Modeling Adolescents’ Online Writing Practices: the Sociolectometry of Non-Standard Writing on Social Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Lisa Hilte ◽  
Reinhild Vandekerckhove ◽  
Walter Daelemans
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Online Writing ◽  
Writing Practices

Adolescents’ perceptions of social media writing: Has non-standard become the new standard?

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Hilte ◽  
Reinhild Vandekerckhove ◽  
Walter Daelemans
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
High Standard ◽  
School Students ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Online Writing ◽  
Demographic Profiles ◽  
Writing Practices

AbstractThe present study examines adolescents’ attitudes and perceptions with respect to writing practices on social media. It reports the findings of a survey conducted among 168 Flemish high school students with various socio-demographic profiles. The survey examines linguistic attitudes and awareness of sociolinguistic patterns in computer-mediated communication, as well as relevant language skills. Moreover, the present paper uniquely combines the study of both adolescents’ perceptions and their production of informal online writing, as the participants’ responses to the survey are compared to their peers’ actual online writing practices.The respondents appear to have a fairly accurate intuition with respect to age and gender patterns in social media writing, but much less so with respect to education-related patterns. Furthermore, while typical chatspeak phenomena are easily identified as such, ordinary spelling mistakes often are not. Strikingly, the teenagers do not claim a high standard language proficiency, although they do state to care about standard language use in formal contexts. Finally, some significant differences were found between participants with distinct socio-demographic profiles, e. g. girls and highly educated teenagers appear to be more sensitive to the potential negative connotations of linguistic features and that sensitivity seems to increase with age.

Lexical Patterns in Adolescents’ Online Writing: The Impact of Age, Gender, and Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Hilte ◽  
Walter Daelemans ◽  
Reinhild Vandekerckhove
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Online Writing ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Communicative Strategies ◽  
Sociodemographic Profile ◽  
The Impact

This article examines the impact of the sociodemographic profile (including age, gender, and educational track) of Flemish adolescents (aged 13–20) on lexical aspects of their informal online discourse. The focus on lexical and more “traditional,” print-based aspects of literacy is meant to complement previous research on sociolinguistic variation with respect to the use of prototypical features of social media writing. Drawing on a corpus of 434,537 social media posts written by 1,384 teenagers, a variety of lexical features and related parameters is examined, including lexical richness, top favorite words, and word length. The analyses reveal a strong common ground among the adolescents with respect to some features but divergent writing practices by different groups of teenagers with regard to other parameters. Furthermore, this study analyzes both standardized versions of social media messages and the original utterances (including nonstandard markers of online writing). Strikingly, different results emerge with respect to adolescents’ exploitation of more traditional versus digital literacy skills in relation to their sociodemographic profile, especially with respect to sentiment expression (verbal versus typographic/pictorial). The study suggests that the inclusion of nonverbal communicative strategies, for instance in language teaching, might be a pedagogical asset, since these strategies are eagerly adopted by teenagers who show proof of less developed traditional writing skills.

More emojis, less :) The competition for paralinguistic function in microblog writing

First Monday ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umashanthi Pavalanathan ◽  
Jacob Eisenstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Statistical Inference ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Online Writing ◽  
Communicative Function ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Textual Features

Many non-standard elements of ‘netspeak’ writing can be viewed as efforts to replicate the linguistic role played by nonverbal modalities in speech, conveying contextual information such as affect and interpersonal stance. Recently, a new non-standard communicative tool has emerged in online writing: emojis. These unicode characters contain a standardized set of pictographs, some of which are visually similar to well-known emoticons. Do emojis play the same linguistic role as emoticons and other ASCII-based writing innovations? If so, might the introduction of emojis eventually displace the earlier, user-created forms of contextual expression? Using a matching approach to causal statistical inference, we show that as social media users adopt emojis, they dramatically reduce their use of emoticons, suggesting that these linguistic resources compete for the same communicative function. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the adoption of emojis leads to a corresponding increase in the use of standard spellings, suggesting that all forms of non-standard writing are losing out in a competition with emojis. Finally, we identify specific textual features that make some emoticons especially likely to be replaced by emojis.

