INTRODUCTION
Statement of the problem
Language is always a fertile field for linguistic researchers since it has incessantly been renewed by users to get what they want to express It is beyond doubt that English has been used not only widely but also dissimilarly in different regions of the world For instance, the prepositional phrase „at the weekend‟, which is preferred by British, turns to „on the weekend‟ in American English; or when you hear an Australian say „sunnies‟, it means „sunglasses‟ in British and American English As an aspect of culture, language is “the system of communication in speech and writing that is used by people of a particular country or area” 1 In other words, language in general and English in particular has been exploited by a certain community that shares the same habits of using the linguistic patterns
Thus, when it comes to Facebook, one of the most popular social networks, which connects people all over the world, one issue raised is whether or not a new kind of English will be created by Facebook users It is the very founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg who declared that this social network was “helping to define a brand- new language for how people connect” 2 He explained that vocabulary was really limited, so adding nouns and verbs could help to express a large number of things and connect to anything in any way we want Therefore, Zuckerberg himself has called Facebook users to create a language with pleasure
Thanks to a wide coverage of Facebook, many Vietnamese learners of English consider it a good site to practice the language by communicating with English speakers There are more and more Vietnamese people sharing their status and
1 language (n.d.) In Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary (8 th ed.) Retrieved from http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/language
2 Zimmer, B (2011, September) “The rise of the Zuckerverb: The new language on Facebook” The Atlantic
Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/the-rise-of-the-zuckerverb-the-new- language-of-facebook/245897/ giving comments in English on Facebook They are more likely to use English to make Facebook users understand their expressions However, what kind of English do the Vietnamese utilize on Facebook? Do they prefer to use the Standard English learnt at school/university or the created one? Hardly have any answers to these questions been found in any research papers before
Thus, the present study has been carried out to investigate the trendy features of English used by Vietnamese learners of English on the social network Facebook.
Objectives of the study
The statuses and comments posted on Facebook are characterized as asynchronous, that is, the mode of communication where the author and the reader are online at different times (Yus, 2011) In contrast to synchronous communication, asynchronicity allows selective message construction (Duthler, 2006), thus language users are able to plan, review and control their texts more than in synchronous media like chats Consequently, asynchronous online communication would allow a more formal style Following this premise, the objectives of the study will be twofold:
1) To examine online English writings on Facebook to find out the trendy features of this language when used by Vietnamese learners of English
2) To investigate the degree of formality/ informality followed by Vietnamese learners of English on this social network site.
Research questions
The study aims at seeking answers to the following questions:
1) What are the trendy features of English language used on Facebook by Vietnamese learners of English?
2) What is the degree of formality/ informality of English followed by Vietnamese learners of English on Facebook?
Significance of the study
The paper is an attempt to look into an under-researched issue on Facebook and for the Vietnamese graduates of English Thus, once completed, its outcome may offer benefits to entities involved, namely Vietnamese learners and teachers of English, and other Facebook users in the world
First of all, it is Vietnamese learners of English that benefit the most from the results of this paper This study partly helps them to differentiate Facebook English from academic and business English: when the former is rather informal, the latter seems to be more formal and standardized As a result, they will be more aware of using suitable English for different purposes, especially for some formal documents like reports, business letters or researches
In addition, for some Vietnamese undergraduates who have not had stable basic background knowledge of English language yet, it is really risky if using Facebook English becomes their habit At that time, there is no doubt that they will unconsciously bring what they read and see on Facebook to school, which leads to their unavoidable mistakes in English Thus, the findings of this study familiarize Vietnamese teachers of English with forms of the uncommon language that their students may use in class and that they consider errors or mistakes Hence, teachers can understand causes of the problems and find out appropriate solutions
Furthermore, in regard to Facebook users in general, the research may provide them with deep and comprehensive insight into the current situation of English used by the Vietnamese Hopefully, all of Facebook users can understand what their Vietnamese interactants mean This helps to connect more users on Facebook
Last but not least, researchers of the related fields can use the current paper for reference and carry out further and deeper investigation.
