LSD3 Period 3 Week 5: Assignment 5.4
Soda, pop, coke. Dialect change through online social networking.
Social networks create an opportunity for dialect contact, which results in dialect diversity; this phenomenon is also recognisable in online social networking and the influence of mass media.
Online social networking influences dialect diversity in such a way that dialects change. It has been proven that social networks influence people’s speech, naturally online social networking is no different. Online social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr enable people of different social backgrounds, cultures, languages, and dialects to ‘connect’. Different people, writing in different dialects, come in contact with each other and their dialect. Dialects can change when they come in contact with other dialects. To see that dialect changes have happened influenced by increased dialect contact through social networking a research has been conducted attempting to find out whether Twitter can be used for “creating dialect maps and studying regional variation” (Russ 2012). The researchers found that the dialect map as plotted from the Harvard Dialect Survey was quite similar to the dialect map they plotted from the ‘Twitter-data’. There were some differences between the two maps but they were indicating different variables in different areas. However, the map containing the ‘Twitter-data’ showed that some variables were also used on Twitter by people living outside of these indicated areas. So did they take a closer look at the variable of ‘soda’, ‘pop’, and ‘coke’ in the United States of America. They had the data of the Harvard Dialect Survey that indicated the variable of ‘pop’ being used in the “Midwest to [the] Pacific Northwest” (Russ 2012) whereas ‘coke’ was mainly used in the South and that ‘soda’ was used all over the United States of America but that it was used exclusively in “New England and Southwest” (Russ 2012). However, the ‘Twitter-data’ they collected showed that ‘coke’ was also being used by users of Twitter in the North East and North West of the United States and that ‘pop’ was also used by Twitter users living in the South of the United States. These variables in word choice of different dialects now overlap. Whether these speakers use a different word than they are expected to because they got into contact with a speaker of a different dialect is still not proven but it suggests so. Also, it has been proven that social networks do influence people’s speech. When dealing with change from above the word or speech sound usually is a borrowing from higher-prestige social classes. Change from below, however, can be introduced by any social class. The most advanced changes are found in the younger generation, which is also the generation that is most active in cyberspace.
Works Cited:
Russ, Brice (2012). Examining large-scale regional variation through online geotagged corpora [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.briceruss.com/ADStalk.pdf