Students' Out-of-School Writing Practices in an Educational Facebook Application

2014 ◽  
pp. 154-170
Author(s):  
Thor Gibbins ◽  
Christine Greenhow
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Leisure Time ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
School Practices ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Out Of School

In this chapter, the authors seek to help educators understand trends in students' writing outside of the classroom, with a particular emphasis on illuminating students' purposes and practices in writing within social media spaces. The authors synthesize current research on students' Internet and social media practices and offer a case study from their own research on students' writing within an educational Facebook application called Hot Dish. This chapter seeks to elucidate the reciprocal relationship between students out of school writing using popular social media and their in-school practices. Ultimately, the authors seek to help readers make connections between what students are doing with new media in their leisure time and the improvement of students' writing performance in K-12 settings, believing there may be important but under-explored synergies.

The return of the social author

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Ramdarshan Bold
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Digital World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Authority Figures ◽  
Traditional Publisher ◽  
New Generation ◽  
And Control

The rise in self-publishing, digital folk culture and social media participation, have revolutionized reading and writing practices. Readers can directly contact their favourite authors, and publishers, through social media and become authors, and publishers, themselves. One of the outcomes of digital reading and writing is that writing is now becoming more democratic: traditional publishers are no longer the sole gatekeepers of culture. The popularity of social writing platform Wattpad is a recent example of how a new generation of influential and innovative writers is entering the publishing arena. This also demonstrates that there is a demand for authorship without the intervention from publishers. Despite this, traditional notions of authorship, ownership and control are prevalent in contemporary publishing hindering the true potential of creativity. The disharmony between the rise of the amateur author and the control of the traditional publisher is confronted in the digital public sphere. Consequently, issues such as authority and influence are mediated during the activities and interactions that take place on social media and other online platforms. Established authority figures, such as famous authors or well-known publishers, that exert authority and influence in the traditional sphere, can shift this authority and influence to the digital world; however, this sphere is also occupied by emerging networks of influencers, such as emerging authors or micro-celebrities, who gain popularity as a result of specific trends, in specific domains, at specific times. This article will examine how new and established authors are using social platforms, and social media, to publish their writing, build communities and extend their dialogue with readers and other writers. A netnographic study of Wattpad will identify which authors are the influencers and innovators in social publishing. Consequently, this article will underscore the increasing importance of social networks and social relationships in 21st century publishing.

The Blogging Method

2016 ◽  
pp. 179-198
Author(s):  
Christine Fiore
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Composition Classroom ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Teaching Tool ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Practical Instruction

Why are there more than 450 million blogs on the Internet? The answer is simple: blogging is easy, free, and fun. People have opinions they want to share with the world, and blogging is a form of social media that best allows them to do so at length. This chapter examines how blogging can be used as a way to enhance instruction on expository writing. As with any form of social media, using blogs as a teaching tool can be a daunting proposition. Therefore, this chapter provides its readers practical instruction and ideas about how to integrate blogging practices into a composition classroom. Because blogging closely mirrors traditional writing practices, this chapter invites readers to consider blogging as a 21st century model for a 20th century practice.

Students' Out-of-School Writing Practices in an Educational Facebook Application

2015 ◽  
pp. 1010-1026
Author(s):  
Thor Gibbins ◽  
Christine Greenhow
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Leisure Time ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
School Practices ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Out Of School

In this chapter, the authors seek to help educators understand trends in students' writing outside of the classroom, with a particular emphasis on illuminating students' purposes and practices in writing within social media spaces. The authors synthesize current research on students' Internet and social media practices and offer a case study from their own research on students' writing within an educational Facebook application called Hot Dish. This chapter seeks to elucidate the reciprocal relationship between students out of school writing using popular social media and their in-school practices. Ultimately, the authors seek to help readers make connections between what students are doing with new media in their leisure time and the improvement of students' writing performance in K-12 settings, believing there may be important but under-explored synergies.

Reblogging as Writing

2016 ◽  
pp. 116-131
Author(s):  
Meghan McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Multimodal Composition ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
Multiple Audiences

This chapter explores how multimodal composition and social media conventions can support writing and introduce students to writing to multiple audiences. This chapter will outline an assignment from logistics of Tumblr as a space to help students establish regular writing practices in online spaces. Additionally, this chapter will illustrate some aspects of resistance that students may have with the assignment and provide strategies that respond to these resistances to make the assignment more effective.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document