Language Use In Social Networks

1351 Words6 Pages
Language Use in Social Networks COURSE REPORT Author: Linda Theoretical Background of Language use in Social Networks The issue of language use in social networks has been widely discussed by many linguists, including Danet (1996), Lazaar and Preece (1998), Druviete (2003), Herring (2004), Cigankova (2011a and 2011b), Pegrum (2012) and others. Herring (2004) highlights that computer-mediated communication (CMC), which is “produced when human beings interact with one another by transmitting messages via networked computers”, focuses on language and language use in computer networked environments as well as on methods of discourse analysis that help address that focus most effectively. Meanwhile, Danet (1996) indicates language use for all types of person-to-person and person-to-group synchronic and non-synchronic communication as well as for reading or downloading documents in person-to-remote-computer contacts. Because CMC combines features of oral and written communication, language use in CMC resembles that of face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations, business letters, personal letters, telegrams, postcards, ritual greeting cards and intra-office memos (Danet, 1996) and is characterised by specific choice of lexis, syntactic and discourse structures and rhetorical devices used in spoken language (Cigankova, 2011a). Cigankova (2011b) also pays special attention to the functions of language used in social networks by outlining the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions of CMC language. Social networks are in fact online communities, in which language use is characterised both by the synchronic and non-synchronic communication modes and by the characteristics of the online community members. Taking into account the technical aspects of CMC, Pegrum (2012) points out that users of social networking websites usually use

More about Language Use In Social Networks

Open Document