The use of shortcuts and abbreviations in everyday communications, both online and through texts, has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Shortcuts like ’lol’ for ’laugh out loud’ aim to provide emotional nuance and context that would otherwise be lost in standard written communication. However, studies have shown that there is a processing cost associated with using these shortcuts (Perea, Acha, & Carreiras, 2009; Ganushchak, Krott, Frisson, & Meyer, 2013). Other studies have found that texting shortcuts are lexically independent units: they are represented and stored in the brain independently of their full, standard form (Ganushchak, Krott, & Meyer, 2010; 2012; Tat & Azuma, 2015). The current study examines the effect of newer, more diverse shortcuts on processing and Working Memory (WM) capacity through two experiments. It was hypothesised that reading shortcuts would lead to an increased processing cost and poorer recall. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that this processing cost and poorer recall would depend on the type of shortcut. Phrasal shortcuts (e.g. ’brb’ for ’be right back’) would be more difficult to read and would lead to poorer recall compared to contractions and clippings (e.g. ‘txt’ for ‘text’). In Experiment 1, the processing cost of reading shortcuts was explored through a self-paced reading task, with results supporting our hypotheses. In Experiment 2, participants read sentences which contained memory words to be remembered for recall at the end of a trial, with the number of correct items recalled used as a gauge of working memory capacity and processing efficiency (Service & Maury, 2014; Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). Results were mixed, with no clear effect of the presence of a shortcut or shortcut type modulating recall. Implications of these results are discussed with regard to reading and the direction of language evolution. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / The use of shortcuts and abbreviations in everyday communications, both online and through texts, has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Shortcuts like 'lol' for 'laugh out loud' aim to provide emotional nuance and context that would otherwise be lost in standard written communication. These shortcuts are more difficult to read than standard English, however (Perea, Acha, & Carreiras, 2009; Ganushchak, Krott, Frisson, & Meyer, 2013). The current study examines the effect of newer, more diverse shortcuts on reading and memory recall through two experiments. We hypothesise that sentences with shortcuts are more difficult to read than sentences without shortcuts, and will result in poorer recall. Results of this study are mixed; Experiment 1 indicates shortcuts to be more difficult to read, whereas Experiment 2 shows a limited effect of shortcuts on recall. This has implications on how the perception of shortcuts in everyday use may be changing.

The fall of the Eastern Block, the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and the subsequent enlargement of the European Union to include former socialist countries contributed to an increase in the movement of people from Eastern to Western Europe which began about a decade earlier. Among them, the Roma are probably the most clearly recognizable group and surely the ones that received, and keep receiving, more media attention. While their presence in the media as subjects of discussion is a topic worth analyzing, the present work is about their presence in a particular medium, the Internet, as actors and producers of content. As a population of Indian origin spread across Europe over the past five centuries, Roma have often been regarded as a diaspora. Ethnographic studies about diasporas and their usage of the Internet have often described diasporic websites as discoursive spaces in which new, hydrid identities are negotiated and stereotyping and marginalizing discourses about diasporic subjects are challenged. The role of languages in these websites, however, has often been neglected. On the other hand, sociolinguistic studies have highlighted how the Internet provides a space for vernacular language usage in which the relaxation of language norms and users’ creativity play a crucial role in overcoming the limitations in text transmission imposed by the medium. A partial bridge between these two trends of studies has been provided by the analysis of code-switching in diasporic websites, which has shown how meaningful language alternation is used to flag users’ hybrid identities. The study of the relationship between diasporic languages and identities on the Internet clearly appears to be in its infancy and only few case studies have looked at the interactions between each diaspora’s specific cultural and sociolinguistic settings and the usage of the Internet. Furthermore, many diasporas, including the Roma, speak unwritten languages which have not been or are just starting to be standardized. Processes of language standardization have always involved both identity and language policies and have often been pivotal in struggles for nationhood or minority rights recognition. While so far such processes tended to be mostly centralized and top-down, the Internet is offering a space for the spontaneous transition from orality to literacy. Thus, analyzing the interaction between diasporic, non-standardized languages and the identities of their speakers as manifested on the Internet can provide new insights into the relations between diasporic languages and identities and into language standardization processes. The present work investigates these issues by analyzing the on-line usage of Romani, the Indic language spoken by many Roma. The study draws on data collected through an online ethnography from Radio Romani Mahala, a website created and used by the recently dispersed community of the Mitrovica Roma. The data are analyzed both qualitatively, using discourse analytic methods, and quantitatively, using traditional sociolinguistic approaches. Combining such approaches allows drawing a nuanced picture of the phenomena under observation accounting both for micro level, individual patterns of usage and macro level trends shared by all users involved. Particular attention is also paid to the emerging Romani spelling and the role played by individual users in the establishment of shared writing norms. The interdisciplinarity of this approach will show how the interplay between diasporic identities and attitudes, non-standard language ideologies and the possibilities offered by the Internet is leading to effective language codification without the intervention of a central authority and outside the frame of any nation-state policy. Such findings call for a re-thinking of current notions on linguistic human rights. Based on the viability of the Romani model, I thus propose a theory of linguistic pluralism in trans-national contexts centred around the notion of cosmopolitan sociabilities, non-utilitarian, everyday interactions creating open and inclusive relations across and even despite perceived cultural divides.

