Abstract
AbstractAgainst the backdrop of the societal differentiation of literacy, the paper investigates spelling variation in digital written communication beyond the binary paradigm of standard and nonstandard. To this end, the paper proposes a formal classification of digital spelling variants and then focuses on the socio-communicative functions of these variants in usage. Theoretically grounded in the notions ofregisterandsocial indexicality, the paper discusses how spelling variants are metapragmatically ordered by social actors and deployed in text-messaging interactions in order to indicate interpretive context. To investigate these phenomena holistically, the paper furthermore presents a tripartite research framework that addresses digital writing regarding its I) structural variants, II) communicative practice, and III) reflexive awareness. Afterwards, this methodological approach is applied empirically. This is done based on a data set that includes samples of everyday literacy by 23 German adolescents: informal WhatsApp texting, on the one hand, formal school essays on the other. The exemplary analyses focus on phonostylistic spellings (e. g. elisions such as <ich hab> instead of <ich habe>) and graphostylistic spellings (e. g. graphemic substitutions such as <daß> instead of <dass>) in these WhatsApp interactions, reconstructing the metapragmatic status of standard orthography in digital writing. By combining structure-oriented, interactional, and ethnographic perspectives, the paper seeks a disciplinary dialogue by relating concepts of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology not only to research fields of media linguistics but also to research on writing systems.
Highlights
The role of writing and literacy has changed in the course of the digitization in everyday communication— at the level of individual writers, whose everyday life incorporates more literacy events than ever before, and by unfolding a catalytic effect on linguistics’ view of written language and its communicative and social variability
I have analyzed to what extent spelling variation can be observed as communicative practice in everyday digital interactions
Starting from a theoretical perspective on processes of pluralization in digital written communication, I discussed spelling variation in interaction through the analytical lens of social indexicality—a concept rooted in linguistic anthropology and interactional sociolinguistics
Summary
The role of writing and literacy has changed in the course of the digitization in everyday communication— at the level of individual writers, whose everyday life incorporates more literacy events than ever before, and by unfolding a catalytic effect on linguistics’ view of written language and its communicative and social variability. Various scholars have repeatedly pointed out how variational practices of spelling and writing systems take on social values calibrated by the metapragmatic awareness, language ideologies, and socio-cultural ordering of given communities—for example, with a focus on spelling (cf Androutsopoulos 2000; Jaffe et al 2012; Screti 2018; Cutler 2020), typography (cf Spitzmüller 2013; Järlehed 2015), heterographic and bi-scriptural practices (cf Angermeyer 2005; Neely and Palmer 2009; Spitzmüller 2007), and orthographic standardization (cf Johnson 2005; Romaine 2005; Donaldson 2017) In these studies, the research interest concerns how writing is and becomes the means of socio-communicative practices, and.
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