Letters 2.0? Linguistic insights into the extent to which social media are a substitute for personal letters.

Transcription

1 Letters 2.0? Linguistic insights into the extent to which social media are a substitute for personal letters. Alan Scott University of Nottingham What is a letter? An interdisciplinary approach. Oxford, 2 July 2014

2 Structure of talk 1. Introduction: Communication in social networks letters social media research questions 2. Methodology variables sources 3. Findings letter-like characteristics of 3 types of social media 4. Conclusions

3 1. Introduction: Communication in social networks

4 Egodocuments egodocument: text in which an author writes about his or her own acts, thoughts and feelings (Dekker 2002: 14)

5 Letters texts that at some point in their histories are meant to pass in accordance with some postal arrangement from an addresser to an addressee, and that in some way inscribe the process by which an author personally addresses a specific readership. Addresser and addressee need not be singular;; [ ] letters are written in collaboration to addressees who often collaborate as readers. (Decker 1998: 22)

6 Letters texts that at some point in their histories are meant to pass in accordance with some postal arrangement from an addresser to an addressee, and that in some way inscribe the process by which an author personally addresses a specific readership. Addresser and addressee need not be singular;; [ ] letters are written in collaboration to addressees who often collaborate as readers. (Decker 1998: 22) The writer is present in the letter, often through the use of the word I [ ]. There is usually a specific reader, or readers in mind and they are invoked in the salutation and in the use of you. (Barton & Hall 2000: 6)

7 Pragmatic characteristics of letters arise from a Mitteilungsbedürfnis (Schmid 1988: 6) social network (Jancke 1996: 73) limited audience (but not necessarily one-to-one): letter as Mitteilung für einen einzelnen (bzw. eine begrenzte Zahl von Empfängern wie bei Rundbriefen) (Schmid 1988: 6) privacy and intimacy of personal correspondence (Decker 1998: 6)

8 Pragmatic characteristics of letters arise from a Mitteilungsbedürfnis (Schmid 1988: 6) social network (Jancke 1996: 73) limited audience (but not necessarily one-to-one): letter as Mitteilung für einen einzelnen (bzw. eine begrenzte Zahl von Empfängern wie bei Rundbriefen) (Schmid 1988: 6) privacy and intimacy of personal correspondence (Decker 1998: 6) dialogic nature: dialogicity and conveying shared experience; focus on the first person (Barton & Hall 2000: 6) letters as dialogue (Hall et al. 2000: 141, 148) intertextuality: the relationship between a text and other texts (Tanskanen 2007: 76)

9 Linguistic characteristics of letters (and other types of egodocument) vernacular literacy (Barton 2010, passim) conceptual orality: dialectal elements (lexis, morpho-syntax, pronunciation) influence of colloquial spoken language (Russ 1998, passim; Elspaß 2002: 46)

10 Linguistic characteristics of letters (and other types of egodocument) vernacular literacy (Barton 2010, passim) conceptual orality: dialectal elements (lexis, morpho-syntax, pronunciation) influence of colloquial spoken language (Russ 1998, passim; Elspaß 2002: 46) not necessarily norm-conformant, but may reflect writers schooling and familiarity with the norm (Pounder 2007: 286; van der Wal 2007: 94-95) structure and certain stock gestures: dating, salutation, and complimentary close (Decker 1998: 22; see also Schmid 1988: 3)

11 Social media & Web 2.0 Web 2.0: web as platform : a place where users could carry out tasks and run applications (Anderson 2012: 7) a group of services that [ ] facilitate a more socially connected Web where everyone is able to add to and edit the information space (Anderson 2012: 10-11) Social media: while some use the term quite narrowly to describe person-toperson relations on social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, others use the term to signal socialization aspects of Web 2.0 sites in general (Hunsinger & Senft 2013: 1) web sites and applications which enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking (OED Online)

12 Social media as a substitute for conversation geschriebene Mündlichkeit written orality (Kilian 2010 [2001]) ein getipptes Gespräch a typed conversation (Storrer 2001: 462) inszenierte Mündlichkeit staged orality (Diekmannshenke 2007: 220) writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech (Crystal 2011: 21)

13 Social media as a substitute for conversation geschriebene Mündlichkeit written orality (Kilian 2010 [2001]) ein getipptes Gespräch a typed conversation (Storrer 2001: 462) inszenierte Mündlichkeit staged orality (Diekmannshenke 2007: 220) writing which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech (Crystal 2011: 21) for letters as Briefkultur im 21. Jahrhundert (Kilian 2010 [2001]: 73; see also Barton & Hall 2000: 1) digital communication assumes roles previously fulfilled by letters (not necessarily a new stage in letter writing ) (Yates 2000: )

14 Research questions Are Electronic Mail and CMC simply new versions of established media such as letters? Are Electronic Mail and CMC new media with their own forms distinct from letters and other media? (Yates 2000: 234) Is an SMS text simply a new form of letter writing? (Haggis & Holmes 2011: 170)

15 Research questions Are Electronic Mail and CMC simply new versions of established media such as letters? Are Electronic Mail and CMC new media with their own forms distinct from letters and other media? (Yates 2000: 234) Is an SMS text simply a new form of letter writing? (Haggis & Holmes 2011: 170) To what extent and how are social media a substitute for personal letters? Do social media offer novel functions which are absent from traditional letters? Which social media most resemble letters, and which do not?

