I'm considering using Twitter data I've collected for one research project to also do a study of orthographic variation. It seems like a topic that could be treated in much the same way as phonetic variation is treated in sociolinguistics, but I'm not familiar with any studies that treat it as such or that even consider the pitfalls of such an approach. What would be some relevant literature to review on the topic, assuming that any literature even exists on it?
This is a fascinating question and just starting to be investigated over the last few years. So much more to be done!
Best place to start, in my opinion:
Tatman, Rachael (2015). #go awn: Sociophonetic variation in variant spellings on Twitter. Working Papers of the Linguistics Circle of the University of Victoria, 25(2), 97-108.
Tatman, Rachael (2016). "I'm a spawts guay": Comparing the use of sociophonetic variables in speech and Twitter. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 22(2), Article 18.
Work-in-progress that I know about:
Dinkin, Aaron (2014). A phonological variable in a textual medium: (ING) in online chat. Paper presented at Change and Variation in Canada 8 (Kingston, Ontario, Canada - May 31-June 1, 2014).
Lamontagne, Jeffrey, and Gretchen McCulloch (2017). Wayyy longgg: Orthotactics and phonology in lengthening on Twitter. Paper presented at the 91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (Austin, Texas, USA - January 5-8, 2017).
McCulloch, Gretchen, and Jeffrey Lamontagne (2017). Troppppp loooongueuuhhhh: Orthographic lengthening across French dialects. Poster presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 46 (Madison, Wisconsin, USA - November 2-5, 2017).
Dalola, Amanda (2017). #YouAreWhatYouTweet: Identity and vowel devoicing in French-language tweets. Poster presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 46 (Madison, Wisconsin, USA - November 2-5, 2017).
Some background sources likely to be helpful:
Tagliamonte, Sali A., and Derek Denis (2008). Linguistic ruin? LOL! Instant messaging and teen language. American Speech, 83(1), 3-34.
Squires, Lauren (2012). Whos punctuating what? Sociolinguistic variation in instant messaging. In Alexandra Jaffe, Jannis Androutsopoulos, Mark Sebba, and Sally Johnson (eds.), Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power, 289-324. Mouton de Gruyter.
Tagliamonte, Sali A. (2016). So sick or so cool? The language of youth on the internet. Language in Society, 45(1), 1-32.
Squires, Lauren (2016a). Computer-mediated communication and the English writing system. In Vivian Cook and Des Ryan (eds.), The Routledge handbook of the English writing system, 471-486. Routledge.
Squires, Lauren (ed.) (2016). English in computer-mediated communication: Variation, representation, and change. De Gruyter.
I came across this article in collecting data for my error analysis study, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.67.3931&rep=rep1&type=pdf
It talks about web orthograpic errors and makes some classifications, hope this coule be of help.
I wouldn't claim it as most important, but it was something that I did not see at the time in the field: Article What the Capitalization of nouns in Early Canadian English m...
- Badges
- Science topic