Emerging Netspeak Word Choices in Social Media on Filipino Pop Culture

Camille Monderin,Mildred B Go

doi:10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.6.7

Camille Monderin, Mildred B Go

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.6.7

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Abstract

The emergence of the Internet gave birth to a new form of language that is unique to the users of the network. Netspeak is the language of the Internet and has adapted the features of both speaking and writing, however, Netspeak has its own unique characteristics as well. This study aimed to find the emerging lexical patterns of Netspeak as used by Filipinos, the extent of use of Netspeak in three most popular social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) as well as various domains of pop culture (entertainment, politics, fashion and sports) and its implications to the language studies in the Philippines. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this study. The corpora of the study were gathered from two months’ worth of social media activities focusing on the comments in the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter of selected public figures. The findings showed that the emerging lexical patterns of Netspeak were abbreviations and homophones and that social media platforms and pop culture domains affect the use of Netspeak features. The platform and domain that got the highest extent of usage of Netspeak lexical features were Twitter and Politics respectively. The results of this study will help in understanding the language that is used in the Internet as well as raise awareness that this kind of language exists.

Highlights

IntroductionAs people communicate more frequently through the Internet, the language has adapted to the one that its users use
1 Language is constantly evolving and new stylistic variations of language as well as new forms of communication
The findings showed that the emerging lexical patterns of Netspeak were abbreviations and homophones and that social media platforms and pop culture domains affect the use of Netspeak features

Summary

Introduction

As people communicate more frequently through the Internet, the language has adapted to the one that its users use. There were a few coined terms that could define and describe this language: “Netlish”, “Weblish”, “Internet language”, and “CMC” or “Computer-Mediated Communication” These terms, do not properly describe the language of the Internet and are not enough to define it. In order to properly describe the Internet language, Crystal coined the term “Netspeak” as an alternative to all the previously mentioned locutions. He stated that Netspeak is “succinct and functional enough” and clarified that speak includes both talking and writing and “that any speak suffix has a receptive element, including listening and reading” (Crystal, 2001). The present study subscribed to Crystal’s term and description and used “Netspeak” to describe Internet language

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