16 2. Methodology

17 Bergs (2007): Text typology of Middle English letters texts may be classified as belonging simultaneously to two interrelated categories : 1. surface / super text type: letter 2. socio-pragmatic subtypes : order, request, report, phatic (Bergs 2007: 27) socio-pragmatic subtypes tested using two linguistic variables: associations of a particular variant with a particular letter subtype? (Bergs 2007: 37ff.) 1. personal pronouns: hem & here vs. them & their 2. relativisation patterns, esp. involving who, whose, whom

18 Variables (features known to characterise canonical letters) 1. structure (salutation text closing) (Decker 1998; Schmid 1988) 2. 1 st person focus (Russ 1998; Dekker 2002) 3. intertextuality (Tanskanen 2007) 4. conceptual orality (including divergences from the norm, economical constructions) (Russ 1998; Elspaß 2002; Barton 2010)

19 Sources Twitter a microblogging platform #urlaub 200 tweets; 4,189 words of text (av words per tweet)

20 Sources Twitter a microblogging platform #urlaub 200 tweets; 4,189 words of text (av words per tweet) campen.de a special interest discussion forum thread: Urlaub was plant ihr? 66 posts; 4,158 words of text (av. 63 words per post)

21 Sources Twitter a microblogging platform #urlaub 200 tweets; 4,189 words of text (av words per tweet) campen.de a special interest discussion forum thread: Urlaub was plant ihr? 66 posts; 4,158 words of text (av. 63 words per post) amazon.de customer comments reviews of Elmex products 42 posts; 4,117 words of text (av. 98 words per post; much variation in length)

22 Twitter a microblogging platform #urlaub Sources 200 tweets; 4,189 words of text (av words per tweet) campen.de a special interest discussion forum thread: Urlaub was plant ihr? 66 posts; 4,158 words of text (av. 63 words per post) amazon.de customer comments reviews of Elmex products Ethical considerations: publicly accessible sources no login required 42 posts; 4,117 words of text (av. 98 words per post; much variation in length)

23 Text linguistics (Brinker 2010) analysis of language at the level of the text (medially written or oral), not the sentence criteria for classifying everyday text types: communication situation e.g. face-to-face conversation, telephone conversation, letter, radio programme, TV programme text function e.g. instructions, guidance, commentary, news, vow text content e.g. weather/travel/sports report, marriage document, recipe, doctor s prescription

24 3. Findings

25 Variable 1. Structure 100% 90% 80% 27 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% text only 0 - text - closing salutation - text - 0 salutation - text - closing 20% 10% 0% Twitter campen.de amazon.de

26 Twitter: (almost) letter structure

27 campen.de: 1 st post in thread

28 salutation + text (n = 15): salutation + text + closing (n = 17):

29 text + closing (n = 7): text only (n = 27):

30 amazon.de: (almost) letter structure

31 Variable 2. 1 st person focus 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Twitter campen.de amazon.de no 1st person focus 1st person focus

32 Twitter: 1 st person focus

33 campen.de: 1 st person focus

34 campen.de: no 1 st person focus

35 amazon.de

36 amazon.de

37 Variable 3. Intertextuality types of intertextuality observed: canonical hyperlinks hashtag hyperlinks explicit reference to previous stages in the communication (earlier posts/ reviews/ tweets) references to shared experience (e.g. product, place, etc.)

38 Twitter 86 only hashtags 114 hyperlinks and hashtags

39 Twitter 86 only hashtags 114 hyperlinks and hashtags

40 campen.de 16 2 quotes an earlier post hyperlink (to an external site) no hyperlinks 51

41

42

43 amazon.de reference to the product under review occasional reference to other reviews hyperlinks: automatically-inserted hyperlinks no hyperlinks inserted by the writers

44 Variable 4. Conceptual orality Twitter campen.de amazon.de regionalisms "phonetic" spellings emoticons no. of tokens per 1,000 words

45 Regionalisms

46 Phonetic spellings

47 Emoticons

48 Summary of characteristics Variable Twitter campen.de amazon.de 1 letter structure very rare frequent (c. 60%) very rare 2 1 st person focus usually usually usually 3 intertextuality usually sometimes (c. 25%) no 4 conceptual orality yes yes rare letter function yes, but faster yes, although in a conversational context no

49 Summary of characteristics Variable Twitter campen.de amazon.de 1 letter structure very rare frequent (c. 60%) very rare 2 1 st person focus usually usually usually 3 intertextuality usually sometimes (c. 25%) no 4 conceptual orality yes yes rare letter function yes, but faster yes, although in a conversational context no

50 4. Conclusions

51 Research questions (1) Which social media most resemble letters, and which do not? forums have many epistolary characteristics (& are also conversational) customer comments have few epistolary characteristics microblogging exhibits some epistolary characteristics

52 Research questions (1) Which social media most resemble letters, and which do not? forums have many epistolary characteristics (& are also conversational) customer comments have few epistolary characteristics microblogging exhibits some epistolary characteristics Do social media offer novel functions which are absent from traditional letters? emoticons hyperlinks instantly readable by recipient

53 Research questions (2) To what extent and how are social media a substitute for personal letters? communication situation: microblogging yes forums (more like a group discussion), customer comments no text function microblogging, forums yes customer comments no text content microblogging, forums yes customer comments no

54 Social media as Letters 2.0? letters, microblogging, forums and customer comments are all social media all three types of computer-mediated social media investigated exhibit some functional, structural and linguistic characteristics of canonical personal letters all three types of social media investigated offer possibilities beyond those of canonical letters no completely novel characteristics of social media; just new ways of doing old things social media as letters 2.0

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57 Thank you for your attention