Non-standard Orthography Research Articles

Atypical Spellings in Cyberspace – Between Deviation and Creativity

Once technology enhanced the means of self-expression in multiple ways, Romanian speakers have developed an original manner of spelling in cyberspace. We therefore refer to “nonstandard orthography” as being any type of spelling which abolishes the actual rules imposed by the Orthographic, Orthoepic and Morhological Dictionary of Romanian (abbreviated as DOOM). The main function of unspecific spelling is the stylistic one, non-standard orthography having negative, deprecative meanings or hiding vulgar, indecent, slang terms. Our paper describes occurrent tendencies in cyberlanguage and exemplifies deviations as a possible means of (in)direct characterization of public political figures.

Ke Dise, Mi Arma? Dialectal Varieties in WhatsApp Digital Norm of Andalusian Adolescent Speakers

This article analyzes the written expression in WhatsApp-type instant messaging applications of Andalusian adolescents who are in the last years of compulsory education in Spain. It aims to establish the relationship between the most relevant characteristics of the digital norm used by Andalusian adolescents in their communications through WhatsApp and the dialectal characteristics of their variety of Spanish. Additionally, this study intends to determine whether the writing norm in instant messaging applications influences the standard orthography of Spanish in school texts. A quantitative methodology has been used, analyzing objective data and carrying out a systematic and structured information collection process. A descriptive research design was employed using textual content analysis. The results show that the dialectal linguistic identity of Andalusian adolescent speakers on WhatsApp is mainly identified with suprasegmental linguistic features such as intonation and rhythm. Textisms related to the loss of the intervocalic -d- stand out, as well as those which reproduce the different realizations of the phonemes /s/ and /ʝ/. These features characterize the norm used by adolescent Andalusian speakers and coincide with the features that distinguish their way of pronouncing Spanish. The results show that these textisms are not related to the standard orthography of Spanish and do not cause non-standard orthography.

The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic WorldFrom the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity

The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic WorldFrom the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity

Drum Ballads and Northern “Vernacular” in the Qing and Early Republic

Writing in general has largely been viewed as a force for cultural or social integration in China. How might writing in the Qing period reinforce regional identities? This article explores the use of regional vernacular in drum ballads (guci 鼓词) from North China: how ballads can or do use regional language, and how the use of regional language in the ballads ties to identity. It briefly considers how the use of nonstandard orthography in the ballads relates to specific book cultures (in manuscripts, woodblocks, or lithographs) by following the stories of Judge Liu and Judge Shi across drum ballads produced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Overall, genre plays a key role in the language choices in the ballads.

From new form to new entry: introduction to the special theme on loanwords and non-standard orthography

From new form to new entry: introduction to the special theme on loanwords and non-standard orthography

Portrayals of Stigmatized “Mountain English” in Southern Literature

This paper uses a comparative analysis of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance and James Still’s novel River of Earth to parse popular language ideologies concerning the Appalachian English dialect of ‘Mountain Speech.’ Deliverance portrays Appalachian natives as ignorant and violent, utilizing non-standard orthography to represent eye-dialect of Appalachian Speech; it feeds the story on stereotypes related to the popular stigmatized terms for Southerners as “Red-necks” and “hicks.” James Still’s River of Earth portrays Appalachian language and culture accurately as Still lived in Appalachia his whole life. Yet, despite these inaccuracies, Deliverance remains the more popular novel, even being turned into a movie in 1972. This paper proposes the theory that Dickey’s novel is more popular because his voice as a Southern writer lends credibility to popular stereotype, whereas Still’s combats stereotype with factual evidence garnered from his time amongst Mountain Folk.

Trascription in practice

Transcriptions of spoken data are a central element of much applied linguistic research, serving both as the basis for large-scale corpora used by multiple analysts, and as one of the primary ways in which spoken data is presented in scholarly work. This article applies a political and ideological perspective to the analysis of a specific aspect of transcriptional practice that is seldom given much attention: the use of nonstandard orthography. While orthographic choices are often treated as neutral, transparent or trivial dimensions of applied linguistics transcripts, a review of the literature shows that nonstandard orthographies covertly attribute sociolinguistic stigma to those they represent. It goes on to explore in detail the sociolinguistic and pragmatic information value of nonstandard orthography in transcriptions, considering issues of predictability, consistency, intertextuality, and audience and readers’ interpretive frameworks. The conclusions argue for recognition among applied linguists of the representational work done by nonstandard orthographies and hence, for very selective, principled and explicitly flagged uses of these spellings in academic corpora and transcripts.

