In pre-internet days, people did not primarily socialise in writing. Today, when roughly half of the world’s population is online, we can observe groups forming on social media platforms. As a result, they are changing language in inventive ways and often with astonishing speed. Social media are a window into unedited language that allows us to observe language evolution in real time. In this course, we will explore how linguists study the language of social media using scholarly and popular sources that cover topics including grammar, pragmatics, and variation and change.
We will address, among others, questions like:
How has the language of social media changed over time? Is the Internet actually improving language? What does an emoji grammar look like? Why do Gen Z not recognise these acronyms: 4COL, AYSOS, and SWIS? How does your first social internet experience influence whether you prefer using “LOL”, “lol” or “hahahahaha”?
By the end of this course, students will develop a familiarity with the research methods for exploring language use in social media and employ them to conduct small-scale studies on language use variation among different online communities.