When the emoticon was created in 1980s, many commentators have even described this creation as futile effort for improving internet communication efficiency. Even in the famous “language and the internet” (Crystal, 2001), the finder of internet linguistic, David Crystal argues that emoticons at the time “are a potentially helpful but extremely crude way of capturing some of the basic features of facial expression, but their semantic role is limited.” Nevertheless, after two decades have passed, emoticon not only survived but turned into an irreplaceable linguistic aspect in the internet language. During its evolution process, emoticon was also transmuted into different forms for accommodating specialties in different language input systems. Among all sorts of emoticons which were evolved this way, Chinese emoticons represent many unique characterizations due to the hieroglyphic aspect of Chinese characters, special sound-meaning-form relationship and peculiar input method. This thesis will explore the background and linguistic functions of emoticons, investigate how those special characterizations distinguish Chinese emoticons from others; analyze how Chinese emoticons to fulfill those missing communication properties in Chinese internet language and syntax; discuss the linguistic effects of those Chinese characters which are picked as emoticon, such as the dual effect toward the meaning of character and real life oral communication; and summarizing Chinese emoticon as a linguistic defined subgroup of emoticon.

<p>The aim of this study is to examine the language from a small sample of texts from the chat channels of World of Warcraft and analyze the differences found between World of Warcraft English and Standard English. In addition, the studywill compare the language found in World of Warcraft with language found on other parts of the Internet, especially chatgroups. Based on 1045 recorded chat messages, this study examines the use of abbreviations, emoticons, vocabulary, capitalization, spelling, multiple letter use and the use of rare characters. The results of the investigation show that the language of World of Warcraft differs from Standard English on several aspects, primarily in the use of abbreviations. This is supported by secondary sources. The results also show that the use of language is probably not based on the desire to deliver a message quickly, but rather to reach out to people. In addition, the results show that the language found in World of Warcraft is more advanced than a simple effort to try to imitate speech, thereby performing more than written speech.</p>

The present study examines typical features of internet language found in user-generated comments collected from commenting groups from four online magazines aimed at different readerships: (1) adult women (Working Mother and Mothering), (2) adult men (Esquire), (3) young women (Seventeen) and (4) young men (Gameinformer). Approximately 5,000 words from each commenting group were collected, creating a 21,087 word corpus which was analyzed with regard to typographic (emoticons, nonstandard typography of and, personal pronouns you and I) and orthographic features (abbreviations, acronyms) as well as syntactic and stylistic features resembling spoken language (contracted forms, ellipsis of subject and/or verb and commenting tone). The results show that adult men wrote the longest comments, followed by adult women, young men and young women in descending order. Furthermore, as for the typical features regarding typography and orthography, it was found that among the four commenting groups, adult men and adult women used them very sparsely, young men used them occasionally and young women used the features most frequently. The analysis of tone showed that adult men mostly used an aggressive or neutral tone, while adult women, young women and young men mostly used a friendly or neutral tone. Young women used an aggressive tone more often than adult women and young men. Moreover, regarding the syntactic and stylistic features, results revealed that the young men were the most frequent users of ellipsis of subject and/or verb, followed by adult women, young women and adult men. Contracted forms were used extensively in the potential places of contractions, regardless of commenting group. Since young men used the ellipsis of subject and/or verb most frequently of all commenting groups and also used the contracted forms in all potential places of contractions, the conclusion is that the young men used a style that is closer to spoken English than the three other commenting groups. / Den här studien undersöker språkdrag som är typiska för språk på internet. Det material som har undersöks har hämtats från användarkommentarer i nättidningar som är riktade till fyra olika läsargrupper: (1) kvinnor (Working Mother, Mothering), (2) män (Esquire), (3) unga kvinnor (Seventeen) och (4) unga män (Gameinformer). Cirka 5 000 ord hämtades från kommentarsfälten för varje tidning, vilket resulterade i en korpus som omfattade 21 087 ord totalt. Korpusen analyserades med hänsyn till typografiska språkdrag (smileys, ickestandardiserad stavning av personliga pronomen I och you samt and) och ortografiska språkdrag (förkortningar, akronymer) samt syntaktiska och stilistiska språkdrag som påminner om talspråk (sammandragningar, ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb, tonläge). Resultaten visade att män skrev de längsta kommentarerna, följda av kvinnor, unga män och unga kvinnor i fallande ordning. Vad gäller typiska typografiska och ortografiska språkdrag visar resultatet att de återfanns mycket sparsamt i kvinnornas och männens data, att de återfanns då och då i de unga männens data och att de unga kvinnorna var de som använde dessa språkdrag mest frekvent. Analys av tonläge i användarkommentarerna visade att män oftast använde en aggressiv eller neutral ton, medan kvinnor, unga kvinnor och unga män oftast använde en vänskaplig eller neutral ton. Unga kvinnor använde en aggressiv ton oftare än kvinnor och unga män. Utöver detta visade resultatet att ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb var mest frekvent i de unga männens användarkommentarer, följt av kvinnornas, de unga kvinnornas och männens. Sammandragna former användes näst intill undantagslöst i hela korpusen. Eftersom pojkarna uppvisade mest frekvent användning av ellips av subjekt och/eller predikatsverb samt använde sammandragna former i full utsträckning, kan slutsatsen dras att de unga männens syntax är mer påverkad av engelskt talspråk än syntaxen hos de tre andra kommenterande grupperna.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:25:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3798.pdf: 1711810 bytes, checksum: 2925b31a1fc2068bf34806bed42c6cca (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-25 / It is possible that the written language is influenced by words and/or expressions as well as graphic or semiotic elements, which are present in interactions in virtual environments (relationship sites, instant chats, e-mails, etc). As school is the privileged place for the acquisition and improvement of the written language, this dissertation aims at observing how the internet can interfere in texts produced by students. Based on a previously collected corpus, this research has as its mains objectives: 1) describe the lexicon used by elementary school students from two schools around São Carlos (SP), observing more frequent words and/or expressions, as well as the least current ones but which reveal a rich semantic content; 2) analyse the interference of internet language in the students´ written production; 3) suggest proposals for class work, considering the influence of communication in virtual environments (the internet). The corpus contains 300 compositions and was created as follows: each student (11 to 15 years old) of a private and a public elementary schools was asked to write two compositions. These should be of two different textual genres, which were chosen according to the research interest: a letter and an essay. It is believed that these 300 texts, although they constitute only a sample, can be very representative, since they represent public and private students and also treat two different textual genres. The corpus, collected between October and November 2006, was typed in .txt (Notepad) format, in a way it could be accessible for manipulation by automatic textual processors. Typing followed previously determined transcription patterns in a way it could preserve the texts particularities as standard language deviations, drawings, abbreviations and symbols occurrence. After that, all the corpus manipulation was carried out with the help of Word Smith Tools and Unitex. Regarding the theoretical aspects, this research is based on the concept of discursive genre from Bakhtin, and concerning the methodological ones, the compilation and corpus analyses proceedings suggested by Corpus Linguistics were followed. / É possível que haja influência na língua escrita de palavras e/ou expressões bem como de elementos gráficos e/ou semióticos próprios de interações em ambientes virtuais (sites de relacionamento, bate-papos instantâneos, e-mails, etc.). Como a escola é o local privilegiado para a aquisição e aprimoramento da língua escrita, procurou-se observar em textos produzidos por alunos, como se dá essa interferência da internet. Baseada em um corpus previamente coletado, esta pesquisa tem por objetivos: 1) descrever uma amostra do vocabulário empregado pelos alunos do ensino fundamental de duas escolas da região de São Carlos (SP), observando