do not usually film vlogs, in majority of cases they create entertaining videos focusing on them playing computer games (that is why their channel is called DanAndPhilGAMES), communication with the audience and life streams. Their YouTube channel has more than three million subscribers and more than 420 million of views, moreover, besides the joint channel, each of them still has his own YouTube channel, where they dedicate to their own
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interests (having six and half and four million subscribers). Phil focuses mostly on promotion of their YouTube channel and entertainment. In contrary, Dan occasionally touches more serious topics such as mental diseases, bully or various sociological and psychological the aspects of being a YouTube celebrity. Their interactions and comments are then related to these general tendencies.
3.2.1.3. Twitter activity
This subsection focuses on the outline of the Twitter activities of Dan and Phil duo.
Regarding the activity on their Twitter accounts, they have two different approaches reflecting both their online identity and their personality in the real life. As far as the activity is concerned, Phil shares much more content on his Twitter account than his companion. Furthermore, most of this content seems to have only a phatic function – there are mostly humorous anecdotes from his everyday life that do not carry any further meaning, simply keeps the channel open and establishes the relationship with the audience.
In addition, in contrast to Howell, Lester seems less emphatic and more spontaneous in his reactions. While Howell shares (both in his videos and on his
Twitter account) stories about his personal issues, experience and as has been demonstrated, his replies are thoughtful and carefully written, Lester’s comments are more entertaining than instructive.
On the other hand, as follows from the description in 3.2.1.2, Dan is more communicative. He often interacts with his audience and especially when dealing with more serious topics he even addresses concrete individuals with serious pieces of advice. Nonetheless, it was surprising to find out that the patterns in the audience’s
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reactions differed from these appearing at Daniel Howell’s profile. The comments with appreciation and support when he replies to the audience do occur, but much less than under his companion’s responses.
This could be the reason why Howell is more popular among younger fans, because he pays attention to their issues and reacts accordingly. The idea of an age difference of the two groups of fans is also supported by the fact that Howell’s audience is more active in their responding and also more emotional about getting a reply (the community support that was earlier). Another evidence that supports this theory is the fact that much less imitating profiles (the profiles where user name and profile pictures imitate the YouTuber) are to be found on Lester’s profile (Adami,
2015). It is also possible that there is one common audience for both members of the duo, which consists of two subgroups of Twitter users – one preferring Dan’s personal approach and the other inclining to Phil’s entertaining stories. Thus, despite the fact that the duo cooperates and works together on most of their material, the reactions they receive on their Twitter accounts differ.
3.2.2. PewDiePie
In this subchapter, a description of the most successful YouTubers follows. His personality and online activities are outlined and compared with the rest of the group.
3.2.2.1. Real-life
Felix Kjellberg, commonly known as PewDiePie, is a Swedish YouTuber with the highest number of subscribers of all YouTube channels – he has more than 57 million subscribers and his channel has over 16 billion views (YouTube). Being the most
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popular YouTube personality gives him significant power both over the audience and over the platform. He is known to be the “enfant terrible” of the YouTube community, his unorthodox humour and bold criticism of YouTube platform itself differ him greatly from the rather decent rest of the sample.
3.2.2.2. Online identity
PewDiePie’s career commenced in a way that is similar to other YouTubers – first, making YouTube videos was his hobby during his university studies. After gaining more than million subscribers he decided to focus exclusively on his YouTube career.
At his beginnings, the topics of his videos is mostly reviews of video games, he provides his observations in humorous way, which makes his videos attractive.
Nowadays, the topics of his videos vary. Unlike several other YouTubers, he does not have more YouTube channels for different purposes, therefore, he creates categories so that it is easier for the followers to get oriented. Some of these categories are for example “All Finished Playthroughs” following his original idea to record himself while playing a game, sometimes reviewing it, different challenges such as “YLYL” (You
Laugh, You Lose), etc.
3.2.2.3. Twitter activity
PewDiePie’s activity on Twitter differed significantly from the other YouTubers. In general, he apparently avoids the position of an authority and does not tend to give advice to his audience, rather comments on humorous posts. Only two instances of advice-giving were identified on his profile and even in these situations, he communicated with another Verified Twitter user (i.e. an official account of a publicly known person). Another specific behaviour is the occasional deletion of his Twitter
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profile. Despite the fact that the data was collected in November, his tweets form this period are no longer available since he deleted his Twitter account in March. That is also the reason why there are no url links in the list of primary sources.
3.2.3. Zoella
The presentation of Zoe Suggs, commonly known under her online nickname Zoella, follows. She was selected because she belongs to the same social group of young British
YouTubers, therefore the group is somewhat homogenous in their background and also the way they address their audiences. Zoella is the only female YouTuber included in the sample I chose especially due to her relatively high activity on Twitter. It was difficult to find a female YouTuber that would actively communicate with the audience on a regular basis. To my surprise, most of the female YouTubers (such as act passively and post their content without reacting to their audiences). Moreover, she also touches more serious topics, therefore I assumed that instances of advice-giving connected to these topics will be found on her profile.
3.2.3.1. Real-world identity
A short outline of Zoella’s real-world identity follows. She is a 27-year-old British
YouTuber, who started as a fashion and beauty blogger, but after some time she moved her activities to YouTube where she also presented her opinions on fashion and provided fashion recommendations. Nowadays, she covers several different topics such as beauty videos, vlogging, lifestyle or collaborative videos or so called “hauls”, where she unpacks gift boxes from her sponsors (YouTube).
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Based on her previous negative experience with unwanted popularity, her boyfriend and she opted for a cautious approach. When they moved to a new apartment in September 2017, they decided to do all the moving on their own avoiding any strangers to enter or locate their house. Moreover, despite a considerable size of the house they do not have any cleaning lady or assistant to come there for they try to keep their address secret. Such behaviour, despite being rather logical and understandable, resembles a certain paradox.
There is a strict line between what is to be shared and what is to be personal. In other words, the public (business) sphere and private life are strictly separated and unlike “traditional celebrities” (Arnold, 2017) they are able to set the boundaries themselves. It gives them a great advantage over these celebrities. Filming in their house, sharing everyday experience, entertaining stories or recommending their favourite things are all activities that resemble sharing a part of their private lives, thus they still give the impression of closeness to the audience. Therefore, it is possible that the audience feels more attached to them, builds stronger relationship and even requires advice or recommendations.
3.2.3.2. Online identity
An outline of Zoella’s online behaviour follows. Like her male British colleagues,
Zoella carefully chooses what type of information she wishes to share with her fans. She often makes videos with her boyfriend and brother, who are both successful YouTube icons as well. They often share, react or simply act in each other’s videos; therefore, she can be considered a member of a wider (unofficial) YouTube community. Similarly to
Dan, Zoella is open about her anxieties and mental health and wishes to raise the public
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awareness of such issues by making content addressing these problems and adding her personal experience.
3.2.3.3. Twitter activity
As has been already mentioned, in comparison with the other female YouTubers, she occasionally reacts to her audience’s comments on Twitter and adds personal comments that can be categorized as pieces of advice.
It is probably the timid personality and anxiety that causes one of the significant characteristics of her online behaviour. In spite of being quite active in sharing on her
Twitter account, very little interactions with the audience were spotted. Thus, it was rather complex to find cases of advice-giving in theses few instances. What is interesting is the fact that it seems that Zoella’s fans are aware of her “ignoring” their questions and comments under her tweets. That is probably the reason why there are significantly less comments under her tweets than in the case of her male colleagues.
While the approximate number of responses under a textual tweet by Dan or Phil is around 3000, by PewDiePie around 300, Zoella gets around 100-200 replies, some of her posts containing Instagram links have less than 50 comments. It implies that the audience is aware of her Twitter behaviour and accepts it. Such compassion can result from her constant effort to raise awareness of mental health issues and anxiety, which has become a significant part of her online identity for she herself has struggled with it.
It is also likely that she considers her YouTube channel to be her primary platform and therefore prefers to communicate with her audience there throughout videos focusing on the audience’s questions. The potential explanation is also the fact that this behaviour is a part of her personality. In some of her videos her friends mentioned her ignorance of
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their messages as well, therefore it seems that she avoids the two-sided online interactions in general.
4. Analysis
In this chapter I present the structural analysis of the collected data described in Chapter
3 applying the methodology outlined in 3.1. I divided the analytical part into two major categories based on first structural and second formal aspects of advice-giving. Each of these is further subdivided depending on whether the advice was solicited or unsolicited, which follows the model proposed by DeCapua and Huber (1995), Locher
(2007), Boatman (1987) and I also comment on the mitigation strategies observed.
As has been mentioned, in some cases authors of certain posts do not originally intend to give advice, however, from the audience’s reaction it is apparent that it was perceived as such. That is why I also include subcategories of explicit and implicit advice-giving since it is apparent that several posts were not primarily meant to function as advice or their performativity is significantly mitigated.
4.1. Structural aspects of advice-giving
This subchapter is devoted to the structural aspects of advice-giving. It is divided into two major subchapters – solicited and unsolicited advice-giving, which are then subdivided into explicit and implicit instances of advice-giving. These categories therefore differ in what DeCapua and Hubel (1995) defined as “authority or expertise”
(p. 120).
