Internet language in user-generated comments Linguistic analysis of data from four commenting groups Internetspråk i användarkommentarer Lingvistisk analys av material från fyra kommenterande grupper Jenny Dahlström Faculty of Arts and Education English English III: Degree project in linguistics 15 hp Supervisor: Pia Sundqvist Examiner: Solveig Granath Autumn 2012 Title: Internet language in user-generated comments: Linguistic analysis of data from four commenting groups Titel på svenska: Internetspråk i användarkommentarer: Lingvistisk analys av material från fyra läsargrupper Author: Jenny Dahlström Pages: 33 Abstract The present study examines typical features of internet language found in user-generated comments collected from commenting groups from four online magazines aimed at different readerships: (1) adult women (Working Mother and Mothering), (2) adult men (Esquire), (3) young women (Seventeen) and (4) young men (Gameinformer). Approximately 5,000 words from each commenting group were collected, creating a 21,087 word corpus which was analyzed with regard to typographic (emoticons, nonstandard typography of and, personal pronouns you and I) and orthographic features (abbreviations, acronyms) as well as syntactic and stylistic features resembling spoken language (contracted forms, ellipsis of subject and/or verb and commenting tone). The results show that adult men wrote the longest comments, followed by adult women, young men and young women in descending order. Furthermore, as for the typical features regarding typography and orthography, it was found that among the four commenting groups, adult men and adult women used them very sparsely, young men used them occasionally and young women used the features most frequently. The analysis of tone showed that adult men mostly used an aggressive or neutral tone, while adult women, young women and young men mostly used a friendly or neutral tone. Young women used an aggressive tone more often than adult women and young men. Moreover, regarding the syntactic and stylistic features, results revealed that the young men were the most frequent users of ellipsis of subject and/or verb, followed by adult women, young women and adult men. Contracted forms were used extensively in the potential places of contractions, regardless of commenting group. Since young men used the ellipsis of subject and/or verb most frequently of all commenting groups and also used the contracted forms in all potential places of contractions, the conclusion is that the young men used a style that is closer to spoken English than the three other commenting groups. Keywords: asynchronous CMC, internet language, netspeak, chatspeak, user-generated content, user-generated comments, reader responses, gender Sammanfattning på svenska Den här studien undersöker språkdrag som är typiska för språk på internet. Det material som har undersöks har hämtats från användarkommentarer i nättidningar som är riktade till fyra olika läsargrupper: (1) kvinnor (Working Mother, Mothering), (2) män (Esquire), (3) unga kvinnor (Seventeen) och (4) unga män (Gameinformer). Cirka 5 000 ord hämtades från kommentarsfälten för varje tidning, vilket resulterade i en korpus som omfattade 21 087 ord totalt. Korpusen analyserades med hänsyn till typografiska språkdrag (smileys, ickestandardiserad stavning av personliga pronomen I och you samt and) och ortografiska språkdrag (förkortningar, akronymer) samt syntaktiska och stilistiska språkdrag som påminner om talspråk (sammandragningar, ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb, tonläge). Resultaten visade att män skrev de längsta kommentarerna, följda av kvinnor, unga män och unga kvinnor i fallande ordning. Vad gäller typiska typografiska och ortografiska språkdrag visar resultatet att de återfanns mycket sparsamt i kvinnornas och männens data, att de återfanns då och då i de unga männens data och att de unga kvinnorna var de som använde dessa språkdrag mest frekvent. Analys av tonläge i användarkommentarerna visade att män oftast använde en aggressiv eller neutral ton, medan kvinnor, unga kvinnor och unga män oftast använde en vänskaplig eller neutral ton. Unga kvinnor använde en aggressiv ton oftare än kvinnor och unga män. Utöver detta visade resultatet att ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb var mest frekvent i de unga männens användarkommentarer, följt av kvinnornas, de unga kvinnornas och männens. Sammandragna former användes näst intill undantagslöst i hela korpusen. Eftersom pojkarna uppvisade mest frekvent användning av ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb samt använde sammandragna former i full utsträckning, kan slutsatsen dras att de unga männens syntax är mer påverkad av engelskt talspråk än syntaxen hos de tre andra kommenterande grupperna. Nyckelord: internetspråk, användarkommentarer Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Presentation of aims ...................................................................................................................... 2 2. Theoretical background ...................................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Internet language .......................................................................................................................... 4 2.2 Typographic and orthographic features ....................................................................................... 6 2.3 E-grammar and level of formality ................................................................................................ 8 2.4 Internet language and gender ...................................................................................................... 9 2.5 Internet language among young men and young women ........................................................... 11 3. Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 12 3.1 Material ....................................................................................................................................... 13 3.3 Methods of analysis .................................................................................................................... 16 3.4 Ethical considerations ................................................................................................................ 18 3.5 Methodological considerations .................................................................................................. 18 4. Analysis and results .......................................................................................................................... 19 4.1 Length and number of comments .............................................................................................. 20 4.2 Typographic features: emoticons and typographic respellings ................................................. 22 4.3 Orthographic features: abbreviations ........................................................................................ 23 4.4 Syntactic features and level of formality .................................................................................... 25 4.5 Commenting tone ....................................................................................................................... 27 4.6 Further remarks on the results .................................................................................................. 29 5. Discussion: Implications for the future of the English language ..................................................... 30 6. Conclusion and future research ....................................................................................................... 32 References ............................................................................................................................................ 35 Appendix A: Emoticons found in the corpus ....................................................................................... 37 Appendix B: Table of additional contractions ...................................................................................... 38 1. Introduction There have been various attempts to define the language used on the Internet. Squires (2010:457) explains that internet language is the variety of language commonly used for communication on the internet and in other types of electronic communication such as mobile phone text messages. The terms netspeak, chatspeak, computer mediated communication (CMC) and electronically mediated language are also employed to describe language used on the internet (Baron, 2009:43, Squires, 2010:457 -459). Abbreviations, blends, respelling of words and emoticons are examples of features that would be considered typical of this variety of language. There are also grammatical structures that are typical of internet language. For example, it is common to leave out the subject in sentence construction and using punctuation in a more informal, and often exaggerated, way. Though the features mentioned above are often considered typical of the language variety, scholars in this field stress that the language used on the internet varies with its user, its purpose and the genre in which the communication occurs (e.g., Baron, 2004:398, Hård av Segerstad 2002:14, 16-21, Squires 2010:463). In this paper the term internet language will be used. It is a term introduced