30.1257, Review: English; Sociolinguistics: Squires (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1257. Tue Mar 19 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.1257, Review: English; Sociolinguistics: Squires (2018)

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Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 10:54:06
From: Selina Sutton [selinajsutton at gmail.com]
Subject: English in Computer-Mediated Communication

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-2863.html

EDITOR: Lauren  Squires
TITLE: English in Computer-Mediated Communication
SUBTITLE: Variation, Representation, and Change
SERIES TITLE: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Selina Sutton, Northumbria University

SUMMARY

‘English in computer-mediated communication: Variation, Representation, and
Change’, edited by Lauren Squires, is volume 93 in De Gruyter Mouton’s 99
volume series ‘Topics in English Linguistics’. According to the blurb, this
book “examines the English language in particular in CMC – what it looks like,
what it accomplishes, and what it means to speakers”. While several overviews
of sociolinguistics in computer-mediated communication (CMC) are available
(e.g. Thurlow and Mroczek, 2011; Herring, Stein, and Virtanen, 2013; Tannen
and Trester, 2013; Georgakopoulou and Spilioti, 2016) previous texts have been
dominated by qualitative investigations, whereas this volume gives near-equal
weighting to quantitative variationism. Also, it is evident that this is not
an introductory volume, with many concepts being introduced with minimal
explanation, and so its content would certainly be inaccessible to first and
second year undergraduates, probably third years too. However, it would be an
essential resource for anyone wanting to develop expertise in the topic of
sociolinguistics in CMC, regardless of career stage.

Overview of the chapters

The book begins with an introductory chapter from the editor and is then
divided into 4 sections, each containing 3 or 4 chapters that share a topic. 

Squires’ introduction describes three themes (i. Variation, ii.
Representation, and iii. Change) that run throughout the book. These are also
referred to as “ordinary processes” (p. 2). A key motivation for the book is
to no longer focus on CMC as a context or medium that has created “new”,
homogenous language types or practices, although this conceptualisation is
still present in some current CMC research. Rather, Squires argues that now
CMC is part of everyday life many of its communicative practices have lost
their “edge” (p.1) and that language in CMC displays diversity and variety,
just like non-CMC language. This change in thinking, along with being
refreshing and long overdue in some researchers’ eyes, directs us to research
questions that are actually more reminiscent of those asked in non-CMC
contexts rather than those asked in the earlier days of sociolinguistic CMC
research.

Part I, chapters 1 to 3, is concerned with “Code and Variety” and explores
“English as a code to be chosen among others, and English varieties as they
manifest and are configured through online discourse” (p. 4).

In Chapter 1, “Modular repertoires in English-using social networks: A study
of language choice in the networks of adult Facebook users”, Lars Hinrichs
studies the choosing of German or English in Facebook posts by adult, native
German speakers. Unlike similar prior research of adolescents
(Androutsopoulos, 2014), Hinrichs found little code switching between German
and English, that English did not carry a particularly positive symbolic
value, and that its use was to maximise audience. It was rationalised that
this behaviour was related to the stable, established identities of the adult
participants, and that the very different language behaviours of
Androutsopoulos’ (2014) adolescent participants was related to their emerging
identities.

Chapter 2, “Tweets as graffiti: What the reconstruction of Vulgar Latin can
tell us about Black Twitter”, sees Taylor Jones examine the manifestation of
African American English (AAE) on Twitter, particularly the nonstandard
spellings of two phonological variables (liquids and glottal stops).
Inspiration is taken from studying Vulgar Latin, which was mostly seen in
graffiti, because of its overlapping qualities with tweets; short, informal,
public, often ribald social commentary. Tools developed and validated within
the field of historical linguistics are used to analyse this data, with Jones
arguing that older methods developed for non-CMC contexts may be being
overlooked for more recently developed, fashionable techniques.

Cecilia Cutler’s chapter, “ “Ets jast ma booooooooooooo”: Social meanings of
Scottish accents on YouTube”, analyses the comments posted on several video
clips of characters in animated films that have Scottish accents. Language
ideologies and attitudes are revealed both by commenters’ dialect performances
through orthography, and through metalinguistic commentary. Cutler argues that
this work indicates the role YouTube plays in allowing viewers to engage with
and respond to language variation. 