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In each category, the tweets are presented with the Twitter user name (initiated by @) for unlike the Twitter name, it cannot be changed. I determine the roles (the advice-giver and advice-seeker), determine the intention and grammatical patterns and identify the discursive content. The nicknames of the authors were preserved as they appeared on Twitter at the time of collection. In the case of solicited advice, the original requests are included as well.
4.1.1. Unsolicited advice-giving
Firstly, the instances of unsolicited advice follow. As has been suggested, this chapter is further subdivided into two units – explicit and implicit advice. I firstly provide details of the post (date and name of the communicating parties), analyse syntactic and content structure of the advice and outline the potential mitigating strategies.
4.1.1.1. Explicit advice
This subchapter focuses on explicit advice where no previous requests for advice were identified and at the same time, the advice was directly expressed. The chapter is subdivided according to the grammatical or syntactic categories depending on the concrete realizations.
The first instance of an unsolicited explicit advice appeared on 10 September
2017. It consists of textual part (summarizing the tweet), link to the YouTube video two emojis. This tweet contains what we can call extratextual (or even “extraplatformal”) reference – the comments react and refer to the content of the YouTube video.
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4.1.1.1.1. Negative cleft sentence
The first example of unsolicited advice-giving was identified on Dan’s profile and it promoted his video.
(1.) @danielhowell a new video for you! i open up about my traumatising
“fresher’s week” - What NOT to do at University (link)
The first part of the post contains an invitation in which he directly addresses the audience (“a new video for you!”). Even the author himself explicitly mentions at the beginning of the video that he “will sprinkle in some advice as we go” (Howell,
2017, 2:08), therefore the main objective of the video (and subsequently the post) is to open the channel and invite the audience to ask questions and request further advice.
The second sentence serves as an annotation of the content and advice that is presented in the video. By introducing the name of the video “What NOT to do at
University” he clearly foreshadows that the recommendations cover mostly things that his audience should avoid, not these they should do. It is clearly a mitigating strategy since the delimitation of the unwanted behaviour is less performative and directive than explicitly stating what the audience should do. Another mitigating strategy could be the use of two emojis at the end of the advice increase the informality of the given message.
4.1.1.1.2. You better, gotta
Under the tweet (1), another instance of explicit unsolicited advice given by
@lightlesshowell occurred.
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(2.) @lightlesshowell gotta remember to stay hydrated
ifyouknowwhatimean
Firstly, the advice is explicit for it is initiated by a phrase “gotta”, the informal variant of “you have got to”, “is used to refer to obligations which come from outside the speaker” (). It is a clear reference to Howell’s recurrent comment on mental health
“remember to stay hydrated” and the advice-giver’s intention was to make reference to this catch phrase than to give an actual advice to the audience. In his reaction, Dan clearly indicates that he understands the allusion and gives the impression that the author of the comment and he have something in common, a sort of secret reference that is not known to everybody, only to the most acquainted fans. Therefore, it has a strongly phatic function since it serves rather as a way how to share a reference with the
YouTube, which clearly relates to the “are-you-there Here-I-am mission” (p. 3) of
Twitter communication presented by Makice (2009). I categorize it as a discursive move called extratextual reference, which may serve as a piece of advice for unacquainted audience but is primarily a reference to another video or post.
The following tweet comes from 19 September 2017 and appeared under
Lester’s anecdote.
(3.) @powerschlumpfi it already survived a flight in a suitcase you better
prepare for a fight
In post (3.), the author reacted to a post previously posted by Phil. The pronoun it is a deictic expression referring to a mosquito that Lester mentioned in the original post. The author apparently uses the light tone and despite the relatively light topic, the expression “you better” serves to “give strong advice, or to tell people what to do”
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(Swan, 2005, p. 230), therefore it is clearly an informal explicit advice. No mitigation strategy was applied there since the context itself diminishes the urgency and strength of the advice.
In conclusion, both of the expressions gotta and you better, which are rather strong and performative, were used by the fans, not the YouTubers. Moreover, they were both used in humorous contexts and their function was mostly phatic.
4.1.1.1.3. Conditional
In this section the only instance of unsolicited explicit advice-giving with a conditional sentence and a modal verb is outlined. It was published on October 2017 and by Daniel Howell.
(4.) @danielhowell if like me you don’t go outside you can simulate autumn walks by looking at a candle glow through a sweater while standing on crisp packets
It is obviously non-requested advice with a humorous tone. Firstly, it is addressed to a closed group of the audience (“if like me you don’t go outside”). The second part of the conditional sentence contains a modal verb can, which is less performative than for example should, but still incites the reader to a potential future action.
Moreover, the use of conditional sentence itself can be identified as a mitigation strategy since it provides sufficient space for refusal.
4.1.1.1.4. Imperative
The tweets covered in this subchapter were grouped together since they all fall within the group of unsolicited explicit advice initiated that contain imperative mood. In
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his structural classification of advice, Hudson (as cited in Locher, 2007) identified the same category as “non-agent” or “non-subject imperative” (p. 33). The following examples prove that non-subject imperatives without any mitigating strategy are used mostly by the audience.
(5.) @lethargyphan (replying to @AmazingPhil) do it with dan ffs (20
September 2017)
(6.) @crushclubs (replying to @AmazingPhil) go outside and look at it (8
October 2017)
(7.) @Rushiaa_ (replying to @AmazingPhil) Wear the stranger things shirt
while watching (27 October 2017)
(8.) @classytaeh (replying to @AmazingPhil) don’t eat it phil! (9 October
2017)
(9.) @AmazingPhil cursed image! close the computer and run (21 September
2017)
(10.) @Zoella Get yourself a tribe that make you cry laugh in your group chats
@shipmannnX @Bee__xo @Jenski_x @amrenahan @ejstagg89
#toupe
Tweets (5.)-(10.) all contain imperative forms (do, go, wear, don’t eat, close, run, get and take). While the first two can be considered mere suggestions, tweet (8.) is much stronger due to the negative used since the performative force of such prohibition is much bigger than of the previous suggestions in (5.)-(7.). Moreover, @classytaeh is the only user who used an exclamation mark to underline the urgency of the advice.
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Tweet (6.) is rather specific since it appeared under a request for advice (see example (23.)). However, since it is rather unrelated to the original request and therefore did not respond to the solicitation, it was kept in this chapter of unsolicited advice.
Moreover, unlike the other implicit advice (24.) related to this post, in this case the author actually offers a solution to the problem, therefore is much more performative.
This is probably the reason why Phil reacted to this advice (and not to the one in (24.) which contained modal verb might). Despite the fact that he rejected this advice, it is apparent that he felt obliged to take certain action.
Unsolicited explicit advice-giving using imperative (without any mitigating strategies) by the YouTuber occurred in (9.) and (10.). In (9.), Phil instructed one of the fans to “close the computer and run” in reaction to an outcome of a picture in a game. It is clearly a hyperbolic statement since the situation is clearly not dangerous. Therefore, the advice is not meant to indeed influence the hearer’s future actions, which is probably the reason why in this situation the only instance when a YouTuber used imperative form without any mitigation appeared. Furthermore, in example (10.) Zoella recommended a characteristic of friendship that she finds enjoyable. She also included direct link to the concrete friends she was talking about, which increased the credibility of the advice.
The following two tweets do contain imperative mood, however, are mitigated:
(11.) @AmazingPhil New Video – TAKE A PSYCHOLOGY TEST WITH ME! Let’s find out what is lurking inside our minds Retweet for emojis
(12.) @Zoella “IT” was absolutely AMAZING guys! Deffo go and see it. Not
just scary but fab acting & amazing soundtrack too
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In tweet (11.), Phil promotes his content, but this post does not only invite the audience to watch the video, it also incites them to “take a psychology test”. The urgency of this advice (or even order) is stressed by the use of capital letters, which commonly serve to give importance or signalize loud voice (Robb, 2014); and is even more emphasized by the use of an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.
The second sentence can be considered a piece of advice as well since
Cambridge Dictionary states that we use the expression let’s “to make suggestions which include ourselves” (Let’s, n.d.). It is less directive and functions rather as a suggestion than as a direct advice, thus it can be regarded a mitigating strategy. Thus, while the urgency and necessity of the post is stressed in the first sentence, the second one (starting with “Let’s find out”) is rather a mitigated invitation. The phaticity of this post consists in the YouTuber’s intention to give advice or recommend something that he and the audience could do together, which clearly supports the idea of closeness and shared experience.
In (12), Zoella comments on a movie It, which was released shortly before. She provides her own appraisal, where she positively evaluates it by using strong adjectives
(AMAZING, fab) which gives adds more credibility to the advice. The explicit advice is than identified in the second sentence, where she uses imperative form (go and see).
Moreover, the informal expression “deffo”, defined by English Oxford Dictionaries as an informal British expression for “definitely, certainly” (Deffo, n.d.) appears there.
Although it is an adverb “used to emphasize the speaker's belief that what is said is true” (Oxford Dictionary Online), in this case it also mitigates the force of the imperative firstly due to its informality and second by its meaning itself (the plain imperative is transformed into a piece of advice or recommendation). When assessing
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the discursive moves, the first and the third sentences can be considered to be a personal evaluation, the second sentence is the advice itself.
I did not identify any instance of an unsolicited advice-giving on PewDiePie’s account.
To summarize, I have identified twelve instances of unsolicited explicit advice.
Six of these were given by the audience to the YouTubers and six vice versa. Out of these, the audience used mostly non-subject imperative mood (four times), the
YouTubers, on the other hand, tended to use mitigating strategies (informal language, conditional sentence, let’s).