palavras e/ou expressões mais frequentes, bem como aquelas pouco ocorrentes, mas que podem revelar um rico conteúdo semântico; 2) analisar a interferência da linguagem utilizada na internet nas produções textuais dos alunos; 3) sugerir propostas para se trabalhar em sala de aula, considerando a influência da comunicação em ambientes virtuais (na internet). O corpus, contendo 300 redações, foi constituído da seguinte maneira: aplicaram-se duas redações para cada aluno de duas escolas de ensino fundamental (5ª a 7ª séries faixa etária de 11 a 15 anos), sendo uma particular e outra pública, ambas da região de São Carlos (SP). Propuseram-se redações pertencentes a dois gêneros textuais diferentes, os quais foram delimitados de acordo com o interesse da pesquisa: uma carta e uma dissertação. Acredita-se que esses 300 textos, embora constituam apenas uma amostra, são bastante representativos, pois além de retratar dois gêneros textuais distintos, contemplam também dois públicos diferenciados, já que se trata de uma escola pública e outra particular. O corpus, recolhido entre os meses de outubro e novembro de 2006, foi todo digitado em formato .txt (Bloco de Notas), de maneira que fosse acessível à manipulação pelos processadores automáticos de textos. A digitação obedeceu a determinados padrões de transcrição, de forma a preservar as particularidades dos textos, como desvios da norma culta, ocorrência de desenhos, abreviações, símbolos, etc. A partir de então, toda a manipulação do corpus foi feita com os programas Word Smith Tools e Unitex. No que diz respeito aos aspectos teóricos, esta pesquisa se embasa no conceito de gênero discursivo de Bakhtin, e no que se refere aos aspectos metodológicos, segue os procedimentos de compilação e análise de corpus sugeridos pela Linguística de Corpus.

This essay examines anglicisms from a translation perspective. The material consists of two German articles on Internet business and social media and their respective translations into Swedish. The overall aim is to examine different methods and strategies for deciding whether to substitute a particular anglicism by an equivalent Swedish word or whether to transfer it into the Swedish target text. The chosen method for investigating the occurrence of, and attitudes towards, particular anglicisms in Swedish was parallel text comparison and interviews. Following Göran Inghult’s theories on transference types, as well as examining the structural and cultural obstacles to adopting anglicisms into Swedish, the material is analysed from a linguistic and cultural point of view. The essay shows that Swedish texts show less evident anglicisms than the German ones. Cultural obstacles, such as attitudes towards anglicisms, and linguistic obstacles, such as the Swedish suffixation of nouns in the definite form, are central to the assumption that translators should pay special attention to anglicisms when translating from German to Swedish.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ZELI MIRANDA GUTIERREZ GONZALEZ.pdf: 1268917 bytes, checksum: 3a704528461b06f74cb2b2e71d8fdcf1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-11-05 / The study presented was motivated by the needs of comprehend the changes in the ortography of the Internet language, such as identify those changes frequency. The main aim of this study was to focus on the usage of a Corpus Linguistics approach for identification of frequent words most used in the studies corpus, such as frequences of changes in the ortography and the lexican gramathical standards of the internet language. There is a great range of studies on the internet language; however, very few of them has demontrated empirically how frequent changes are. Therefore, this study has tried to fill this gap by being able to show empirically the changes. The main theoretical underpinning for the research is provided by Corpus Linguistics, assuming the main notions presented by Biber (1998), Berber Sardinha (2004, 2006), Sinclair (1991,1996). For focusing the use frequency of lexican items it was considered, more specificly, the studies of Berber Sardinha (2000a, 2000b, 2004), Halliday (1991, 1992, 1993). Besides the Corpus Linguistics, the project also mentioned in questions such as: linguisctics diversity, genre, registry and internet language ortography along the perspective of Possenti (2006), Mollica (2007), Thurlow and Brown (2007), Crystal (2001), Othero, (2004). The corpus employed in the study was collected of young people s blogs that use internet for comunication. This corpus contains 135.021 tokes and 15.552 types. For the development of this research and of the analysis of the lexican items it was considered all the 500 most used words in the corpus studies. The frequences were used as base for decription of changes happened in