Scope of the study
According to Vietnam‟s Youth Magazine (2012) 3 , the majority of Vietnamese accounts on Facebook are under the age of thirty-four Besides, due to the fact that Vietnamese graduates of English are more likely to use English on Facebook, twenty-three- to thirty-three-year-old users have become the most suitable informants of the study
Additionally, there are several applications for Facebook users to communicate on this social network such as private and public message, status, comment, note, chat, voice and video call and so on, but some of them are hard to be observed and intervened to study on the used language Therefore, only status and comment have been taken into consideration As a result, written English has become a variable of the study However, despite numerous fields of English language, the research only focuses on the aspects of morphology and syntax, the two main components of a grammar (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p.4) Also, punctuation is concerned as the study targets to written English
Moreover, in regard to English, there exists a list of dialects of this language such as British English, American English, Australian English, and Canadian English and so on Until now the issue called „Global English‟ is still a matter of argument, hence the study needs to choose a Standard English to make comparison with the one used on Facebook In Huddleston and Pullum‟s (2002, p.4) theory, Standard English “is the language of government, education broadcasting news publishing, entertainment, and other public discourse” Standard English in the twenty-first century can be grouped into two regional dialects: British English and American English (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p.5) Nevertheless, the researcher decided to put only British English on one scale of comparison The reason is the scholarly interest in global English is of mainly British origin The British seem to be much more aware of the necessity of somehow overseeing the development of global English Anderman (2005, p.147)
3 30,8 triệu người Việt Nam sử dụng Internet (2012, Oct 19) Retrieved from http://nhipsongso.tuoitre.vn/Nhip-song-so/516689/308-trieu-nguoi-Viet-Nam-su-dung-Internet.html
Design of the study
The study includes three parts:
Part one is the Introduction of the study which states the problem, the research questions, objectives, scope, significance and the design of the whole paper
Part two is the Development which is composed of two chapters Chapter one presents the theoretical background related to the issue Chapter two presents the research methodology (i.e subjects of the study, data collection instruments, and procedure), findings (i.e analysis of data, results) and discussion
Part three is the Conclusion which summarizes significant findings of the investigation, elaborates contributions of the research, puts forward practical suggestions for future research as well as addresses notable limitations.
DEVELOPMENT
The social network Facebook is the place for both spoken and written communication However, due to the scope of the study that only concentrates on the applications of status and comment, written English has been under investigation
The nature of the written language is the medium and slower sentence-planning environment with the construction of longer sentences in comparison with speech (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p.13) As a standard, written English is encountered in contemporary newspapers, magazines, and books In order to get precise sentences, writers of any language need to master its grammar composed of morphology, syntax and punctuation
Morphology is the study of word structure (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik,
1987) Words typically have internal structure; particularly they consist of smaller units called morphemes (Aronoff, 1983) For example, the verb-form looked consists of two morphemes: the verb-stem look and the grammatical ending -ed
Similarly, the noun notebook consists of the morphemes note and book, and the adverb beautifully consists of the morphemes beautiful and -ly
A word is an independent meaningful linguistic unit typically larger than a morpheme but smaller than a phrase Morphologically, words can be formed in many processes which are presented as below based on the grammatical theories by Quirk et al (1987, p.430) and Huddleston (2002, p.1621).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Written English
The social network Facebook is the place for both spoken and written communication However, due to the scope of the study that only concentrates on the applications of status and comment, written English has been under investigation
The nature of the written language is the medium and slower sentence-planning environment with the construction of longer sentences in comparison with speech (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p.13) As a standard, written English is encountered in contemporary newspapers, magazines, and books In order to get precise sentences, writers of any language need to master its grammar composed of morphology, syntax and punctuation