The possible explanation of the high number of non-subject imperatives used by the audience is that in most cases the first responses under YouTubers’ tweets are these that have the highest chance of getting a reply. Therefore, the language in these tweets is usually condensed to be as efficient as possible, which could explain why the audience tends to use non-subject imperatives, which do not require any modal verbs or even personal pronouns. On the other hand, YouTubers seem to be not too directive when giving unsolicited explicit advice. It appears that they prefer to only to contact the audience, suggest the potential advice and avoid excessive pressure on their audience.
4.1.1.2. Implicit advice
In this section I present the tweets that contained unsolicited implicit advice. I again grouped according to the profile on which they appeared and further outline the implications it may have. This section is the least numerous one, within the determined time period I identified six instances of implicit unsolicited advice. In this case, only one subcategory is included (4.1.1.2.1 Evaluation) since there are only individual cases.
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Moreover, most of the advice is not based on a grammatical pattern, but rather on the meaning of the advice’s content, which is usually based on personal experience.
As far as Dan’s profile is concerned, only one implicit unsolicited advice was recognized. It was published on 10 September under aforementioned video about first week at college – see post (1.). For more clarity, the fan’s reaction to which he replies is included as well.
(13.) @poemdan you make it sound scary bro (14.) @danielhowell it’s totally fine as long as you do literally nothing i ever did
Dan’s post is therefore a reaction to his audience’s remark, which was not a request. Therefore, it can be considered unsolicited. The first sentence should serve as a negation of the respondent’s comment (“you make it sound scary” – “it’s totally fine”) and the conditional phrase stresses the fact that the stories described in the video should be taken as a deterrent example (which is also implied in the name of the video itself).
Dan obviously tries to mitigate the warring tone of the original post (1.) and the embedded video by reassuring that it is “totally fine” under the conditions established in the video. Another strategy of how to mitigate the performative force or obligation and to encourage the user, a strong adjective was used (“totally fine”) together with a conditional clause (“as long as you do literally nothing i ever did”).
Despite the fact that this post does not have the structural or grammatical aspects of an advice, it still provides the audience information about “prudent future actions”
(Advice, Oxford dictionary, n.d.).
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Another unsolicited advice that appeared on Phil’s profile under his post from 1
September 2017, where he shared his childhood memory. One of his fans posted the following:
(15.) @mulitstvrs thrilling carrot childhood memories with phil
The form of the reply by @mulitstvrs gives the impression that it could be a potential name of a video. It is caused especially by presence of the expression “with phil” (which is a traditional part of the titles that the duo makes) that indicates the author of the imaginary video.
The tweet can be interpreted either as a simple entertaining reply commenting and partly mocking Lester’s story, but it can be also regarded as a recommendation that
Phil should consider making such video. The absence of a verb in the sentence leaves the interpretation and the strength of the illocutionary force upon the receiver, therefore the responsibility is shifted to Phil. Since he further reacted to it with a remark that he
“should make a movie about it”, he apparently recognized the indication and repeated the idea himself. Thus, the attempt to give advice can be regarded successful for the
YouTuber recognized it. Moreover, despite its questionable impact on his future behaviour, it certainly has phatic function. Especially due to the fact that there were three discursive moves (the initial post by Phil -> advice by audience -> follow up), the communication did occur.
4.1.1.2.1. Evaluation
The following instances of implicit unsolicited advice-giving that are based on personal evaluation were posted by Zoella.
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(16.) @Zoella I’m watching Inception for the first time & it's hurting my brain.
Very good though
(17.) @Zoella Well Dr Foster was AMAZING (I knew it would be but the
second series deffo started with more of a bang than I thought)
(18.) @Zoella This is honestly my favourite song right now @Sazclose IT’S SO
AMAZING & I CAN’T STOP SINGING IT!
The reason why tweets (16.)-(18.) are grouped together is that all three can be regarded as a evaluative opinions on a particular film or song if considering the discursive moves. However, since Zoella appears in the central position with a presumed authority, these tweets serve as pieces of advice on what the audience should watch or listen to. They are also similar to the example from the previous category (12.), however, the following examples do not contain imperative mood or any other grammatical structure that would automatically signalize advising.
In these tweets Zoella provides an unsolicited evaluation of a film (16.), series
(17.) and a song (18.). In all of these instances of unsolicited advice we can identify strong adjectives amazing, favourite, very good, in some cases even written in capitals, which are another example of strong feelings (in this case enthusiasm). Moreover, in
(17.) and (18.) the performativity of the message is increased by the use of capital letters. The comment in parenthesis adds more specific comment on why she considers it of such quality (“started with more of a bang than I thought”). Therefore, despite the fact that the comment can be regarded as evaluative, it also served as a piece of advice on what to watch (especially if they want to have even more shared experience with their idol). From the follow-up it is clear that this posts indeed served to some users as a
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piece of advice since they appreciated the recommendation. When considering discourse moves (as introduced in Locher, 2007, Chapter 5), the above mentioned can be considered a personal evaluation.
The last unsolicited implicit advice comes from 25 October 2017 from Zoella’s profile. It is rather specific since it is a retweeted post by @emshelx (a verified user) on which she further comments. For more clarity, both the original post (19.) and the text of Zoella’s tweet (20.) are included.
(19.) @emshelx Focusing on supportive, lovely, good people only now
(20.) @Zoella (retweeted user Em Sheldon) Amen sister! The best mantra to live
by
In her comment, Zoella again starts again with a comment of approval (“Amen sister!”). Moreover, the term “sister” suggests that she also reckons herself as a member of the community with the same opinion. Moreover, the fact that she uses the addressing
“sister” clearly suggests that she identifies with @emshelx. Moreover, she again evaluates the shared content. The superlative “the best mantra” clearly stresses her positive attitude to this statement. Moreover, since she decided to retweet it (and not simply comment on it), it is clear that her intention was to spread the idea and give her audience this type of implicit advice. It can be again categorized as a personal evaluation when considering
In conclusion, unsolicited implicit instances of advice-giving were rather rare.
Most of them was published by Zoella, who by evaluating certain content created by third parties and consequently sharing it with her audience provided advice opinions or
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recommendations. The following table summarizes the discursive moves that appeared
in tweets (1.)-(20.).
Table 1: Content structure of unsolicited advice
Discursive Personal Reassurance Advice Extratextual practice → evaluation reference Advice Suggestion
Advice type↓
Unsolicited - (1.), (5.), (6.), (4.) (2.) explicit advice (7.), (8.), (9.),
(10.), (11)
Unsolicited (16.), (17.), (14.) (15.) implicit advice (18.), (20.)
4.1.2. Solicited advice-giving
This chapter is dedicated to solicited advice-giving, therefore to advice-giving that was
preceded by a request for advice. As has been outlined, the hypothesis of the present
research is that advice-giving on Twitter serves to YouTubers and their audience as a
form of keeping in touch. Therefore, it was assumed that the solicited advice-giving
would occur more often than unsolicited, which, as demonstrated by the number of
presented tweets, was confirmed.
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Similarly to chapter 4.1.1, it is divided into two subchapters – explicit and implicit advice-giving. In the explicit part, I again establish subchapters depending on the structure of the advice. Surprisingly, in the situations of solicited advice-giving very little grammatical patterns were observed. It appears that when a request for advice is present, it establishes and adumbrates the act of advice-giving and therefore the reply
(the advice itself) does not necessarily require any patterns typical of advising. Thus, the subchapters are based rather on the pragmatic or syntactical pattern. Moreover, I again observe the discursive moves that are present there.
4.1.2.1. Explicit advice
The following subsection focuses on solicited advice and its structure. Firstly, I outline the grammatical realizations of advice-giving, analyse the mitigating strategies and discursive moves that appear there. It is important to note that the categories of solicited advice differ from the unsolicited ones. The reason is mainly the nature of the unsolicited advice, for instance unsolicited advice cannot contain categories such as binary advice (yes or no answers) or enumeration, which require a previous request.
4.1.2.1.1. Maybe, might
In this section, solicited advice-giving that is strongly mitigated is presented. In spite of the fact that maybe is not a modal verb, both maybe and might are similarly connected to doubt, uncertainty and politeness, that is why they were grouped together.
In the following example advice was offered to Zoella after she described problems with her computer and asked for advice:
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(21.) @Zoella Trying to set up a new iPhone and it's asking me for a password that doesn't seem to be any of the passwords I've tried (phone passcode, iTunes password etc) Any ideas? (22.) @mrellisnew The password to your laptop maybe ?
Zoella first described the circumstances of her issue and asked the audience for advice (“Any ideas?”) in an informal tone without using a full grammatical question.
Similarly to the following post, the advice-giver (coming from the audience) replied by a significantly dubious indicative sentence. The use of maybe and a question mark after offering the advice is clearly a mitigating strategy. However, the motive for this mitigation does not necessarily need to be based on insecurity, it is rather a polite expression that does not aim to threaten the YouTuber’s face in front of the audience.
Moreover, it was rather surprising that in the whole sample only one instance of unsolicited advice with a modal verb was discovered. It comes from 8 October 2017 and appeared under Phil’s anecdote.
(23.) @AmazingPhil Something WITH CLAWS keeps crawling across
the skylight probs a squirrel right? definitely not a murderous clown (24.) @tylrthecrtr might be the pigeons?