Accessing Phonetic Variation in Spoken Language Corpora through Non-standard Orthography

Much of the sociolinguistic and stylistic variation which is of interest to linguists is phonetic in nature, but the access route to corpus data is typically via a textual transcription. This poses a significant problem for a researcher who wishes to access the original recordings of speech in order to analyse variation: how can they search for relevant data? Many transcription traditions allow for the representation of such variation through non-standard orthography, and such conventions should therefore allow access to data relevant to the study of variation. However, the specific conventions used vary between traditions (and indeed may not be applied consistently by individual transcribers). This then creates another problem where the researcher wishes to access data across an aggregated collection, which is a practical necessity given the relatively limited size of most corpora of spoken language. In this paper, we analyse the conventions used in two of the component collections in the Australian National Corpus, the Australian Radio Talkback Corpus and the Monash Corpus of Spoken English. On the basis of this analysis, we develop a fragment of an ontology which gives an explicit account of the phenomena related to non-standard pronunciation represented in the transcripts and which can therefore act as the basis for better searching of the collections and better access to relevant data for analysing sociolinguistic and stylistic variation.

Performing and Positioning Orthography in Peruvian CMC

Using positioning theory and notions of stylization and performance, we examine alternative orthographies posted in Spanish on a Peruvian radio station's website. These posts were reactions to a published photo of Peruvian indigenous congresswoman Hilaria Supa's orthographic errors in notes she took during a congressional meeting. Contrary to our original assumptions, we find that commenters who used Spanish CMC orthography were less likely to support Hilaria Supa's own Quechua-influenced orthography, while commenters using a hyper-normative Spanish orthography were more supportive of Supa. We discuss possible reasons for this contradiction, with findings that contribute to a growing body of literature on CMC in non-English speaking environments and suggest new beliefs regarding the use of nonstandard Spanish orthographies in asynchronous CMC environments.

Dictionaries and the Standardization of Spelling in Swahili

The paper discusses the role of the dictionary in standardizing the spelling of Swahili. The discussion begins by defining key terms in this paper: spelling and standardization of spelling. It surveys lexicons written in Swahili between 1811–1990 and records the efforts made to establish spelling conventions for Swahili words in Roman characters, pointing out variant spellings of words written by different authors. The paper focuses on the role played by different lexicons in setting orthography for Swahili words, viz. Steere (1870), Krapf (1882), Nettelbladt (1891), Madan (1903), Sacleux (1939), etc. It observes how the lexicons established norms for words of a language which was hitherto not written in Roman characters. It also shows how lexicons helped to standardize the spelling of words to its current form especially after a standard dialect had been selected, pointing out lexicons which exclusively recorded words of the standard language with minimal variants. Finally the paper emphasizes the significance of the dictionary to adhere to the standard orthography. Keywords: standardization of spelling; spelling conventions; standard orthography; swahili alphabet; dialectical variations; catchwords; phonetic transcriptions; standard language; spelling system; nonstandard orthography; standardization process; word-list; lexicon and dictionary

A Cell Phone in the Classroom: A Friend or a Foe?