the variant linguistics ortography the internet language. Among the most frequent items in the corpus was selected the td item with the sense of all, every, everything ( tudo, todo, toda, todas e todos in portuguese), with the objective of verify the standards lexican-gramathical, contributed for the respective senses. To sum up, this study hopes it has contributed to the study of the internet language, since there are few studies that have demosntrated empirically how these changes occur. This work also presentes the research limitations and its possible applications in the future / O trabalho que ora se apresenta foi motivado pela necessidade de compreender as modificações na grafia do internetês, bem como identificar a freqüência dessas modificações. Esse trabalho teve como objetivo principal utilizar uma abordagem baseada em Lingüística de Corpus na identificação das palavras mais freqüentes do internetês, das freqüências de modificações na grafia e os padrões léxico gramaticais. Há vários trabalhos que lidam com a questão do internetês; entretanto, nenhum deles demonstrou empiricamente quão freqüente as modificações ocorrem. Sendo assim, esse trabalho buscou preencher essa lacuna, sendo, portanto, capaz de demonstrar empiricamente a extensão dessas modificações. Para tanto, encontrou suporte teórico na Lingüística de Corpus, adotando as principais noções apresentadas por Biber (1998), Berber Sardinha (2004, 2006), Sinclair (1991,1996). Por enfocar as freqüências de uso de itens lexicais consideraram-se, mais especificamente, os trabalhos de Berber Sardinha (2000a, 2000b, 2004), Halliday (1991, 1992, 1993). Além da Lingüística de Corpus, o projeto também tocou em questões como: variedades lingüísticas, gênero, registro e grafia internáutica sob a perspectiva de Possenti (2006), Mollica (2007), Thurlow and Brown (2007), Crystal (2001), Othero (2004). O corpus empregado na pesquisa foi coletado em blogs de jovens que utilizam a internet para comunicação. O corpus contém 135.021palavras e 15.552 formas. Para as análises dos itens lexicais consideraram-se as 500 palavras mais freqüentes do corpus de estudo. As freqüências detectadas serviram como base para a descrição das modificações ocorridas na grafia da variante lingüística o internetês. Entre os itens mais freqüentes do corpus, selecionou-se o item td com sentido de tudo, toda, todo, todos, todas, com a finalidade de verificar se os padrões léxicogramaticais contribuíam para os respectivos sentidos. Por conseguinte, a pesquisa pretende ter contribuído para o estudo do internetês, uma vez que há poucos trabalhos que demonstrem, de maneira empírica, essas modificações. O trabalho ainda apresenta as limitações da pesquisa e aponta sugestões para futuros estudos

The thesis deals with manifestations of lexical dynamics in the language of Internet discussion forums. The chosen communication sphere is typical for its creativity and spontaneity, respectively active exchange of lexical means and the effort for fresh expressions. For these reasons, the language of discussion forums on the Internet is a suitable material basis for the confrontational description of lexical innovations in contemporary Bulgarian and contemporary Czech. The theoretical part of the thesis defines the notion of neologism and the terms connected with it, as well as the specific features of Internet communication. In the practical part, a structural and semantic analysis of Czech and Bulgarian neologisms is carried out, and considering that a large part of the new lexicon used in the discussion forums is borrowed mainly from English, more attention is paid to the interpretation of the meaning of these loanwords and the ways of their adaptation in Czech and in Bulgarian.

The aim of this study is to examine the language from a small sample of texts from the chat channels of World of Warcraft and analyze the differences found between World of Warcraft English and Standard English. In addition, the studywill compare the language found in World of Warcraft with language found on other parts of the Internet, especially chatgroups. Based on 1045 recorded chat messages, this study examines the use of abbreviations, emoticons, vocabulary, capitalization, spelling, multiple letter use and the use of rare characters. The results of the investigation show that the language of World of Warcraft differs from Standard English on several aspects, primarily in the use of abbreviations. This is supported by secondary sources. The results also show that the use of language is probably not based on the desire to deliver a message quickly, but rather to reach out to people. In addition, the results show that the language found in World of Warcraft is more advanced than a simple effort to try to imitate speech, thereby performing more than written speech.