In tweet (23.) Phil first described a situation happening around him at that time.
The interrogative sentence (“probs a squirrel right?”) can be perceived both as a rhetorical question and as a request for advice (or rather reassurance) on what could be the possible explanation of the unusual circumstances could be. User @tylrthecrtr perceived it as the latter and offered a piece of advice. It is in its sense an indicative sentence, however, the question mark at the end signalizes the doubt and uncertainty of
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the statement. Moreover, according to Cambridge Dictionary the verb might is also believed to have lower degree of possibility than for example may or could (Might, n.d.). Both of these facts support the idea that such piece of advice is significantly mitigated. The reason could be that it is one of a few instances in which it is the fan who provides advice to the YouTuber, who is believed to be on a higher social level of this particular group, therefore the fan (who is, based on her Twitter profile, a teenage girl) was and politer open to different opinion.
4.1.2.1.2. Imperative
Furthermore, the instances of advice in imperative mood are presented. As the results show, imperative mood is used much less in the case of solicited advice-giving than in the unsolicited one as demonstrated below.
Another instance of request for advice followed by a YouTuber’s advice appeared on 10 September 2017.
(25.) @gentlylinguini okay but how do you even decide what you want
to do for the rest of your life at this age I have trouble deciding what i want
for dinner
(26.) @danielhowell i definitely didn't! take a gap year if you need it
and a break mid-course if you need it then
The request for advice by @gentlylinguini contains a direct question (“how do you even decide what you want to do for the rest of your life at this age”). The question is not in any way separated from the subsequent observation (“I have trouble deciding what i want for dinner”), probably due to the fact that the author followed his or her
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stream of consciousness. Missing punctuation is, however, rather recurrent among both
YouTubers and their audience. It can be regarded as their own personal style of writing, but most likely it was caused by the fact that they use Twitter on their mobile phones, where using some signs can be more time consuming (Zappavigna, 2015).
As far as the discursive moves are concerned, the first part of Dan’s reply (“i definitely didn't!”) is an expression of empathy, where he admits that he was in a similar situation as the user. It also suggests his insecurity at that time (I definitely didn’t!) and expresses empathy with the question and situation, which is at the same time a significant mitigating strategy that points out the similarity of the YouTuber’s situation.
The second part is a piece of advice in an imperative mood (take a gap year) however, as DeCapua and Dunham (2007) notes, the illocutionary force does not depend solely on the fact that imperative is applied, but also on other factors such as the context of the utterance or the linguistic context. In this case, in the second sentence
“take a gap year if you need it”, the strength of the imperative is mitigated by “if you need it”, which offers the receiver a possibility not to follow the advice (implying “if you do not need it, do not take a gap year”). Moreover, the choice of the verb “need” signals empathy and is charged with empathy rather than with judgement (contrary to a possible alternative “have to”).
Another request appeared on Phil’s Twitter account. Phil first introduces the context and explains why he further proceeds to the request.
(27.) @AmazingPhil I want to do a ‘viewers pick my outfit’ video! tweet me links to some clothing items! (topman, ebay, anything UK) Using
#ClothesForPhil
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The form of this indirect request for advice is particularly interesting since it does not contain any question or interrogation. On the contrary, Phil first outlines the context and the reason why he need help or advice from his audience (“I want to do (…) video”). This remark also directly informs the audience about the performativity of the advice – since a video was planned, it was highly probable that at least some of the interesting ideas would be actually performed and the advice would be followed. This could have served as a strategy how to motivate the audience to share their suggestions.
The second part, the request itself, is in imperative mood, which is an exceptional case considering the whole sample – it is the only instance when a YouTube requested advice in such directive voice. It clearly implies that no mitigating or politeness strategy was employed. Moreover, to filter the audience’s relevant advice,
Phil used one of the Twitter’s affordances – hashtags. He created hashtag
“ClothesForPhil”, which appeared more than thousand times (unfortunately, statistics about the number of the hashtag is not available). Most of the tweets contained factual advice, however, one instance of a imperative advice appeared there (see (6.)).
The following request for advice appeared on Phil’s profile on 12 October 2017 in reaction to a video he published at that time.
(28.) @CastiOMG My parents asked me to go outside and have dinner
somewhere... Should I stay and watch the live show or should I go? (29.) @AmazingPhil Watch it with them AT DINNER like one of those food cinemas
Similarly to posts (25.) and (26.), a request for advice followed by an imperative form can be identified there. In this case, the request for advice is accentuated by the use of “should”. It is also a potential word play since the basis of the request is “should I
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stay (…) or should I go?”, which could potentially be a extratextual reference to the lyrics of a famous song (Should I stay or should I go by The Clash).
Moreover, in contrast to the previous example (26.), where it was the advisor
(Dan) who provided two alternatives, here it is the inquirer herself who delimitated the scope of advice to two eventualities (to stay and to go). Such delimitation is more performative than a
In his reply, Phil provides advice on how the inquirer should decide. He uses imperative form (“watch it with them”) in which he combines the two eventualities (to go and to watch the video). The capital letters do not serve here as a factor that would stress the urgency of the advice, it rather underlines the location where the inquirer should do these activities. The additional comparison “like one of those food cinemas” could be considered a secondary mitigation strategy since it decreases the directness of the advice.
4.1.2.1.3. Binary opposition
The following category outlines instances where two alternatives are presented to the advice-giver. The reason why the name of the category differs from the one in implicit advice is that not only yes-no questions, but also two mutually exclusive alternatives
(see (32.)) are presented there. Similar instance of recommendation based on a yes-no request for advice was identified on 15 October 2017 on Phil’s profile. A fan approached him with a request on opinion about a series (Stranger Things) that he recurrently mentioned at that time.
(30.) @dimpledhoweII I’ve never watched stranger things, do you recommend? (31.) @AmazingPhil omg yes
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Tweet (30.) is a direct request for advice (“do you recommend”) and again delimits the advice to two instances, in this case affirmation or negation. The phaticity of this advice is even engraved by the fact that the context of Phil’s tweets clearly indicates the fact that he indeed enjoyed the series, thus as far as the meaning of this interaction is concerned it is rather redundant. However, Phil decided to react on it and reassert his point of view.
The primary function of the response is a positive reply to the request.
Therefore, despite not containing any specific grammatical structure such as modal verb, it clearly provides an affirmation of the recommendation to the binary question
(yes or no). As far as the mitigating strategies are concerned, the opposite case can be observed here. The commonly known abbreviation “omg” (Oh my god), which even stresses the excitement or approval and thus increases the performativity of the advice.
Another two interactions that contain request for advice with two delimited answer were identified. They both are rather specific since they were based on a Twitter
Poll feature.
(32.) @AmazingPhil Doing a gaming stream tonight! (around 8PM) What shall we play? (*link*)
52%Mario Kart (Phan-Prix)
48%Overcooked (10,510 votes)
The tweet consists of three moves. In the first sentence is informative, it introduces the context and announces a new video with a specific time. It also serves as a confirmation of the realization of the advice and thus increases its performativity for they present their plan to base the video on the received advice. Such specific
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information may be a strong motivating factor for the audience to provide advice that would have immediate implications. Furthermore, the number of votes that appears beneath the poll increases the credibility and trustworthiness (DeCapua and Dunham,
1993, p. 519).
The second sentence represents the request itself. The use of shall here indicates
“asking for information” (Swan, 2005, p. 252). As has been outlined, the response is limited to two possible answers – two different games (Mario Kart and Overcooked).
The results were tight; however, the duo indeed followed their audience’s decision.
Thus, they acknowledged the audience’s opinion and followed the advice given. It is one of the few instances where the advice-giver(s) could observe the implications of their counsel. This strategy of polls does not only have a strong phatic function of establishing a relationship with great number of the involved voters, but also evinces the direct application of the advice itself (to make the video on the particular topic).
4.1.2.1.4. Nominal enumeration
The following section focuses on the instances where a direct request for advice is followed by a reply directing the inquirer to a particular product, specific item or procedure. Thus, this group of explicit examples of solicited advice are all instances of factual advice or nominal enumeration. This group consists mainly of nominal phrases that do not contain a verb, therefore, the performativity of such advice depends purely on the receiver
Firstly, the examples of enumerative advice provided by the YouTubers follow.
The first example was found on Dan’s profile:
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(33.) @rauhligt how did you afford that taxi across the city every time you wanted to do your laundry (34.) @danielhowell maintenance loan and mostly eating tesco value bread
Post (33.) is another direct question asking for some advice or rather a clarification on a specific topic – spending money while studying at university. The interrogative part “how did you afford…” may again signalize a simple question, however, since the expected answer is a recommendation, it can be considered as a request for advice or suggestion on what the reader should do to be able to live in a similar way.
The response is again rather economical, the nominal phrase contains two parts
– “maintenance loan” and “and mostly eating tesco value bread”, both of them represent another example of enumerative advice. The second part, “mostly eating tesco value bread” is probably an exaggeration, which could be seen as a mitigating strategy that decreases the seriousness of the reply and consequently its performativity.
Another case of enumerative advice as identified on Zoella’s profile and it comes from 30 September 2017, one of her fans requested advice on her recurrent health issue.