Part II, Chapters 4 through 7, focuses on the phenomena of “Contact, Spread,
and Innovation”. English and CMC spread globally in an almost reciprocal
manner, and this chapter considers the role that CMC plays in linguistic
innovation as well as the sociolinguistic outcomes of this global spread.

Theresa Heyd reports on a study of how the function words “dey” and “am” are
used on a web forum for local and diasporic Nigerians in Chapter 4 “Global
varieties of English gone digital: Orthographic and semantic variation in
digital Nigerian Pidgin”. Heyd questions how nonstandard repertoires (e.g.
creoles, pidgins) that have previously predominantly been spoken varieties
transition to being regularly used in written contexts, and further, how does
this occur in multilingual contexts. Through this work, insights into the
varieties themselves, as well as the associated CMC practices that develop,
are gained.

In Chapter 5, “Virtual meatspace: Word formation and deformation in cyberpunk
discussions”, Matt Garley and Benjamin Slade describe the word formation and
deformation strategies that are characteristic of cyberpunk literature and are
then used in CMC contexts that pivot around this genre. The long-term nature
of the CMC data (the Usenet data dates from 1987 to the late 90’s, and the
forum data dates 2006 to 2013) is novel in comparison to most previous work,
and so is the use of literary data in conjunction with CMC data (the book
corpora dated from 1980 to 2007). As the authors describe, this study design
creates an interrogation of the linguistic practices associated with a
literary subculture rather than a speech community per se, and so considers
feature actuation and transmission on a larger scale.

Chapter 6, “Language change because Twitter? Factors motivating innovative
uses of because across the English-speaking Twittersphere”, sees Axel Bohmann
question whether platform specific characteristics (in this case
Densification, Colloquialization, Americanization, and Computer Mediated
Discourse) can act as a catalyst or driver in a linguistic change. Binomial
logistic regression revealed that the three most significant factors all
related to densification, that is the fact that the number of characters one
can use in a tweet is restricted encourages because-complementation (e.g.
“Early morning gym because fat”, example 1b p.149).

Steven Coats explored the “Grammatical feature frequencies of English on
Twitter in Finland”. He collected English tweets that were geo-tagged within
Finland and compared these to English, non-geotagged tweets from an
established corpus. An exploratory factor analysis revealed differences in the
use of a range of features (including Tweet length, prevalence of hashtags,
expressive lengthening) that clearly distinguishes English from Finland, and
global English on Twitter.

Part III, Chapters 8 through 10, focus on “Style and Identity”; “specific
features of English in CMC are investigated for the work they do in
constructing sociolinguistic personae.” (p.4).

In Chapter 8, “Stylistic uniformity and variation online and on-screen: A case
study of The Real Housewives”, Lauren Squires conducts a principal components
analysis to examine the differences and similarities in stylistic practices
across all individuals within the Real Housewives franchise, individuals
within their cast, and across the 6 casts. Unlike other analyses of style on
Twitter, Squires started by considering the public persona of ‘a Real
Housewife’, and how this manifested regionally (to reflect the different
casts) as well as individually by engaging with the TV show data. From the
insights gained, the linguistic manifestations of both the uniformity and
variation in the Real Housewives’ identities could be interpreted. 

Patrick Callier considers how stylistic resources are combined and what social
effects are achieved in doing so. Chapter 9, “Exploring stylistic co-variation
on Twitter: The case of DH”, reports an analysis of tweets that used the
standard/nonstandard spellings ‘this/dis’, ‘that/dat’, and ‘they/dey’, and
their covariance with other orthographic representations of DH-stopping,
R-lessness and R-fullness, and the presence/absence of internet initialisms
(e.g. OMG). Most interesting is how, through a multiple correspondence
analysis, the three DH-stopping keywords (“dis”, “dat”, “dey”) showed highly
distinctive co-occurrence patterning with the other variables. Callier
proposes that this may indicate these three forms occur in different
communicative situations.

