c:/3socio/5-2/02-paolillo.3d ± 3/4/1 ± 18:21 ± disk/mp Journal of Sociolinguistics 5/2, 2001: 180±213 Language variation on Internet Relay Chat: A social network approach1 John C. Paolillo University of Texas at Arlington and Indiana University This paper examines linguistic variation on an Internet Relay Chat channel with respect to the hypothesis, based on the model of Milroy and Milroy (1992), that standard variants tend to be associated with weak social network ties, while vernacular variants are associated with strong network ties. An analysis of frequency of contact as a measure of tie strength reveals a structured relationship between tie strength and several linguistic variants. However, the variant features are associated with social positions in a way that does not correlate neatly with tie strength. An account of these results is proposed in terms of the social functions of the dierent variables and the larger social context of IRC aecting tie strength. KEYWORDS: Social networks, language variation, computer-mediated communication (CMC), Internet Relay Chat 1. INTRODUCTION The 1990s will be remembered as the decade in which the Internet and its protocols for communication (e-mail, Listserv discussions, Usenet news, the World-Wide Web, Internet Relay Chat, etc.) arrived in the lives of millions of people around the world. Almost from the outset of its popularization, digital technology enthusiasts promoted the Internet as a means for fostering social connection and community-building among geographically dispersed people in `virtual communities' (Rheingold 1993), where `virtual' denotes, as in com- puter science, something manifest only in a realm of electronic information. As social structures manifest largely through language, virtual communities have also attracted the interest of sociolinguists studying computer-mediated com- munication (CMC) (Baym 1996; Cherny 1999; Collot and Belmore 1996; Ferrara, Brunner and Whittemore 1991; Herring 1994, 1996, in press; Murray 1988; Paolillo 1996). This research has focused predominantly on ethnographic and interactional aspects of electronic discourse: in-group lan- guage, patterns of participation, turn-taking, and message schemata. In these studies, virtual communities are viewed as speech communities or discourse communities that may or may not have a prior o-line existence, where some # Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX41JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148,USA. c:/3socio/5-2/02-paolillo.3d ± 3/4/1 ± 18:21 ± disk/mp LANGUAGE VARIATION ON INTERNET RELAY CHAT 181 important part of that group's participation takes place through computer- mediated communication. Such on-line social groups often exhibit variation in micro-linguistic structures. For example, in the community studied by Cherny (1999), prepositions could be deleted in certain widely used expressions: `Henry nods (at) George' (Cherry 1999: 89). As yet, few empirical studies exist relating such micro-linguistic variation to the social mechanisms by which virtual communities are structured and maintained. Sociolinguistic research on computer-mediated communication faces an immediate problem, namely, articulating a basis from which to discuss the social identities of participants. Oftentimes, information about participants' `real-life' social identities can be dicult to obtain, because they use on-line monikers that obfuscate or falsify their o-line identities, and because they can change the on-line cues to their identities by using dierent computer accounts. In circumstances such as this, where there are few reliable cues to social structure, a social network approach is often bene®cial, since it permits social structure to be observed directly from patterns of interaction (Milroy and Milroy 1992: 4±6). This is appealing for the study of CMC, where social background information is scarce, and where the only observable social structure may be that which emerges through on-line interaction. A small but growing number of CMC studies has adopted a social network perspective (Garton, Haythornthwaite and Wellman 1999; Rice 1994; Wellman and Gulia 1999). However these studies are directed at the analysis of social interaction itself, and not linguistic variation. In the present study, I conduct a social network analysis of linguistic variation in an on-line community on a form of multi-participant CMC called `Internet Relay Chat' (IRC), in which users interact in real time by typing text messages from their computer terminals. The participants are mostly expatriate South Asians or their children who interact on the channel #india, using Hindi codeswitching together with more widespread features of IRC language. The study tests a hypothesis derived from the model of social network and language variation of Milroy and Milroy (1992), according to which vernacular variables ± those which are not legitimized by the dominant group ± are expected to be used more frequently by members of the community with stronger social