Morphology is the study of word structure (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik,
1987) Words typically have internal structure; particularly they consist of smaller units called morphemes (Aronoff, 1983) For example, the verb-form looked consists of two morphemes: the verb-stem look and the grammatical ending -ed
Similarly, the noun notebook consists of the morphemes note and book, and the adverb beautifully consists of the morphemes beautiful and -ly
A word is an independent meaningful linguistic unit typically larger than a morpheme but smaller than a phrase Morphologically, words can be formed in many processes which are presented as below based on the grammatical theories by Quirk et al (1987, p.430) and Huddleston (2002, p.1621)
• Affixation – the formation of words by adding a prefix or a suffix to the base, e.g predict, presidential , informal
• Conversion – the word formation process of changing word-classes without affix, e.g import (used as a verb or a noun), abstract (used as a noun or an adjective)
• Compounding – the process of forming words from two or more bases, e.g greenhouse from green and house, desktop from desk and top
• Back-formation (Back-derivation) – the process of forming a word by removing one part of the word this can change its part of speech or meaning, e.g the verb opt back-formed from the noun option
- Clipping – the formation of a word by shortening but still keeping its meaning and part of speech, e.g phone from telephone, photo from photograph, and flu from influenza
- Acronym – the process of forming a word from its initial letters of a series of words, which is itself pronounced as a word, e.g UNESCO
// (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), NASA / / (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), UNICEF // (The United Nations Children's Fund)
- Initialism – the process of forming a word from its initial letters of several of words or parts of a word, which is itself pronounced letter by letter, e.g
TV // (television), UFO // (Unidentified Flying Object)
• Blending – the word formation from two separate forms, e.g motel from motor and hotel, smog from smoke and fog
• Reduplication – the process of forming words from two or more wither identical or slightly different elements, e.g goody – goody, tick – tock, tip – top
• Coinage – the process of inventing a completely new word, e.g aspirin, heroin, Google, zipper
• Borrowing – the word formation process which was taken from other language and used in their own, e.g mammoth (from Russian - large, hairy extinct elephant), gung-ho (from Chinese - too enthusiastic about something without thinking seriously about it, especially about fighting and war), tycoon (from
Japanese - a person who is successful in business or industry and has become rich and powerful)
• Sound imitation – the formation of words that imitates the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to, e.g kiwi (a New Zealand flightless bird which can produce the sound like „kiwi‟), click, clink
In traditional grammar, words are classified into eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection
However, in the theories by Quirk et al (1987, p.18), two more parts of speech are added, namely article and demonstrative
Parts of speech are divided into two groups: closed-system and open-class The former is “the sets of items closed in the sense that they cannot normally be extended by the creation of additional members” (Quirk et al., 1987, p.19) This system embraces functional words such as articles (a, an, the), demonstratives (this, that…), pronouns (I, you, her, them…), prepositions (in, at, on…), conjunctions
(and, when, although…) and interaction (oh, ah, well…) These kinds of words are reciprocally exclusive, which means the words of the same part of speech are not used together in a given structure For instance, one can have a pen or the pen but not the a pen In addition, the closed system is also reciprocally defining thus the meaning of an individual item should be defined in relation to the rest of the system
For example, when talking about a student coming third in a contest, it may come to different understandings with the meaning of third in a set of four and in a set of forty (Quirk et al., 1987, p.19)
In contrast, the latter group – the open-class is indefinitely extendable It consists of notional or lexical words such as nouns (Jack, book, work…), verbs (do, have, play…), adjectives (happy, attractive, big…) and adverbs (very, really, quickly…)
In the open-class, new items can be constantly created, thus a noun can be created from an adjective, e.g happiness from happy, an adjective can be formed from a verb, e.g attractive from attract and so on Additionally, the parts of speech in this group can be combined with each other and with the closed-system in a given structure (Quirk et al., 1987, p.19)
The phrase is the combination of article a, adverb really, adjectives beautiful and