Communication is getting increasingly mobile, with more than a third of the world's population using cellular phones. Recent statistics indicate that this proportion is much bigger among young people. Research has also registered significant predominance of short message exchange over other modes of interaction in youth culture, where e-mail is perceived as a tool for “old people,” while voice calls are reserved for communication with parents and other adults. Adapting to the changing world of mobile technology, many public institutions have welcomed the use of mobile phones for messaging, which is less disturbing than phone calls. However, schools, which are the principal abode of young people, are still struggling with this most common way of communication of their clients. While a growing number of schools across the world have worked cellular phones and text messaging into their curriculum, most of academia still bans phones from the classroom, if not the school campuses altogether. The factors, which account for persistent resistance to the phone presence in the academic context, are of two kinds: linguistic and pedagogic. From the linguistic point of view, SMS shorthand writing, or texting, is a unique language phenomenon, which shares many linguistic features with other types of digital communication, such as email, chat, instant messaging, forums, interaction via Twitter, Facebook, blogs and so on. The common features of electronic discourse include extremely diverse and developed abbreviation, use of emoticons, contracted syntax and frequent negligence of spelling, capitalization and punctuation rules. In this way, texters achieve extremely compressed writing, adapted to the financial and technological requirements of the medium. While some researchers and practitioners consider mastering of the medium a part of digital literacy required for the citizens of the new millennium, others perceive nonstandard orthography and grammar perpetuated in texting as a threat to traditional literacy. The concern of the opponents of texting is supported by sufficient evidence that texting is progressively penetrating into the academic production of students, which testifies to the lack of code-switching skills and the growing preference towards nonstandard language. From the pedagogic point of view, the attitude towards cell phones and texting is similarly ambiguous. On the one hand, research shows that with cell phones, youngsters are exposed to more reading and writing than ever before. Inclusion of texting in teaching practice increases motivation and makes learning more relevant to the needs and likes of students. Also, the evidence that non-native speakers increasingly borrow textisms testifies to a higher appropriation of the target language. On the other hand, many teachers view texting as disruptive for classroom atmosphere, as it leads to multitasking and certain inappropriate activities. Finally, spillover of texting into other modes of interaction may negatively affect communication and its participants. This presentation will look into the main issues of the evolving discussion around cell phones and texting in the academic context and analyze the most recent research on and practice of using mobile technology in the field of teaching foreign languages.

Entextualization, mediatization and authentication: orthographic choice in media transcripts

This article examines the way that sociolinguistic authority and authenticity are constituted in media-based entextualization practices, focusing specifically on patterns of orthographic choice made in transcriptions on the companion websites of two large-scale, professional media productions about linguistic variation: the BBC Voices project in the U.K and the American PBS series 'Do You Speak American?' Building on previous research that shows that nonstandard orthographies in transcripts stigmatize the speakers represented, the analysis examines the pattern of nonstandard orthographic depictions in these transcripts. The results show that while both expert and 'ordinary' speakers are depicted with nonstandard spellings, media subjects identified as dialect speakers are more often represented as being highly aligned with the nonstandard spellings used to record their speech. These nonstandard spellings contribute to their depiction as authentic speakers, but undermine their access to sources of sociolinguistic authority, including using unmarked, 'standard' language and maintaining control over elf-representations. These specific processes of media entextualization are linked to the contrast between expert/academic and lay knowledge and the 'authentic' voices that motivate these broadcasts and act as a media 'hook'. As this contrast is reproduced in oral, textual, and visual representations, it reinforces the divide between the authentic and the authoritative speaker.

Variability in transcription and the complexities of representation, authority and voice

This commentary addresses the complexities of representation in sociolinguistic transcripts, considering the meaning potentials of different representational choices at the level of both ideology and identity. It considers the kinds of authenticity and evidence that are indexed by simplified versus more detailed transcripts, suggesting that a simplified transcript may give more direct access to elements of the original speaker's voice. Second, it discusses the role of transcripts as scholarly texts, and questions their use as sociolinguistic records suitable for reinterpretation by scholars who do not have access to the original recordings. Third, it emphasizes that the use of non-standard orthographies is an unreliable source of data on sociolinguistic variation, because few authors use non-standard forms in consistent and principled ways. Fourth, it proposes that translations may take different forms depending on whether they are efforts to be `faithful' to `authentic' speech in the target versus the source language. Finally, it reflects on the act of transcription as part of professional practice and identity among linguists.