network ties. The results of the analysis reveal a highly-structured relationship in which the variables' interactional functions and social values in¯uence their association with tie strength, at times calling into question their hypothesized vernacular status. I account for these observations in terms of factors in the larger social context of IRC that both weaken the dominance of powerful groups and cause weak ties to predominate. Variables arise which are `standard', yet non-legitimized, through the role of weak ties in enforcing macro-social cohesion (Granovetter 1973). The remainder of this paper is laid out as follows. Section 2 introduces IRC, Milroy and Milroy's (1992) model of social network and language variation, and the channel #india. Section 3 explains the data collection and analytical procedures used to measure tie strength and their relation to linguistic # Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 c:/3socio/5-2/02-paolillo.3d ± 3/4/1 ± 18:21 ± disk/mp 182 PAOLILLO variation. Section 4presents the results of the social network analysis, its interpretation in terms of tie strength, the correlation of participant groups and linguistic variables, and the relationship of the observed variation to tie strength. Section 5 integrates the interpretation of these ®ndings into a more general model of tie strength and language variation. Section 6 presents the conclusions drawn from this study for the sociolinguistics of CMC. 2. THE SOCIAL ANDLINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT OF IRC 2.1 The IRC medium On IRC, users engage in simultaneous, multi-party interactions, hosted on `channels' that are maintained by a network of servers (Werry 1996). When users connect to a server on a particular IRC network using a client program and `join' a channel, they immediately start to see messages from other users appear on their screens; as messages are added, the text on the screen scrolls upward, allowing the user to see new messages as they arrive. To send messages to the channel, users type in a buer window and hit the return key. A typical IRC session from the channel #india is given in Example 1 (line numbers have been added in this and all other examples for ease of reference), in which the researcher joined #india under the nickname `gora'. Example 1. A typical IRC log from the channel #india (all typographical and spelling errors appear as they occur in the original).2 1. *** gora ([email protected]) has joined channel #india 2. *** HighChief has left channel #india 3. * Zainaa PRince-1!! 4. *** Sandhya has left channel #india 5. 5Dr_K94 Gujju- hehehe muthafucka, i know khamoshi is a bot, but someone is on the bot ad talking thru it .. that's who i am tlaking to!! heheh ur a moron, muthafucka !! 6. 5shareen4 ANYONE HERE FROM BKK? 7. *** bhim ([email protected]) has joined channel #india 8. 5shareen4 ANYONE HERE FROM BKK? 9. * Zainaa H E L L O ! PRince-1 H E L L O ! H E L L O ! PRince-1 H E L L O ! H E L L O ! PRince-1 H E L L O ! 10. *** True^Love is now known as Nicole 11. 5lilly4 hi guys 12. 5lilly4 hi guys 13. 5Dr_K94 hi lilly.. would u like to have a quickie netsex with me? 14. 5lilly4 yup me 15. *** Signo: TripleX (Operation timed out) 16. 5Pavitra4 Gujju: hiya:) 17. *** amesha ([email protected]) has joined channel #india 18. *** Signo: Sheraz (Connection reset by peer) # Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 c:/3socio/5-2/02-paolillo.3d ± 3/4/1 ± 18:21 ± disk/mp LANGUAGE VARIATION ON INTERNET RELAY CHAT 183 19. * Gujju walks slowly . towards. Lilly. and screams. HIIIIIiiiii ya lilly . to kisko milli? 20. 5Gujju4 Hi pavitra..hows it going? 21. * ¯amenco wonders if gujju is ajit the villain 22. 5Pavitra4 Gujju: Its going great..and urself? 23. *** pyckle ([email protected]) has joined channel #india 24. * Gujju is no villan 25. * Gujju is a gujju 26. * Gujju laughts 27. * ¯amenco wonders if ajit the villain is gujju 28. *** Gujju has left channel #india 29. *** Gujju ([email protected]) has joined channel #india 30. 5Gujju4 tnt2 OPME 31. 5lilly4 no i don't dr-k9 32. 5Dr_K94 lilly- why not ? 33. *** Mode change ``+ooo Gujju'' on channel #india by KhAm0sHi 34. *** Signo: DESIBABU (Leaving) 35. 5¯amenco4 scatman:) ) hows u? 36. *** Akshay ([email protected]) has joined channel #india 37. *** pyckle has left channel #india 38. *** k0oLaS|Ce is now known as SEXPL0S|V 39. *** umdhall1 ([email protected]) has joined channel #india 40. 5lilly4 cause i don't wanna 41. * Gujju tells Dr_K9 there is no one talking throught the bot hahaha ...u idiot.. Khamoshi is programmed to do that..once in a while..randomly.. 42. *** umdhall1 is now known as Panchaud Prior to joining a channel, users select a nickname (`nick') by which to be known on the channel. In the default mode of communication on IRC, users type something to be broadcast to the channel, hit the return key, and the system displays it with the user's nick appended inside angle brackets (as in lines 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, etc.).