Syntax is concerned with the way words combine to form phrases, clauses and sentences (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p.4) Remarkably, clause may form either a sentence or part of a sentence 4 ; hence only phrase and sentence are concerned in this paper
As a grammatical unit smaller than a clause,
…the term phrase is an ancient one, and it has long been used to denote a grammatical unit which is typically (though not invariably) consists of two or more words, but which does not contain all of the things found in a clause
4 clause (n.d.) In Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary (8 th ed.) Retrieved from http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/clause
For example, a noun phrase consists of a noun and its complement, as in the sun, an intelligent student and something new
Especially “since the 1940s, linguists have recognized a much larger variety of phrases than was formerly the case” (Trask, 2007, p.218); namely noun phrase (e.g a good book), verb phrase (e.g has been looking for the keys), adjective phrase
English phonemes
As mentioned above, the present paper aims to study on the written English language However, in an informal linguistic context like the SNS Facebook where the Facebook users may use spoken language in their writings, there would be some creation of the language related to its system of sound Consequently, the study would review the English phonemes in case of the necessity of data analysis
Phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two words (Roach, 1998, p.36) The English phonetic alphabet consists of twenty-four consonants and twenty vowels; the former are displayed in the chart as follow
Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Plato-alveolar
Table 1 - Chart of English consonant phonemes
Besides the consonants are twenty vowels including five long vowels /, , ,
, /, seven short vowels /, , , , , , / and eight diphthongs /, ,
, , , , / Long vowels tend to be longer than short vowels in similar contexts A diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another, and the whole glide acts like one of the long simple vowels (Roach, 1998, p.18)
Informal English
The definition of informal English in this study refers to the language in daily life, including colloquialisms, slang words and non-standard language patterns which lack of accurate grammatical structures
Colloquialism, according to Oxford dictionary, is “a word or phrase that is used in conversation but not in formal speech or writing” 5 For instance, ain‟t (am not), reckdon (suppose) and yonder (over there), etc Some linguists have made a distinction between colloquialisms and slang words like Zuckermann (2003, p.21):
Slang refers to informal (and often transient) lexical items used by a specific social group, for instance teenagers, soldiers, prisoners, or surfers…
Meanwhile, colloquialism is a lexical item used in informal speech; whilst the broadest sense of the term colloquialism might include slangism, its narrow sense does not Slangisms are often used in colloquial speech but not all colloquialisms are slangisms
Therefore, the words that most native speakers know are more likely colloquialisms
Another method of distinguishing between a slang word and a colloquialism is to look it up in the most updated dictionaries Thanks to the more popularized use of colloquialisms, most of them have been added in dictionaries with the note of informal words
However, the problem is that this is not a discrete but a continuum system
Although the majority of slang words are short-lived and often replaced by new ones, the number of non-slang colloquialisms is always growing Thus, the present study has been carried out to discover whether there are any slang words and colloquialisms created on the most popular SNS Facebook by Vietnamese users
5 colloquialism (n.d.) In Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary (8 th ed.) Retrieved from http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/colloquialism
Conversations
Most of the time, conversation consists of two or more participants taking turns, and only one participant speaking at any time
It is worth noting that status is posted aiming to report or update something about the Facebook user‟s feelings, emotions or daily activities It can be considered a
„topic-raising‟ statement expecting others‟ feedbacks or in other words, it is the very beginning of a conversation Meanwhile, comment is the application for other
Facebook users to freely give their opinions related the „topic sentence‟ or status, which makes a real successful conversation
Due to the asynchronous characteristics of the social network Facebook, users are under no pressure of time when posting something on this site Therefore, long pauses (long silence between turns – Yule, 1996, p.72) normally exist between the comments In addition, this kind of indirect non-restrictive conversations permits any one to take their turn at any time, but there will be no overlaps thanks to the system‟s time management Nevertheless, because of the free turn-taking, adjacency pairs (formed by certain sequences of turns going together – Yule, 1996, p.77) of conversations on Facebook are not often contiguous and ordered.
