Going Gaga: Pop Fandom As Online Community of Practice
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics Linguistics 2018 GOING GAGA: POP FANDOM AS ONLINE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE John D. N. Carter University of Kentucky, [email protected] Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2018.198 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Carter, John D. N., "GOING GAGA: POP FANDOM AS ONLINE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE" (2018). Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics. 27. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ltt_etds/27 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Linguistics at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. 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Carter, Student Dr. Jennifer Cramer, Major Professor Dr. Edward Barrett, Director of Graduate Studies GOING GAGA: POP FANDOM AS ONLINE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE THESIS A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By John Durbin Neal Carter Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Jennifer Cramer, Professor of Linguistics Lexington, Kentucky 2018 Copyright © John Durbin Neal Carter 2018 ABSTRACT OF THESIS GOING GAGA: POP FANDOM AS ONLINE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE Among various fan sites dedicated to pop stars, GagaDaily is one prominent online collective that centers around Lady Gaga. This study is a piece of ethnographic research focused on two claims – GagaDaily constitutes a Community of Practice (Eckert, 2006) in an online setting, and the regular use of humor by users fulfills social and pragmatic roles in the discourse. Communicative phenomena (both textual and graphic) that characterize the linguistic repertoire of GagaDaily members were catalogued from the first 100 pages of one thread within the forums. These data were grouped into categories corresponding to different dimensions of language use as well as media/literary devices. Alongside a quantitative analysis of various tokens and types of data, a qualitative examination of selected excerpts from the sample confirm the veracity of the two main claims. When analyzed with regard to Wenger’s definition of a Community of Practice (Wenger, 2009), GagaDaily meets all three of his requirements. Likewise, the analysis of humor reveal that GagaDaily users regularly engage in the first dichotomy of the tactics of intersubjectivity, adequation and distinction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004) and incorporate GIF images in their humor to express their alignment with stance objects (DuBois, 2007) and other members. KEYWORDS: Online Communities, Fandom, Humor, Ethnography, Communication _______John Durbin Neal Carter___ ________4/27/2018_____________ GOING GAGA: POP FANDOM AS ONLINE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE By John Durbin Neal Carter _________Jennifer Cramer________ Director of Thesis ________Edward Barrett__________ Director of Graduate Studies ____________4/27/2018_________ TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………..iv List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………..v Section 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………1 Section 2: Background Information………………………………………………………2 Section 3: Methods………………………………………………………………………..7 Section 4: Communities in the Virtual World…………………………………………...12 Section 5: The Online Community of Practice…………………………………………..16 Section 6: Humor and Linguistics………………………………………………………..37 Section 7: The Function of Humor in an Online Community of Practice……………….42 Intersubjectivity and Stance……………………………………………………...43 Humor as Practice………………………………………………………………..53 Section 8: Discussion/Implications………………………………………………………58 Section 9: Suggestions for Further Research…………………………………………….61 Section 10: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..64 References………………………………………………………………………………..66 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………….70 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1, Acronym Chart…………………………………………………………...…….26 Table 2, Music Industry Terms…………………………………………………………..32 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1, GagaDaily homepage………………………………………………………….17 Figure 2, News and Events subforum……………………………………………………19 Figure 3, Charts and Sales subforum…………………………………………………….20 Figure 4, Data Illustrations………………………………………………………………23 Figure 5, Poot Lovato emoticon…………………………………………………………35 Figure 6, Britney Speares emoticon……………………………………………………..35 Figure 7, “Died from Laughter” emoticon………………………………………………35 Figure 8, GIF Example 1…………………………………………………………..…….48 Figure 9, GIF Example 2………………………………………………………………...49 Figure 10, GIF Example 3……………………………………………………………….50 Figure 11, Response Example 1 Part 1…………………………………………………..52 Figure 12, Response Example 1 Part 2…………………………………………………..52 Figure 13, Response Example 2………………………………………………………….53 Figure 14, Conversation Part 1…………………………………………………………..54 Figure 15, Conversation Part 2…………………………………………………………..55 Figure 16, Conversation Part 3…………………………………………………………..55 v SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION “It is so intense to be a super fan. I feel that it’s been lost a little bit. If anything, I want to create that again,” said Lady Gaga during one of her earliest televised interviews (Rosado, 2015). After nearly a decade in the spotlight, the pop icon continues to execute that same prophetic goal, amassing fan after fan, a great number of whom are part of the LGBTQ community. Nearly every major pop icon in recent history, especially within music, has had a passionate fan base; images of teenage girls losing their minds over Elvis or The Beatles are not hard to find. Yet while person-to-person contact has not disappeared in the world of fandom, another medium has taken hold in this millennium - discussion boards, also known as forums. One such forum, GagaDaily, serves as the virtual space in which thousands of Gaga fans congregate to discuss their pop queen. In doing so, they make use of a characteristic linguistic repertoire, with a variety of indexical ties, as well as non-linguistic communicative phenomena that help build and reify the culture of the forums. In order to further understand this online culture, I have crafted an ethnography of the virtual community with a few overarching questions in mind. First, I want to investigate to what extent GagaDaily could be called a “community of practice,” and how this relates to the linguistic phenomena observed on the forums (Wenger, 2009, p. 1). Second, I will explore the role that humor plays in shaping and maintaining the culture of these specific forums by means of one dichotomous tactic of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, p. 382), the concept of the stance triangle (DuBois, 2007, p. 162) as well as the role of humor as part of the “practice” of a community of practice. Using these 1 questions, I have organized this ethnography into the following sections: Background information (on both Gaga, GagaDaily, and the role of ethnography), methods of data collection and analysis, review of community–related literature, assessment of GagaDaily as a community of practice, overview of literature related to the second claim, assessment of humor on GagaDaily, discussion/implications, suggestions for further research, and a conclusion. Through a combination of data analysis and examination of the literature, I posit that numerous insights can be gained, including a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms of social groups (specifically communities of practice) as seen through language use. SECTION 2: BACKGROUND INFORMATION Born Stefani Germanotta, the superstar Lady Gaga exploded onto the pop music scene in late 2008 with her debut album The Fame (Click, Lee, & Holladay, 2013, pp. 360). According to her biography on her Facebook page, the singer has earned countless honors, from Grammy Awards to MTV Video Music Awards to multi-platinum albums and singles (Lady Gaga). As of this writing, the musician is followed by roughly 78.3 million accounts on her Twitter page (http://twitter.com/ladygaga), thus