(35.) @erachelw zoe I have had a migraine for three days now... what works?! I’m desperate! X
(36.) @Zoella Feminax, neurofen for migraines & cool n sooth head strips
The interaction was initiated by user @erachelw under Zoella’s tweet about her continuous problem with migraines. Therefore, @erachelw clearly related to the topic of the original post and described a similar experience, which could be the reason why
Zoella decided to interact with this particular user.
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The structure of the @erachelw’s request is, despite its length, well-structured. It is initiated by an addressing “zoe”, which is, as demonstrated in the previous post, is not very frequent. It is then followed by describing a similar experience, which is a clearly an expression of empathy and understanding. The request for advice itself consists of an informal question “what works?!”. The use of both question and exclamation mark stresses the insistence of the request, which is even deepened by the additional emotional comment “I’m desperate!”, which clearly emphasizes the necessity of this advice. The message is then concluded by the letter “X”, which “used in a letter or message to symbolize a kiss” (X, n.d.). Therefore, besides having the phatic function, it also seems to provide factual information.
Zoella’s reply consists of a simple enumeration of things and aspects that
“work” for her. Moreover, she supplemented the advice by an emoticon, which serves here as a mitigating and also supporting element, which is supported by the idea presented by Dresner and Herring, who claim that emoticons can serve “as indicators of illocutionary force” (as cited in Culpeper and Haugh, 2014). This instance differs from examples (37.), (38.), (39.) due to its higher performativity. While in (36.) Zoella enumerates procedures that the inquirer “should do” or “should apply”, in the latter ones
((37.)-(39.)) she only provides information on where to buy a certain product. Example
(36.) is thus much more directive and performative.
As has been mentioned in chapter 3.2.3.2, Zoella is open about her anxieties and mental health issues. That is why @erachelw considered her competent enough to provide advice on such serious topic.
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The following instances of nominal enumeration were published on Zoella’s profile:
(37.) @xelliepottsx Where did you get your stranger things jumper from????
(38.) @Zoella Topshop (39.) @Zoella Lots of you asking me where I got this dress from! It’s a
Zara number and I’m obsessed with it!
In comparison with the previous question, the request for advice in (35.), where the structure of the advice was addressing-request-personal comment-closing is rather straightforward. The user asked a specific question about a specific location (“where”).
The request clearly implies that such information is useful to the user (most probably because she wants to buy a similar jumper), therefore it is considered a request for advice as well. The request is even strengthened by the use of several question marks that emphasize the importance of this information for the inquirer. As has been mentioned, in all (37.) to (39.) Zoella’s answers consist of some factual information – names of the particular shops where she bought her clothes (Topshop, Zara number).
The use of emojis at the end of these nominal sentences then supplements the advice with Zoella’s involvement and fondness.
The second instance, (39.), is slightly more complex. In the first part, Zoella refers to several questions that were previously posted under her Instagram post. What is interesting is the fact that although these questions were published on Instagram, she decided to use her Twitter account to reply to them, thus it can be considered another example of extratextual or even “extraplatformal” reference. The possible explanation is that while it would be necessary to post another picture with the dress to address all of her fans, Twitter enables her to post an exclusively textual message.
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Interaction (40.)-(41.) appeared on PewDiePie’s profile. As has been outlined in chapter 3.2.2., he does not tend to interact with his audience much. Even in this case it was a reaction to another “verified user”, Dan Bull, another member of the YouTube community. The interaction from 20 October follows.
(40.) @itsDanBull Are you enjoying any scotch whiskies lately?
(41.) @pewdiepie Yeah man, laphroaig hits the spot. What's your poison?
In his question, Dan Bull addressed PewDiePie directly and asked about his preferences. The question might not be considered to be a direct request for advice since it does not directly imply any further action to be carried out. PewDiePie then addresses him directly (“yeah man”) and provides the factual information (“laphroaig hits the spot”). Furthermore, to keep the channel open he asked a reciprocal question. Such follow-up is very rare in these Twitter exchanges and it is highly probable that this polite follow-up question emerged only because of the different level of online
“hierarchy” – while in most of the posts the interactions are YouTuber -> audience, in this case it is YouTuber <-> YouTuber.
This is also a reason why this interaction is definitely strongly phatic since it appears to be a polite exchange of experience and advice. However, rather than the content itself it appears to be an exchange of courtesies without any further implications. Therefore, the performativity of the advice is mitigated by the context of the advice.
Another instance of factual advice provided to a Twitter “Verified user” by
PewDiePie was found under a post by company Discord from 11 October 2017.
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(42.) @discordapp We need a new round of loading lines! Reply here with
your suggestion and we’ll pick the creamiest of the crop for the app.
(43.) @pewdiepie “I TURNED MYSELF INTO A LOADING SCREEN
MORTY”
As far as the request is concerned, it is clearly a request for “suggestion” that were meant to serve marketing purposes. However, it was also partly phatic in its sense since the company clearly wanted to deepen the relationship with the audience.
Similarly to Phil’s invitation in example (28.), the request is not performed via interrogation, but via exclamative sentence. Also, the use of a verb “need” stresses the urgency of the request and is supposed to provoke the audience’s reaction. The specific request for suggestions (“reply here”) is then a clear invitation for an action (in this case a reply). The suggestion proposed by PewDiePie is clearly factual, which is clearly demonstrated by the use of quotation marks and its implications emerge only to the company that asked for this type of reactions.
In conclusion, this chapter presented solicited explicit advice, in other words presented the opinion of the advice-giver on the particular topic or suggested what the inquirer should do. Four main categories of such advice were identified. Firstly, it was a slightly mitigated advice with the use of words might and maybe. Secondly, advice in imperative mood appeared, where the mitigating strategy was mostly humorous or trivial context. Thirdly, it was advice following a request that presented two (mutually exclusive) options. The fourth group, which is the most numerous one, consists of enumerations or factual advice, where the advice-giver provided facts or enumerated where he or she should buy certain products or what they should do.
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4.1.2.2. Implicit
In this subchapter implicit advice preceded by request or solicitation follows. The concrete examples are again presented according to the structure of advice. It is important to note that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between solicited implicit and explicit advice. All of these emerged in reaction to a particular request, however, the explicit instances were more performative with greater illocutionary force.
4.1.2.2.1. Yes-No Questions
The fist category of solicited implicit advice are yes-no questions, i.e. questions that provide only two potential answers (recommendations) – yes or no, which are in binary opposition. The first two interactions ((44.)-(47.) appeared under Dan’s video about his depression (see (1.)) from 12 October.
(44.) @tatinofdaniel do you feel like a weight has been lifted off your
shoulders??
(45.) @danielhowell yes as i said it was almost weird to not be a thing that
everyone just knew
(46.) @voidphiI did you have to go through many therapists to find the
right one? or did you find one right away
(47.) @danielhowell three! a story for another time perhaps
Despite the fact that the questions (44.) and (46.) give the impression of a plain request for supplementary information, they can be also perceived as an implicit request for advice. From the reactions full of appreciation and gratitude that were posted under
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theses replies it was clear that several followers perceived them as a piece of advice on how to deal with their own health issues.
As far as the syntactic structure is concerned, both of these questions fall within the category of “binary opposition” for they are replies to yes-no questions (“Do you feel like (…)?”, “Did you have to go through…?”) that specify the scope of the required advice. In interaction (46.) and (47.) a certain divertion from the form emerged. While the user posed a yes-no question (“Did you have to go through…?”), Dan’s reply contained a factual information, specifically the number of the therapist (“three”). Thus, the scope of the request was exceeded, which suggests that the from purely phatic function in transformed into an informative advice.
4.1.2.2.2. Assessment
The following subchapter presents a category where the request advice requires personal opinion, evaluation or assessment (Locher, 2007). Such evaluation cannot be considered an explicit advice since it does not directly say what the inquirer should do or behave, but it still presents the “opinions (…) given by people who perceive themselves as knowledgeable, and/or who the advice seeker may think are credible, trustworthy, and reliable” (DeCapua and Dunham, 1993, p. 519), as determined in chapter 2.1. Naturally, these evaluative implicit advice have much less performativity since it does not oblige the inquirer to take any action, rather outlines the advice-giver’s point of view and opinion.
The first of the following examples appeared under Dan Howell’s post (1.) on what not to do at university. One of his fans asked the following question:
(48.) @twinklinglestr is uni better than school or sixth form????
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(49.) @danielhowell infinitely more fun and harder (50.) @stitcheshowell how would you rate the game so far? (51.) @AmazingPhil it's very strategic and I wasn't into it at first as it all seemed quite samey but I'm past world 1 now and addicted! (52.) @stargazedpml idk anything about bladerunner oops what’s it about?
(53.) @AmazingPHil sad robots and pretty scenery
Extract (48.) is an explicit question where the author is asking for a piece of advice or information. The author, @twinklinglestr, asks for Howell’s opinion on comparing a university with sixth grade. The question here is not explicitly about what the inquirer should do, rather asks for more information on the topic of the video and evaluation. Although it is not apparent from the form of the sentence, the context of the discussion below an instructive video indicates that it can be also considered as a request for further information. Since the inquirer is most probably still a sixth-grade student, a video introducing life at university is probably not of interest to her.
Therefore, she seeks a comparison with something she can relate to and is familiar with.
The answer she gets is rather economical – it consists of two characteristics (therefore assessment) that define life at university.
Regarding the form of the advice, advice-giver with two possible answers since it is another yes-no question based on comparison (Is X better than Y?) for it is apparent that the inquirer seeks for a comparison relatable to her (possibly due to her lower age).
