Some distributional patterns in the use of typed laughter-derived expressions on Twitter

Abstract

This paper is a large-scale quantitative examination of the conversational use of nine English Typed Laughter-Derived Expressions (TLDEs) on Twitter: haha, hehe, tehe, lol, lmao, lmfao, ▪ (Unicode: 1f602), ▪ (1f923), and ▪ (1f606). The paper aims to establish a quantitative groundwork capable of supporting future qualitative research attempting to answer questions about how and why TLDEs are used in digital conversation on various platforms and about how our use of TLDEs is related to our use of physical laughter in face-to-face exchanges.The analyses conducted examine various conversation distributional characteristics of TLDEs in Twitter conversations. One analysis examines the placement of TLDEs within tweets (initial, medial, final, alone), concluding that while all TLDEs are preferentially used in tweet-final position, this trend is much stronger for emoji forms than letter-based forms. Another analysis concluded that TLDEs are disproportionately found in tweets with high levels of hearer/reader ratification. Another found that initial-position TLDEs are more likely to be used in contexts which permit reference to a laughable in previous utterances than are medial- or final-position TLDEs. Finally, this study found that the offer/acceptance pattern of spoken laughter is weak to nonexistent in Twitter exchanges.