The discursive construction of identity in an Internet hip-hop community

In this paper, the Internet message board forum is proposed as an example of a community of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992) in which contributors exhibit common linguistic conventions and forms of participation. The emergence of individual identities in interaction is examined in the genre-specific context of hip-hop Internet message boards. A corpus analysis of message board postings clearly shows that contributors systematically exploit the spoken and written qualities of the language of message boards, the " third medium" (Crystal, 2001) to identify themselves linguistically. Linguistic conventions or practices reveal a tendency among contributors to discursively construction their identities via a "social positioning of self and other" (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005) as experts or non-experts in the hip-hop community. Contributors' identities as experts or simply in-group members are further corraborated or established by the codification not only of non-standard pronunciations and grammar characteristic of speech, but also of non-standard orthography, which demands a written forum to be appreciated, as it is neutralized and unremarkable in speech. Because of the written and spoken qualities of message board discourse, both the content and the form of postings can be manipulated to showcase familiarity with hip-hop discursive practices. Internet message boards therefore represent the ideal forum for discursively constructing a hip-hop identity.

The Construction of Away Messages: A Speech Act Analysis

Previous research suggests that ‘‘away messages’’ in instant messaging express informational and entertainment communicative goals while displaying a users’ identity. This study investigated the extent to which these communicative goals are reflected in the language structure of away messages, by examining the speech acts performed through the production of 483 away messages crafted by 44 participants. The messages were also analyzed for the use of non-standard orthography and humor. The results show that the messages were constructed primarily with assertives, followed by expressives and commissives, but rarely with directives, confirming that away messages tend to reflect both informational and entertainment goals. Non-standard orthography and humor were also common, although experienced participants used fewer non-standard forms than less experienced participants. These findings are discussed in terms of computer-mediated discourse and online self-presentation.

Rule-based Search in Text Databases with Nonstandard Orthography

In this article, we describe our interdisciplinary project 'Rule-based search in text databases with nonstandard orthography (RSNSR)' in support of the conservation of cultural heritage, especially for the German reception of the philosopher Nietzsche. We present a rule-based fuzzy search engine that allows users to retrieve text data independently of its orthographical realization. The rules used are derived from statistical analyses, historical publications, linguistic principles, and expert knowledge. Our Web-based tool is intended for experts as well as interested amateurs. Along with its present features, further functions are currently worked out. Among them are automatic rule derivation and finer result classification through a generalized Levenshtein similarity measure. Our work is associated with the recently launched project Deutsch Diachron Digital (DDD) to build a complete diachronic corpus of German for the first time with texts from the ninth century (Old High German) to the present (Modern German).

Review of “Non-standard orthography and non-standard speech. (Special issue, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4:4)” by Alexandra Jaffe (ed.)

Review of “Non-standard orthography and non-standard speech. (Special issue, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4:4)” by Alexandra Jaffe (ed.)

Phat Lines

This paper focuses on the spelling conventions used in a corpus of written rap music lyrics intended for public consumption. The non-standard spellings evident in this corpus are used deliberately for various purposes, one of which is to graphically represent the phonological and syntactic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This use of non-standard orthography can be seen as a way for the writer to demonstrate a positive evaluation of the non-standard speech forms that characterize rap music performances. Other non-standard spellings bear no relation to the grammar or phonology of AAVE. However, through the use of processes such as “inversion”, these non-standard spellings invoke alternative meanings while simultaneously calling attention to the arbitrariness of dominant spelling conventions. It is argued that, overall, the non-standard spelling conventions employed in rap music lyrics function to create and sustain hip-hop culture as an “anti-society”.

The voices people read: Orthography and the representation of non‐standard speech

Combining features of matched guise tests with sociolinguistic interviewing and oral performance, this study investigates the social meanings carried by non‐standard orthographies. Participant evaluations of the personas represented by non‐standard orthographies showed that people connected orthography to social identities. Specifically, we found that people uncritically and spontaneously read non‐standard orthographies as indices of low socioeconomic status. When we asked participants to read texts out loud, we found marked shifts in their reading performances of texts in standard versus non‐standard orthographies. Through a case study analysis of participants' readings and attitudes, we identify two kinds of stances taken by participants towards stigmatized identities indexed by non‐standard orthographies. Finally, we use these case studies to argue for the necessity of contextually rich qualitative research methods for the study of language attitudes.