In Chapter 10, “Who I am and who I want to be: Variation and representation in
a messaging platform”, Rebecca Childs describes the similarities and
differences in the use of language features (postvocalic /r/, and expletives
and slang terms) in instant messaging and spoken data collected from the same
participants. After describing the local Appalachian African American
community and the ways in which its young people engage with the broader
African American community, and the social and cultural connotations of the
variables under study, it is evident that the lack of overlap of behaviours in
written CMC and speaking demonstrate different identity construction and
performance in these contexts.

The final part, Part IV, Chapters 11 through 14, examines how the “Mode and
Medium” of interaction influences language use and the resulting attitudes
towards its users.

Chapter 11 sees Markus Bieswanger consider the concept of synchronicity not as
binary but as a continuum, and not as stable but variable. In
“Electronically-mediated Englishes: Synchronicity revisited”, he reports on
two sets of data collected from the same forum; the first 100 replies from a
topic posting and the first 100 replies posted exactly one week since the
original topic posting was made. Bieswanger establishes that there is a
statistically significant difference in the mean time period between replies,
with a mean gap of 39 seconds in the first 100 messages, and a mean gap of 4
minutes 6 seconds in the first 100 messages posted one week later. This
clearly illustrates that this context, that is typically defined as
asynchronous, can actually be not only synchronous but for that synchronicity
to differ throughout the thread. Further, this appears to have an impact on
the communication behaviours of the posters; statistically significant
differences were found across the two datasets for the length of message and
lexical shortenings.

In Chapter 12, Nathan LaFave examines “Social factors and lexical frequency
influencing English adjective gradation in speech and CMC”. 2 data types (i.
Instant messages, ii. Spoken) were collected from several corpora and examined
in regard to the influence that linguistic and social factors had on adjective
gradation, particularly synthetic (e.g. “old”, “older”, “oldest”) versus
analytic (e.g. “beautiful”, “more beautiful”, “most beautiful”) adjective
gradation. Through various statistical analyses, LaFave reveals that there
isn’t a statistically significant difference between instant messenger and
speech data but there was when examining the social factors of sex and
education. Furthermore, preliminary comparisons were also made with a corpus
of formal writing.

In “Implications of attitudes about nonstandard English on interactional
structure in the computer-mediated workplace: A story of two modes” (chapter
13), Josh Iorio reports on an experiment within a global virtual project
networks (GVPNs); a team of teams that are geographically dispersed and so use
technology to communicate and carry-out their work. In this study there were 2
GPVNs, each one containing 3 teams spread across 3 countries (USA, the
Netherlands, and India) with the members of each team having a different
native language (English, Dutch, and Telegu). The participants communicated in
English through 2 modes (written and spoken) to complete a project, and the
participants’ language attitudes towards their co-workers was assessed through
questionnaires.

Finally, Lauren Collister’s participant-observation ethnography reveals the
role that the language attitudes and ideologies of others can have upon
engaging with an online gaming world. Chapter 14, “ “At least I’m not Chinese,
gay, or female”: Marginalized voices in World of Warcraft”, reports on the
experiences of players who do not possess this online world’s supposedly
dominant, unmarked identity of white, heterosexual, American male. One can be
‘outed’ (identified as deviating from this identity) in several ways – through
a perceived lack of English proficiency in the text chat, or through vocal
features in the voice chat. The repercussions of one being outed include
receiving abuse and being excluded from group gaming activities, e.g. raids.
Players attempted to avoid such instances in a variety of ways, the most
sociolinguistically relevant being to avoid voice chat and consciously
changing one’s speech.

EVALUATION

First, the theme of ‘English’ should not be taken as an indicator that the
book covers a narrow topic or lacks diversity in its content. On the contrary,
an array of English varieties (e.g. African American English, Scottish
English, Nigerian Pidgin English to name a few) as well as English use in
different cultural contexts (e.g. English use by native German, Finnish,
Dutch, and Telugu speakers) is examined. Also, the theme of English should not
be viewed as excluding those interested in other languages. Anyone with an
interest in sociolinguistics in CMC will appreciate the range of interaction
contexts (e.g. social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook,
messaging applications, discussion forums) and linguistic phenomena, concepts,
and topics of interest that are covered. Furthermore, it can be argued that
one of the key learnings and the most inspirational aspect of the book is the
novel and innovative study designs and methods that are reported on; learning
and inspiration that one can envisage being transferred to other CMC languages
and contexts and, in some cases, outside of CMC.