Dan, however, avoided the direct advice and provided a brief personal evaluation
(“infinitely more fun and harder”). The peculiar aspect of the advice is the use of conjunction “and” in copulative meaning, not in a contrasting one that would be expected. It can be considered the opposite to mitigating strategy since the second part
(“but harder”) resembles a warning rather than assurance.
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Thee mitigating strategy consists in the form itself, the implicit advice is naturally less performative, and the author did not necessarily aim to influence the inquirer’s action, rather provided his personal opinion. Since no verb is present, the performativity of the advice lies with the receiver.
Another request for advice (50.) appeared when one of Phil’s followers,
@stitcheshowell, asked for his opinion on this game. The fact that she asked about his opinion confirms that she considers him experienced and authorized to give an objective evaluation She asked a direct question “how would you rate the game” with the objective to receive. The verb “rate” indicates that she requires a quantitative assessment consisting of stars or percentage. By posting the direct question she switched the responsibility of the dialogue to Lester, who accepted it and replied.
Lester’s reply (51.) consists mainly of two parts. The first proposition, “it’s very strategic”, can be considered an objective evaluation of the game. In the second part he provides his personal opinion and impressions (“I wasn’t into it at first (…) but I’m requested, he added four emoji stars. The advice itself consists mainly of the four stars that are attached to the tweet. Unlike the part that contains personal impressions, the stars represent a clear evaluation of the game on a certain scale. It is generally known that the maximum number (and therefore the highest rating) is five stars, therefore it is apparent that the four stars used here indicate his overall assessment of the given game.
Therefore, despite the fact that no future actions of the inquirer are mentioned, the
YouTuber clearly expresses his “opinions and counsel” (DeCapua and Dunham, 1993, p. 519) and is considered “credible, trustworthy, and reliable” (DeCapua and Dunham,
1993, p. 519) to provide it. This is why it can be still considered a piece of advice
(despite being rather implicit).
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In example (52.) one of the users asked about a movie (Blade Runner) that Phil mentions in his post. Despite the fact that what Phil provides (53.) is rather a descriptive assessment of the movie (“sad robots and pretty scenery”) does not have to be primarily considered a piece of advice, it can still inform the audience about the movie and that invites to watching it.
In summary, only five instances of unsolicited implicit advice-giving (ten including the corresponding requests) were identified. They were divided into two groups – yes/no questions and (personal) assessment. Despite the fact that these pieces of advice are solicited, they are clearly less performative than the explicit ones since they do not directly address any future action and, in some cases, do not even contain a verb, therefore no mitigation was necessary.
4.1.2.2.3. Disclaimer
The last category of solicited implicit advice is rather specific since it is not the advice per se. This category was inspired by Locher (2007), who introduced her in her study.
She (2007) claims that disclaimer is a special kind of assessment
“There is a clear link to the questioner’s particular concern, but the content of
the assessment is special in so far as it is pointed out that the answer will be
incomplete or cannot match expectations due to the site’s limitations or to
insufficient knowledge of the questioner’s situation” (pp. 63-64).
Only one such example was identified on Dan’s profile. The reason for such low number is that since the Twitter accounts do not primarily serve as an advising site.
Therefore, if feeling unqualified or if they simply do not want to react to requests for
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advice, they can ignore them. Moreover, the audience seems aware of this fact and no negative reaction to such ignorance were discovered.
(54.) @VivaLaEmelie Can you also do a “what NOT to do after university” because I need one of those (55.) @danielhowell remind me in two years i should have a lot of material
In this case, another direct request for advice in the form of a polite question appeared (“Can you also do X”). The use of modal verb “can” is not strong, thus its use can be regarded a mitigating strategy. Moreover, the author copied the name of the video with a slight change – she substituted the preposition “at” for “after”, which altered the background of the advice. As the response suggests, at that point Dan did not feel competent enough to provide such advice. Thus, he directed the advice-seeker to
“remind [him] in two years”, when he “should have a lot of material”. The non-subject infinitive of the advice is, however, mitigated by the longer time period between the recommendation and its performance.
To summarize it, 35 instances that contained solicited advice-giving (both requests and advice) were identified. Solicited advice-giving was again divided into two categories – explicit and implicit advice. In the explicit advice, four grammatical and syntactical groups were identified depending on the structure of the advice – imperative, advice with might/maybe, nominal enumeration and binary opposition (responses to yes-no questions). As far as the implicit advice is concerned, the categorization is based rather on the content structure of the advice and only three categories were identified – yes-no questions (with less performativity), assessment and disclaimer.
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The implicit advice does not require much mitigation strategies as it is much less performative than the explicit one. In its nature, the implicit advice depends mostly on the hearer’s intention and will. Therefore, no face-threatening emerges.
4.1.3. Meta advice
The chapter of explicit solicited advice is concluded by a category of meta advice, in other words, it focuses on advice on advice-giving itself. This category consists of a single tweet posted by Zoella.
(56.) @Zoella I’m doing a little agony aunt piece for people coming to @Hello_WorldLive so if you could ask me for any advice, what would it be?
In this tweet, Zoella asked her audience to share topics on which they would like to hear her advice. If simplified, she practically asked for advice on advising. The request is based on a question in second conditional (“if you could (…), what would it be?”), which clearly suggests the hypothetical situation. The replies consisted mainly of factual topics, however, interesting phenomenon occurred. The audience started to advise each other without waiting for the future responses by the YouTuber. In other words, some members of the audience adopted the role of an advisor without being directly requested or without having any background information about their knowledge of the subject.
To conclude, this subchapter analysed instances of solicited advice. Firstly, the instances of unsolicited advice were outlined. They were sorted into explicit and implicit instances. The former was then then sorted into two groups depending on the
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grammatical pattern – the first one contained expressions “you better / you gotta”
(4.1.1.1.1), the other one was based on imperative mood. Different mitigating strategies were identified there varying from diminishing the context, conditional sentences or emojis. It was also discovered that advice provided by the audience is less likely to be mitigated (partly due to the necessity to reply quickly). The latter group, implicit solicited advice comprises two subchapters – Yes-no questions and personal evaluation.
In general, the illocutionary force and performativity of all implicit advice is lower, some of the mitigation strategies are absence of a verb or simply the fact that such implicit responses are mostly answers to the posed questions, present advisor’s opinions and do not primarily aim to influence the inquirer’s future actions. Furthermore, different mitigation strategies were identified, for example the use of might and maybe, advice in the form of a question or the form itself (in the case of enumeration).
4.1.4. Follow-up
This chapter summarizes the follow up of advice-giving on YouTubers’ Twitter accounts. Firstly, general tendencies of both YouTubers and their audience are outlined, secondly, instances of individual follow-up strategies and the manner in which
YouTubers and the audience accept (or reject) advice are outlined.
In general, it is possible to say that only a few follow-up reactions from the
YouTubers were identified. It seems that the audience is aware of the fact that the
YouTubers’ reactions are rare (compared with the number of reactions that emerge under each post), therefore they seem satisfied with a simple reply and do not try to develop any further communication. Most of the follow-up appeared in reaction to a piece of solicited advice provided by the audience.
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4.1.4.1. Appreciation
Appreciation of advice was one of the recurrent follow-up strategies. In several instances the audience expressed gratitude and thanked the YouTubers for their advice
(especially in the serious context such as mental illnesses, health, etc.) To illustrate, a few follow-up reactions from Dan’s profile are stated below. They appeared under his post that promoted his video “Daniel and Depression”.
(57.) @softboyhoweII thank you for recommending @AsapSCIENCE’s video about the science behind depression. and for the other videos as well. (58.) @danielhowell There’s honestly so much great content around mental health on youtube! it’s good to be proud of the community for something (59.) @SkippuDippu ah man I’m supposed to be cleaning my room but nope. on the floor crying. (for real, thank you. this video is a blessing and so are you.) (60.) @danielhowell thanks but i do recommend bed a lot more than the floor from an ergonomic standpoint
In both (57.) and (59.) the Twitter users appreciated the video and other advice emerging from it provided by Dan (“thank you for recommending”, “for real, thank you
(…) this video is a blessing and so are you”). As has been mentioned earlier, follow-up comments or appreciative remarks are rather rare. Thus, is apparent that the seriousness of the topic was one of the reasons why these emotional appreciations emerged. In both
(58.) and (60.) Dan offered another (secondary) implicit recommendation.
In the first instance he clearly describes and partly refers to other resources that could provide further advice (“There’s honestly so much great content around mental
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health on youtube!”). In the second one he appreciates the user’s appreciation
(“thanks”) and adds an obviously ironical recommendation, which lowers the seriousness and pathos of the polite exchanges (“i do recommend bed a lot more than floor from an ergonomic standpoint”). Thus, humour is used here not to mitigate the advice itself (or its performativity), but rather the follow-up comments of appreciation.
In the following interaction that occurred on Phil’s profile under the poll he posted (see example (33.)):
(61.) @danielhowell well looks like we’re gonna have to combine them and make a mario burger rip buddy (62.) @spacedoutphan What team? 12%Team Phil 08%Team Dan 80%Wildcats (63.) @danielhowell 13% dan 13% phil 76% wildcats i love this audience
In this follow-up, Dan summarized and assessed the results from the poll and commented on the tie. Tweets (63.) and (64.) were then published on Dan’s profile under the link to the corresponding video. One of the users initiated another “unofficial” poll, where she suggested three potential names for the team. However, Dan’s reaction was published approximately one hour after that poll was published (thus after the live stream of the video), which means that he had not noticed it before and thus had not named their team accordingly. However, he still appreciated the audience’s creativity and humour (“I love this audience”).
