A2 Language Investigation Take 2

Introduction My investigation into how technology benefits, constrains and simulates everyday conversations will use Language and Technology theories to certify my hypotheses. I aim to specifically analyse the language used on the social networking site Twitter. Due to Twitter being such a modern and revolutionary idea (Twitter was launched in 2006,) there has been limited research into the language involved on the micro-blogging site. Current popular examples of linguists studying Twitter at this very moment involve linguist David Crystal and Ruth Page. These theorists have indentified characteristic Twitterisms: features idiomatic to the website, such as hashtagging, retweets and the ability to favourite tweets as well. I aim to confirm the use of these characteristics and to highlight other specific features used on contemporary Twitter. I use the expression contemporary Twitter because its clear to see that the language on Twitter is ever-changing and the language used today has evolved considerably since Twitters inception in 2006. This would have been my investigation, but its almost impossible to access older tweets on an everyday computer as the task requires going back page by page on a subjects (or Tweeps) Twitter page (potentially hundreds of pages to access the Tweets from 2006.) Even then, theres no guarantee that they were actively Tweeting in the first few years of Twitter. So, a more realistic investigation is to compare modern tweets, demonstrating the characteristics of Twitter nowadays, rather much life the popular linguists. I will analyse a variety of tweets sent within a short space of time, all based on the same topic, in this case the X Factor, as its a popular topic that normally received a high trending topic every weekend, as it easily instigates conversation and controversial opinions. By collating tweets all with a common topic of X factor (as Twitter has an easy search-engine like function which makes this easy to carry out,) it will be easier to collect the data quickly in order to eliminate the time factor that may occur. Hypothesis I hope to find conversations especially in my collection of data as these will be prime examples of how the use of technology is manipulating language (in everyday conversation,) whether in positive or negative ways. I also hope to find a variety of the idiomatic features I have mentioned above as well as the embedding of pictures, videos and hyperlinks. I will investigate the idea that Twitter is enabling richer interactions and is emerging as a leading way of communicating nowadays. Other external forces will obviously affect the language used on Twitter, rather much how it affects spoken language as well, in this type of limelight Twitter inadvertently boasts in the height of contemporary media and communication. I expect to find many pictures, videos and the idiomatic Twitterisms and which may be based around this idea of Twitter being a leading character of modern communication. I also hope to find abundant use of hashtagging, mentioning and language which is usual to find in text messages. I will then compare these features between a range of Tweeters and will try to discover a general consensus of how people use and communicate through Twitter. Methodology On weekend nights, I will search through tweets all with the common topic of X Factor by either clicking on the trending topic link or, if #xfactor is not actively trending, I will search via the search bar at the top of the page which will bring up an ever-updating list

of tweets all containing the phrase X Factor. I will collect the tweets all with a common topic because I wish to eliminate the variable of a differing topic as it may affect the contents of tweets and seeing as X Factor is a popular programme, there should be a wide variety of the idiomatic features of twitter to be found. I will collect a range of tweets each weekend from different tweeters each demonstrating idiolect, an interesting topic to discover. This can be done in two ways through the search engine as there are two options of discovery: Top Tweets or Most Recent. I will click the most recent option as the top tweets tend to just feature tweets by famous people, companies promoting products and advertising by Twitter. The most recent option includes every other tweet and is where I am most likely to find the desired idiomatic features. However, in the case of conversation collecting, I will obviously track the conversation between two or more tweeps as Twitter has the miraculous added feature of looking back through someones conversations as long as they have hit the reply button rather than starting a new conversation by just imputing their friends username in the tweet composition window. I will pick the tweets at random as I believe this will give an unbiased, general view of average tweeting and so whether I stumble across a conversation or the idiomatic features I expect to find is down to luck.