Technology

• Paralinguistic signs


  Emoticons, asterisks etc. which mimic prosodic features, soften tone and convey emotions
• Vocative


  Addressing a particular participant during chat when there are multiple participants so interlocutors know what message is intended for who, helps to encourage a response
• Reactive token


  A response like 'yeah I know' and is a form of back channelling which shows shared understanding and helps offer opinion
• Punctuation and capitalisation


  Emphasises emotion and helps mimic prosodic features to make up for lack of face to face communication
• Reduplication


  Used to emphasise feeling and as a politeness strategy as to not sound blunt
• Self-correction


  A person correcting their own typing error to make sure they're understood
• Acronyms and abbreviations


  For shared understanding and used for brevity
• U instead of 'you'

  Is a letter homophone
• Phonetic spelling


  No need for spelling to be correct – primary function is brevity and speed
• Netspeak


  A hybrid of spoken and written forms, dependent on whether texts are produced in real time, like messages, or planned and edited, like emails and blogs
• Synchronous and asynchronous texts

  Synchronous (written in real time) or asynchronous (planned and organised), impacting spelling and structure
• It is difficult to convey tone in electronic communication
• Technology


  Can lead to cyber bullying
• Technology


  Can crash
• Some types of messages

  Can't be unsentimental
• Technology


  Can encourage spelling laziness through autocorrect
• Technology


  Is quick and easy
• Technology


  Can respond quickly in an emergency
• Technology


  Time differences don't matter
• Technology


  Can talk to anyone in the world
• Technology


  Creates social links
• Technology


  Leads to language diversity
• Technology


  Enables multiple communication
• Trolling


  Creation of malicious identities online by anonymous individuals
• Prosumers


  Individuals who consume and produce value, either for self-consumption or consumption by others, and can receive implicit or explicit incentives from organizations involved in the exchange
• People may speak clearer over the phone due to reduced sound quality
• Lack of visual contact in phone calls mean extra close attention to turn taking
• Identification routines are at the start of phone conversations
• Repair sequences may occur due to how contextual factors can cause disruptions to utterances
• Discourse structure of phone calls

  • Identification routines
  • Call validation routines
  • Phatic elements
  • Main issue
  • Closing sequence
  • Call termination routines
• Social-linguistic maxims


  Lie behind language choices in technology, e.g. need for speed and need to communicate non-verbal aspects, e.g. through emojis
• We often borrow from languages like Greek when describing new technology
• Metaphors from everyday life

  Used to discuss aspects of new technology, e.g. sleep, mouse – making it more understandable
• Our identities are being constantly constructed, consciously or unconsciously, every time we add new material online
• Internet communication might remove social stereotyping associated with language differences so people are less prejudiced
• Prescriptivists say we need the rules of English to communicate clearly
• All language changes and there is no way to stop this from happening
• Twitter


  Involves turn-taking, casual registers, written representation of pauses or noises we make in speech
• Conversion/verbing


  Where a word can change class due to the development of social media
• Twitter's character limit has caused abbreviations, use of symbols and hashtags