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Another follow-up occurred under tweet (6.), where one of his followers ordered him to
“go outside and look at it”, referring to unusual circumstances near his house.
(64.) @AmazingPhil Phil on a slippery roof at night investigating a beast! What could go wrong
This statement is a partial disclaimer – Phil outlines the consequences of the advice (“go outside and look at it”) with certain portion of exaggeration. This exaggeration is a humorous element; however, it also serves him as a way how to disclaim or refuse the advice. The slightly ironic rhetorical question “What could go wrong” emphasizes the denial of the advice even more, but in a mitigated (and seemingly humorous) way.
Another significant follow-up tendency occurred under advice given to the audience by Dan and Phil (with less frequency). It is apparent that Dan’s audience belongs to the youngest of all, according to the content of the comments they are mostly teenagers. This information is significant on the level of establishing an online identity, by revealing their age they immediately join at least one group of the audience – their peers.
From the comments under Dan’s post it is apparent that group is rather homogenous as far as their age and interests are concerned. It resulted in a group where people know and support each other. The waves of solidarity and support that emerge among the fans of the duo every time the YouTuber reacts to a fan’s post clearly supports this assertion. It not only supports the idea that YouTubers have a role of an idol, an authority, but also the fact that the community of their fans is interconnected.
An instance of such endorsement emerged after Dan retweeted one of his fan’s (@phan
– Holland) video on 26 October 2017. The chosen reactions stated below display only a
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fragment of the immense community support he received (there were more than 20 users congratulating him in a similar way):
(65.) @SpookyScaryN HOLLAND (66.) @phan2187 JSJSJSJJJSJJSJSJ (67.) @SpookyScaryN HOLLAND IM SHOOK SENPAI NOTICED YOU WHEISJDIND (68.) @phan2187 IM CRYING SM SNKKNSNKSKNNK
In conclusion, as has been mentioned, follow-up is not a common tendency in advice-giving on Twitter. There are usually two discursive moves present – the request for advice and the advice itself. It was identified only in a few isolated instances in the form of appreciation and disclaimer. The only recurrent follow-up tendency was the collective community support that appreciates the fact that the YouTuber noticed his audience, however, this is not a tendency exclusive to advice-giving, it occurs after any reactions or comments and is usually initiated by a third party that was not initially included in the discourse.
5. Conclusion
This thesis has dealt with the process of advice-giving online, specifically with advice- giving occurring on Twitter between YouTubers and their audiences. In the first chapter, the environment of social media was outlined with a specific focus on Twitter
(which was the primary platform of the present research). The second chapter was dedicated to the linguistic and structural aspects of advice-giving and the hypothesis that advice-giving online has mostly phatic function was presented. In the third chapter, I provided more details on the collected data (specifically on the 71 tweets that were presented there) and also outlined the ordinary behaviour of the individual YouTubers
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on Twitter. Moreover, findings from previous research on advice-giving in both private and public space.
To answer the first research question (see Chapter 1) concerning the general tendencies, it can be said that advice-giving does function as a part of phatic function, however, not in the case of all YouTubers. In the case of PewDiePie, only two instances of advice-giving were identified (and these occurred on the level of verified user, not when communicating with the audience). On the contrary, Dan and Phil seem to be rather active advice-givers when requested, Zoella prefers to give unsolicited advice in the form of evaluation or assessment. What is important to note is the fact that
YouTubers do not always appear on the position of power, they often ask the audience for advice and recommendation themselves. However, in total, the frequency and relevance of the advice corresponds with the general online behaviour of each
YouTuber (which was outlined in Chapter 3.2).
The collected tweets were divided into two major groups – solicited and unsolicited advice-giving. As far as unsolicited explicit advice-giving is concerned, I identified four different grammatical patterns – conditional sentences, sentences with you better/you gotta, negative cleft sentence and imperative. The most numerous was the group of non-subject imperative applied mostly by the audience. This was rather surprising since it contradicts the assumption that YouTubers are considered an authority and therefore, the audience was expected to apply mitigating strategies. The possible explanation for the use of non-subject imperatives was the need for quick reactions that increase the chance that the user might get a reply from the YouTuber.
Regarding the content structure of unsolicited advice, the most numerous was the group of advice itself and of personal evaluation, which appeared especially within the group
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of unsolicited advice, when YouTubers promoted certain product, film, etc. The question is whether these particular cases of advice-giving on specific products can still be considered within the scope of phatic function (and thus establishing a relationship) or whether its main purpose is based on marketing.
Secondly, the instances of solicited advice were described as well. The category was definitely more numerous than the other one, 24 tweets that contained either request for advice the following explicit advice were identified. The solicited advice was more frequent, and more mitigation strategies were applied there. I detected sentences with non-subject imperative mood, expressions with lower level of performativity using maybe and might, binary opposition (with two mutually exclusive options) and nominal enumeration (provided mostly by the YouTubers), which, due to the absence of a verb, has very little performativity. It was rather surprising to discover that mitigation strategies are used mostly by the YouTubers, who (most probably) do not want to harm their audience’s feelings or act from the position of power. On the contrary, the audience tends to use direct non-subject imperative when addressing the YouTubers without any issues.
Furthermore, mitigating strategies were observed as well. There was not any stable pattern that would repeat (due to the small size of the sample). The use of modal verbs might, word maybe, let’s or informal language. The use of emojis and strong adjectives (e.g. amazing) can be perceived from two different perspectives. It can be either seen as a mitigating strategy that is used to make the advice lighter and less directive, or it can also be considered as the contrary strategy, that supports the advice with more emotional perceptions.
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As was anticipated, follow-up reactions were not that frequented it seems that the audience is aware of the fact that YouTubers do not communicate so frequently and do not try to develop the conversation and further. The fist recurrent tendency was appreciation, in other words, the audience frequently thanked for the advice (mostly on serious topics). Another “follow-up” tendency that was discovered was not related exclusively to advice-giving. The fans of Dan and Phil duo tend to send each other supportive messages every time they get a reply from their idols.
As far as the individual YouTubers are concerned, the most active advice-givers were clearly Dan and Phil, which corresponds with their online identities of entertaining and active Twitter users. On the contrary, the least active advice-giver (or receiver) was
PewDiePie. It was rather unexpected, because he belongs to the highest YouTube social group, thus I anticipated that people would look up to him and ask for advice, which was not confirmed. However, this finding goes together with the aforementioned strategy of the audience, who is rather direct. It seems that within the online community the position of YouTubers is clearly higher, however, they do not seem to incline to giving advice from the position of an authorized person. To my future teaching practice this is the most valuable finding, since it appears that this unenforced authority is exactly the reason why young adults turn to their idols for advice.
To summarize, the results suggest that each of the YouTubers has a different strategy how to contact and maintain the relationship with his or her audience. As has been suggested, the frequency of advice-giving and its structure depends mostly on the concrete situation and the two involved parties (the advice-giver and the advice- receiver). However, advice-giving can still be considered a significant phenomenon that
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reappears on YouTubers’ Twitter account and helps them establish and maintain the relationship with their audience.
