Social Network Approach in African Sociolinguistics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Beyer ◽  
Henning Schreiber
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Western World ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
The Social

The Social Network Analysis approach (SNA), also known as sociometrics or actor-network analysis, investigates social structure on the basis of empirically recorded social ties between actors. It thereby aims to explain e.g. the processes of flow of information, spreading of innovations, or even pathogens throughout the network by actor roles and their relative positions in the network based on quantitative and qualitative analyses. While the approach has a strong mathematical and statistical component, the identification of pertinent social ties also requires a strong ethnographic background. With regard to social categorization, SNA is well suited as a bootstrapping technique for highly dynamic communities and under-documented contexts. Currently, SNA is widely applied in various academic fields. For sociolinguists, it offers a framework for explaining the patterning of linguistic variation and mechanisms of language change in a given speech community. The social tie perspective developed around 1940, in the field of sociology and social anthropology based on the ideas of Simmel, and was applied later in fields such as innovation theory. In sociolinguistics, it is strongly connected to the seminal work of Lesley and James Milroy and their Belfast studies (1978, 1985). These authors demonstrate that synchronic speaker variation is not only governed by broad societal categories but is also a function of communicative interaction between speakers. They argue that the high level of resistance against linguistic change in the studied community is a result of strong and multiplex ties between the actors. Their approach has been followed by various authors, including Gal, Lippi-Green, and Labov, and discussed for a variety of settings; most of them, however, are located in the Western world. The methodological advantages could make SNA the preferred framework for variation studies in Africa due to the prevailing dynamic multilingual conditions, often on the backdrop of less standardized languages. However, rather few studies using SNA as a framework have yet been conducted. This is possibly due to the quite demanding methodological requirements, the overall effort, and the often highly complex linguistic backgrounds. A further potential obstacle is the pace of theoretical development in SNA. Since its introduction to sociolinguistics, various new measures and statistical techniques have been developed by the fast growing SNA community. Receiving this vast amount of recent literature and testing new concepts is likewise a challenge for the application of SNA in sociolinguistics. Nevertheless, the overall methodological effort of SNA has been much reduced by the advancements in recording technology, data processing, and the introduction of SNA software (UCINET) and packages for network statistics in R (‘sna’). In the field of African sociolinguistics, a more recent version of SNA has been implemented in a study on contact-induced variation and change in Pana and Samo, two speech communities in the Northwest of Burkina Faso. Moreover, further enhanced applications are on the way for Senegal and Cameroon, and even more applications in the field of African languages are to be expected.

Social Network Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 261-266
Author(s):  
Jean-Frédéric Morin ◽  
Christian Olsson ◽  
Ece Özlem Atikcan
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Social World ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Flow Through

This chapter studies Social Network Analysis (SNA), which is a methods toolbox for analysing the patterning of social ties and explaining how and why those patterns emerge and what consequences they have for social actors. Social networks are ubiquitous in the social world, either unfolding in face-to-face interactions or digitally. In recent decades, SNA has grown in popularity, appealing broadly to students interested in complex social structures. The recent availability of data based on digital traces of social relations (e.g. emails or social media profiles) has further prompted students to study these network structures. Analysing how actors are connected through other actors via paths may indicate how e.g. information or resources flow through the network via these ties.

scholarly journals A Social Network Analysis of the Oceanographic Community: A Fragmented Digital Community of Practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 159-181
Author(s):  
Kinda Dahlan ◽  
Melissa Terras
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Community Integration ◽  
Public Outreach ◽  
Digital Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Time

Abstract What does a digital Social Network Analysis reveal about online oceanographic communities on Twitter? We examine the structure of a digital community of practice of oceanographers and ocean-related stakeholders on Twitter using a Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach to understand digital aspects of information production and information flow in oceanography, mapping the social ties between members of a community of practice concerned with the study of the oceans. We carried out the SNA using Docteur Tweety TwExList for data collection, and Gephi to visualize scraped data, and found that although the oceanographic community on Twitter is an active vibrant community, fragmentation between sub-communities exist. Further qualitative sampling revealed where these fragmentations occur between individual researchers, institutions, funding bodies, government agencies, and news outlets as a result of practice, time zones, and geography. The findings also revealed which groups are utilizing Twitter consistently, and which accounts have the potential to connect isolated groups. We recommend that if training were available to assist ocean scientists in understanding the affordances of Twitter, it would be possible to utilise it for better collaboration, community integration, and more effective public outreach.

Duality beyondPersons and Groups

2020 ◽  
pp. 391-413
Author(s):  
Sophie Mützel ◽  
Ronald Breiger
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Network Data ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Affiliation Networks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Principle Of Duality ◽  
Seminal Article

This chapter focuses on the general principle of duality, which was originally introduced by Simmel as the intersection of social circles. In a seminal article, Breiger formalized Simmel’s idea, showing how two-mode types of network data can be transformed into one-mode networks. This formal translation proved to be fundamental for social network analysis, which no longer needed data on who interacted with whom but could work with other types of data. In turn, it also proved fundamental for the analysis of how the social is structured in general, as many relations are dual (e.g. persons and groups, authors and articles, organizations and practices), and are thus susceptible to an analysis according to duality principles. The chapter locates the concept of duality within past and present sociology. It also discusses the use of duality in the analysis of culture as well as in affiliation networks. It closes with recent developments and future directions.