As mentioned earlier, across the chapters equal attention is given to
quantitative and qualitative approaches. Of course, as with most edited
volumes, some chapters will be of more interest than others to some readers.
But an understanding of polarised methods, and more importantly an acceptance
of their differing epistemologies, would be required for a reader to engage
with more than a few chapters. Therefore, it is likely that many readers will
merely dip in and out, rather than engage with the majority of the volume.
This is also reflected in the lack of dialogue or discussion across the
chapters. Squires’ excellent introduction does clearly describe how the
content of the chapters relate and pattern in a multitude of ways, and the
fundamental themes that underlie throughout the book have not been so
explicitly touched on previously. But the authors of the individual chapters
make minimal reference to each other’s work, and the end of the volume lacks a
summary or conclusion. In other words, the book is a complementary bricolage
of work rather than providing a series of learnings that interconnect to spark
debate, build into broader insights, or trigger new, topic-wide questions. In
fact, this is a common issue across these types of books. The volume is
intended as an overview and so evidently provides a representation of the
current state of affairs, but considering its differentiation from the other
volumes available in this topic space, and the vibrancy and future potential
of this research area, not looking forward and proposing future directions
feels like a wasted opportunity. 

Further, in regards to the cohesion of the chapters, there is one which some
may view as somewhat disjointed or disconnected from the rest. The volume is
dominated by research of language use (by individuals, groups, for different
audiences, in different modalities and contexts etc), yet Chapter 3 is
primarily concerned with language ideologies and attitudes. While language
ideologies and attitudes do figure in other chapters, the findings reported
there focus on how the presence of language ideologies and attitudes
influences or explains interactional behaviour. For example, in Chapter 13
Josh Iorio’s study found that different modes (speech and writing) triggered
different language ideologies and attitudes amongst the communication partners
and, equally, that this influenced interactional patterns (in other words, who
communicated with who and how often). Similarly, Lauren B. Collister’s
ethnography, reported in Chapter 14, found that gamers who were aware that
they didn’t conform to the assumed dominant identity of the World of Warcraft
world either did not use voice chat or consciously changed their speech when
using voice chat to avoid being ‘outed’. Chapter 3 does touch on language use
somewhat (how Scottish accents are represented through orthography) but this
is interpreted in relation to how this use signals the commenters’ stance
towards Scottish English.

Equally, others may welcome Chapter 3’s inclusion because of its use of video
data. To date, research into linguistics in CMC has been dominated by
investigations into written content, and where video is considered it is
usually in regard to the language content of the dialogue rather than the
speech itself. While there is less video data online relative to textual data,
the amount that video and speech data is currently researched when examining
language in CMC seems unbalanced, and so the inclusion of Cutler’s work avoids
the medium of video being continually overlooked.

To conclude, although it has its limitations, this edited volume is a welcome
and much needed addition to the growing collection of literature on
sociolinguistics in CMC. Most importantly, the deviation away from framing
technology as something predicted to always drastically influence or impact
language is exactly the rebalancing that this area of interest needs if we are
to move forward in our research.

REFERENCES

Androutsopoulos, J. (2014). Languaging when contexts collapse: Audience design
in social networking. Discourse, Context & Media 4-5. 62-73.

Herring, S., Stein, D., and Virtanen,T. eds., (2013). Pragmatics of
computer-mediated communication. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

Georgakopoulou, A. and Spilioti, T. eds., (2016). Routledge handbook of
language and digital communication. London/New York: Routledge.

Tannen, D. and Trester, A. M. eds., (2013). Discourse 2.0: Language and new
media. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Thurlow, C. and Mroczek, K. eds., (2011). Digital Discourse: Language in the
new media (Oxford studies in sociolinguistics). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Selina Jeanne Sutton is a 3rd year PhD student within the research group NorSC
(Northumbria Social Computing) based at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon
Tyne, UK. Her research interests lie at the intersection of digital technology
design and sociolinguistics. Her thesis will report on an exploration of
methods for conducting sociophonetic research in online, publicly shared video
data. She has also previously published work on emoji and voice user
interfaces, as well as on social media from perspectives other than
linguistic. She can be found on Twitter at @selinajsutton and
www.selinajsutton.com





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