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Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/906963156576210944 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, September 10). i definitely didn't! take a gap year if you need it and a break mid-course if you need it then [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/906963048166027265 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, September 10). remind me in two years i should have a lot of material [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/906963742537256960 86 Howell, D. [danielhowell] (2017, September 20). it’s totally fine as long as you do literally nothing i ever did [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/906962270961504257 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, September 23). 13% dan 13% phil 76% wildcats i love this audience [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/911687405819789313 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, September 23). well looks like we're gonna have to combine them and make a mario burger rip buddy [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/911646673750904832?lang=cs Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, October 11). thanks but i do recommend bed a lot more than the floor from an ergonomic standpoint [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/918245376871845889 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, October 11). three! a story for another time perhaps [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/918246792734658561 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, October 11). there's honestly so much great content around mental health on youtube! it's good to be proud of the community for something [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/918246082529910789 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, October 12). yes as i said it was almost weird to not be a thing that everyone just knew [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/918246314030321665 87 Howell, D. [danielhowell]. (2017, October 20). if like me you don't go outside you can simulate autumn walks by looking at a candle glow through a sweater while standing on crisp packets [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/921417794050195456 Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, September 3). it's very strategic and I wasn't into it at first as it all seemed quite samey but I'm past world 1 now and addicted! [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/904344193216245760 Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, September 9). I want to do a 'viewers pick my outfit' video! tweet me links to some clothing items! (topman, ebay, anything UK) Using #ClothesForPhil ✨ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/amazingphil/status/910498467772067840?lang=cs Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, September 14). New Video - TAKE A PSYCHOLOGY TEST WITH ME! Let's find out what is lurking inside our minds 樂❓Retweet for emojis [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/amazingphil/status/908410877824479232?lang=cs Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, September 20). cursed image! close the computer and run [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/amazingphil/status/910611986907529216?lang=cs Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, September 23). Doing a gaming stream tonight! (around 8PM) What shall we play? http://www.youtube.com/danandphilgames [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/911637164387160065 88 Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, October 7). Something WITH CLAWS keeps crawling across the skylight probs a squirrel right? definitely not a murderous clown [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/amazingphil/status/916773665827639302?lang=cs Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, October 10). Phil on a slippery roof at night investigating a beast! What could go wrong [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/916774954280026113 Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, October 10). sad robots and pretty scenery [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/921441795422261248 Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, October 12). Watch it with them AT DINNER like one of those food cinemas [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/918540773641146368 Lester, P. [AmazingPhil]. (2017, October 15). omg yes [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/AmazingPhil/status/919543608663052288 Pewdiepie [pewdiepie]. (2017, October 12). “I TURNED MYSELF INTO A LOADING SCREEN MORTY” [Tweet]. Pewdiepie [pewdiepie]. (2017, October 20). Yeah man, laphroaig hits the spot. What's your poison? [Tweet]. Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, September 3). I'm watching Inception for the first time & it's hurting my brain. Very good though 👌🏼 [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://mobile.twitter.com/zoella/status/904457066403819520 89 Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, September 5). Well Dr Foster was AMAZING (I knew it would be but the second series deffo started with more of a bang than I thought) [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/zoella/status/905194209715609600?lang=cs Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, September 6). "IT" was absolutely AMAZING guys! Deffo go and see it. Not just scary but fab acting & amazing soundtrack too 嵐 [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/zoella/status/905596070759104512?lang=cs Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, September 17). This is honestly my favourite song right now @Sazclose IT'S SO AMAZING & I CAN'T STOP SINGING IT! [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/zoella/status/909512863861104640?lang=cs Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, September 23). Lots of you asking me where I got this dress from! It's a Zara number and I'm obsessed with it! ❣️ https://www.instagram.com/p/BZX- lwFgveC/ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/zoella/status/911487961442680832?lang=cs Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, September 27). Trying to set up a new iPhone and it's asking me for a password that doesn't seem to be any of the passwords I've tried (phone passcode, iTunes password etc) Any ideas? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/zoella/status/913001152320606216?lang=cs Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, September 30). Feminax, neurofen for migraines & cool n sooth head strips 👍🏼 [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/zoella/status/914229612292517888 90 Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, October 5). I’m doing a little agony aunt piece for people coming to @Hello_WorldLive so if you could ask me for any advice, what would it be? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Zoella/status/915889265246195712 Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, October 25). Amen sister! The best mantra to live by 👌🏼 [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Zoella/status/923266311572148224 Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, November 1). Topshop 👍🏼 [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Zoella/status/925781419330293765 Zoella [Zoella]. (2017, November 7). Get yourself a tribe that make you cry laugh in your group chats @shipmannnX @Bee__xo @Jenski_x @amrenahan @ejstagg89 #toupe [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/zoella/status/927918865723600897?lang=cs [CastiOMG]. (2017, October 12). My parents asked me to go outside and have dinner somewhere... Should I stay and watch the live show or should I go? 樂 [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/CastiOMG/status/918538523011108869 [classytaeh] (2017, October 8). don’t eat it phil! [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/classytaeh/status/917135667129438208 [crushclubs]. (2017, October 7). go outside and look at it [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/crushclubs/status/916774521784422400 [dimpledhoweII]. (2017, October 15) I've never watched stranger things, do you recommend? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/dimpledhoweII/status/919543366257430529 91 Discord [discordapp]. (2017, October 11). We need a new round of loading lines! Reply here with your suggestion and we'll pick the creamiest of the crop for the app. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/discordapp/status/918174398737256449?lang=cs [erachelw]. (2017, September 30). zoe I have had a migraine for three days now... what works?! I’m desperate! X [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/erachelw/status/914229313725243393 [itsDanBull]. (2017, October 20). @pewdiepie Are you enjoying any scotch whiskies lately? [Tweet]. karis [selflovedjh] (2017, September 20). thrilling carrot childhood memories with phil [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/selflovedjh/status/903660739814096897 [lethargicphan]. (2017, September 20) do it with dan ffs [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/lethargicphan/status/910499258129928192 [lightlesshowell] (2017, September 10). gotta remember to stay hydrated ifyouknowwhatimean [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/lightlesshowell/status/906964211766611968 [mrellisnew]. (2017, September 27). The password to your laptop maybe ? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/mrellisnew/status/913001379374993408 [NailLWNG]. (2017, October 26). HOLLAND [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/NaiLWMG/status/923634702946373633 92 [NailLWNG]. (2017, October 26). HOLLAND IM SHOOK SENPAI NOTICED YOU WHEISJDIND [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/NaiLWMG/status/923635396323528706 [phan2187]. (2017, October 26). IM CRYING SM SNKKNSNKSKNNK [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/phan2187/status/923635543094824961 [phan2187]. (2017, October 26). JSJSJSJJJSJJSJSJ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/phan2187/status/923635263917740032 [poemdan]. (2017, September 9). you make it sound scary bro [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/poemdan/status/906962147992731648 [powerschlumpfi] (2017, September 18). it already survived a flight in a suitcase you better prepare for a fight [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/powerschlumpfi/status/909905055603707904 [rauhligt]. (2017, September 10). how did you afford that taxi across the city every time you wanted to do your laundry [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/rauhligt/status/906962124542496768 [Rushiaa_] (2017, October 27). Wear the stranger things shirt while watching it [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Rushiaa_/status/923948341611728896 Sheldon, E. [emshelx]. (2017, October 25). Focusing on supportive, lovely, good people only now 🙌🏻 [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/emshelx/status/923265968670945281 93 [SkippuDippu]. (2017, October 11). ah man I'm supposed to be cleaning my room but nope. on the floor crying. (for real, thank you. this video is a blessing and so are you.) [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/SkippuDippu/status/918245054723919874 [softboyhoweII]. (2017, October 11). thank you for recommending @AsapSCIENCE's video about the science behind depression. and for the other videos as well. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/softboyhoweII/status/918245821195284485 [spacedoutphan]. (2017, September 23). What team? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/danielhowell/status/911687405819789313 [stargazedpml]. (2017, October 10). idk anything about bladerunner oops what's it about? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/stargazedpml/status/921441125860331522 [stitcheshowell]. (2017, September 3). how would you rate the game so far? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/stitcheshowell/status/904345116378370049 [tatinofdaniel]. (2017, October 12). do you feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders?? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/tatinofdaniel/status/918245790707060736 [tylrthecrtr]. (2017, October 7). might be the pigeons? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/tylrthecrtr/status/916774901796823040 94 [twinklinglestr]. (2017, September 10). is uni better than school or sixth form???? [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/twinklinglestr/status/906962095983525889 [VivaLaEmelie]. (2017, September 10). Can you also do a “what NOT to do after university” because I need one of those [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/VivaLaEmelie/status/906962060411580416 [voidphil]. (2017, October 11). did you have to go through many therapists to find the right one? or did you find one right away [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/voidphiI/status/918246562429636610 [xelliepottsx]. (2017, November 1). Where did you get your stranger things jumper from????❤️ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/xelliepottsx/status/925780312822636549 95 Summary The present Master’s thesis focuses on the discursive practice of advice-giving. Specifically, it analyses the process of advice-giving on social media, concretely on Twitter, that occurs in between YouTubers and their followers. The primary hypothesis is that YouTubers use advice-giving on their Twitter profiles to approach their audience, stay in contact and create friendly environment with the idea of closeness. The thesis is divided into four main chapters. The first chapter is a brief introduction of social media is presented with a particular focus on the affordances and specifics of Twitter. Moreover, the phenomenon of YouTube community is outlined. The second chapter provides the theoretical background of the research. It describes advice-giving from the linguistic point of view and demonstrates its connection with phatic function of microblogging on Twitter. Moreover, it also presents findings from previous research on advice-giving that is relevant and further applied in the present thesis. The third chapter presents the collected data and also provides background information about the four YouTubers, whose tweets were analysed. The fourth chapter consists of the analysis itself. It is subdivided to solicited and unsolicited advice, each of these is then further subdivided according to the structural patterns (in explicit advice) and content structures (implicit advice) and mitigating strategies. 96 Resumé Tato diplomová práce představuje diskurzivní analýzu udělování rad (advice- giving) na sociálních sítích, konkrétně Twitteru. Konkrétně zkoumá, jakým způsobem probíhá udělování rad a poučení mezi YouTubery a jejich fanoušky (tzv. followery). Primární hypotézou této práce je, že YouTubeři využívají udělování, aby se přiblížili svému publiku, udržovali s ním kontakt a nastolili přátelskou atmosféru. Práce je rozdělena do čtyř hlavních kapitol. První kapitola představuje sociální média, konkrétně Twitter a jeho specifické rysy a nastiňuje fenomén komunity YouTuberů. Druhá kapitola představuje teoretický základ analytické části. Dávání rad je zde nejprve definováno a je nastíněna jeho spojitost s fatickou jazykovou funkcí tzv. microbloggingu (tweetování). Dále jsou zde představeny poznatky z předchozích studií, které se zabývaly udělováním rad a jsou pro tento výzkum relevantní. Třetí kapitola se zaměřuje na sebraná data a blíže představuje čtyři vybrané YouTubery, na jejichž aktivitu (a udělování rad) se tato práce zaměřila. Ve čtvrté kapitole jsou data pak sebraná data zařazena do příslušných kategorií (vyžádané a nevyžádané rady, implicitní a explicitní rady) a následně kvalitativně analyzována. 97