The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Diverse Field ◽  
The Rich

Social networks fundamentally shape our lives. Networks channel the ways that information, emotions, and diseases flow through populations. Networks reflect differences in power and status in settings ranging from small peer groups to international relations across the globe. Network tools even provide insights into the ways that concepts, ideas and other socially generated contents shape culture and meaning. As such, the rich and diverse field of social network analysis has emerged as a central tool across the social sciences. This Handbook provides an overview of the theory, methods, and substantive contributions of this field. The thirty-three chapters move through the basics of social network analysis aimed at those seeking an introduction to advanced and novel approaches to modeling social networks statistically. The Handbook includes chapters on data collection and visualization, theoretical innovations, links between networks and computational social science, and how social network analysis has contributed substantively across numerous fields. As networks are everywhere in social life, the field is inherently interdisciplinary and this Handbook includes contributions from leading scholars in sociology, archaeology, economics, statistics, and information science among others.

Language as a phenomenon of the third kind

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Ewa Dąbrowska
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dual Perspective ◽  
Micro Level

AbstractWhile many linguists view language as either a cognitive or a social phenomenon, it is clearly both: a language can live only in individual minds, but it is learned from examples of utterances produced by speakers engaged in communicative interaction. In other words, language is what (Keller 1994. On language change: The invisible hand in language. London: Taylor & Francis) calls a “phenomenon of the third kind”, emerging from the interaction of a micro-level and a macro-level. Such a dual perspective helps us understand some otherwise puzzling phenomena, including “non-psychological” generalizations, or situations where a pattern which is arguably present in a language is not explicitly represented in most speakers’ minds. This paper discusses two very different examples of such generalizations, genitive marking on masculine nouns in Polish and some restrictions on questions with long-distance dependencies in English. It is argued that such situations are possible because speakers may represent “the same” knowledge at different levels of abstraction: while a few may have extracted an abstract generalization, others approximate their behaviour by relying on memorised exemplars or lexically specific patterns. Thus, a cognitively realistic usage-based construction grammar needs to distinguish between patterns in the usage of a particular speech community (a social phenomenon) and patterns in speakers’ minds (a cognitive phenomenon).

scholarly journals Evaluation of Coordination of Emergency Response Team through the Social Network Analysis. Case Study: Oil and Gas Refinery

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iraj Mohammadfam ◽  
Susan Bastani ◽  
Mahbobeh Esaghi ◽  
Rostam Golmohamadi ◽  
Ali Saee
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Emergency Response ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Response Team ◽  
Gas Refinery

Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110594
Author(s):  
Yiyi Yin ◽  
Zhuoxiao Xie
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Media Logic

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.

scholarly journals The use of social network methodological framework in nursing care to breastfeeding women

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Helena do Nascimento Souza ◽  
Ivis Emília de Oliveira Souza ◽  
Florence Romijn Tocantins
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Nursing Care ◽  
Nursing Practice ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Strong Bond ◽  
The People ◽  
Primary Network ◽  
The Social

This study aimed to discuss the contribution of the social network methodological framework in nursing care delivered to women who breastfeed their children up to six months of age. This qualitative study aimed to elaborate the social network map of 20 women through tape-recorded interview. Social network analysis evidenced a "strong" bond between these women and members from their primary network, especially friends, neighbors, mothers or with the child's father, who were reported as the people most involved in the breastfeeding period. The contribution of this framework to nursing practice is discussed, especially in care and research processes. We believe that nurses' appropriation of this framework can be an important support for efficacious actions, as well as to favor a broader perspective on the social context people experience.

The evolution of the intellectual structure of strategic management between 1980 and 2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-534
Author(s):  
Mehmet Ali Köseoğlu ◽  
John Parnell
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Strategic Management ◽  
Citation Analysis ◽  
Intellectual Structure ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Foundation

PurposeThe authors evaluate the evolution of the intellectual structure of strategic management (SM) by employing a document co-citation analysis through a network analysis for academic citations in articles published in the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ).Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed the co-citation analysis through the social network analysis.FindingsThe authors outlined the evolution of the academic foundations of the structure and emphasized several domains. The economic foundation of SM research with macro and micro perspectives has generated a solid knowledge stock in the literature. Industrial organization (IO) psychology has also been another dominant foundation. Its robust development and extension in the literature have focused on cognitive issues in actors' behaviors as a behavioral foundation of SM. Methodological issues in SM research have become dominant between 2004 and 2011, but their influence has been inconsistent. The authors concluded by recommending future directions to increase maturity in the SM research domain.Originality/valueThis is the first paper to elucidate the intellectual structure of SM by adopting the co-citation analysis through the social network analysis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document