Review of related studies
With spectacular growth and popularization of social networking sites 6 , many studies have been conducted concerning the use of languages on SNSs
Take the research titled “Intercultural internet chat and language learning: A socio- cultural theory perspective” by Pasfield-Neofitou (2007) as an instance With the participation of five Australian advanced learners of Japanese and their five
6 Social Networking Reaches Nearly One in Four Around the World (2013, June 18) Emarketer Retrieved from http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Networking-Reaches-Nearly-One-Four-Around-
Japanese chat partners in the form of chat logs, the study uses Socio-cultural theory to investigate the properties of Japanese-English intercultural Internet chat
Collected over a month by follow-up interviews, the data are analyzed within conversations to find out a variety of linguistic and interactional features in the ten chat logs gathered, in terms of turn taking, language features, and features linked to computer literacy and amount of experience in using chat The findings lead to a conclusion that sociocultural factors are important in shaping the nature of language used in the discourse, and chat provides opportunities for natural language use with native speakers
Concerning the same issue, Nguyễn, D T T, Nguyễn, T T T & Nguyễn, T T H
(2008) carried out “a study on the impact of @-language on the mother tongue”
@-language, according to the authors, is the one used for chatting on internet by the young generation Participants of the study are students from two classes of two high-schools in Da Nang, Vietnam The findings disclose a pervasion of @- language on the young In regards to the reasons leading to their preference of using @-language, 65,3 % of the participants express their interest in strange language, 49% of them want to save time with abbreviated expressions, a minority 14,28% like to update the trend of the teenage language and another 8,16% of the participants use @-language to keep their parents in the dark about what they share with their friends The study concludes that @-language may deprive the young of their ability to perceive and understand the nature and beauty of the mother tongue
In short, both of the two linguistic studies, as many others by Milroy (1987), Young
(2009), Morris, Cunliffe & Prys (2012) and Vũ, N N K (2012)…, mainly target to chat language in the SNSs in general
Not until the outburst of Facebook, have some researchers concerned the language in a particular network community like this SNS Specially, since Zuckerburg – the founder of Facebook, called Facebook user to create language with pleasure, this SNS has urged more linguists to study on the uncommon features of English language on Facebook Consequently, Pérez-Sabater (2012) conducted the “A Study of Writing Conventions on Facebook” to observe the level of formality/informality of online communication in English, and indicate the distinction between online writings by native and non-native speakers of English This quantitative study are a cohort of students from universities in Europe (as non-native speakers) and in the United States of America (as native speakers) Its corpus comprises 300 comments in English posted to the official Facebook sites of the universities The study focuses on “the formulae of etiquette and protocol used for salutation, opening, pre- closing and closing as an indicator of the degree of orality and informality in online writing” (Pérez-Sabater, 2012, p.81) In regard to the results, the data reveal that the comments posted on the Facebook sites have noticeable variations in style, so in a specific context of a university, the use of Facebook is not conventionalized
Additionally, the study shows that non-native speakers of English are likely to communicate more formally than native speakers on the Facebook sites in the academic world
Some other linguists concerning the Facebook language are Ellison, Steinfield &
Lampe (2007), Pugh (2010), Blattner & Fiori (2009), Bonds-Raacke & Raacke
(2010), Terantino & Graf (2011), Blattner & Lomicka (2012) and Anwaruddin (2012)…
However, among those is no study targeting to Vietnamese Facebook users despite the fact that Vietnam is considered the country which has the highest growing rate (146%) of Facebook users within six months of 2012 and Facebook is also the most popular SNS in this country 7 Moreover, it is merely the native language that Vietnamese authors are more likely to put into their studies related to SNSs
These gaps intensified the significance of the study which aims to investigate the trendy features of English on Facebook pages of Vietnamese graduates of English
7 30,8 triệu người Việt Nam sử dụng Internet (2012, Oct 19) Retrieved from http://nhipsongso.tuoitre.vn/Nhip-song-so/516689/308-trieu-nguoi-Viet-Nam-su-dung-Internet.html
THE STUDY
Methodology
The participants are a cohort of thirty Vietnamese learners of English who have their own Facebook accounts Their average age is 28, with an age range from 23 to
33 All of them are college/ university graduates majoring in English Thus, despite their various proficiency levels of English, the participants are believed to have basic background knowledge of the English language However, the Facebook platform allows users to decide what information about themselves they want to share with others; it is not to change identities but to present the best part of the user to the others (Baron, 2008, p.82) Therefore, the selection of participants is mainly based on the authentic relationship between them and the researcher
The study is conducted mainly on Facebook pages of the participants Its corpus has been collected by the author during 2012 and 2013, comprising 112 statuses and
185 comments posted to the Facebook pages of the Vietnamese graduates of English
As mentioned above, the study is an effort to describe the nature of existing English on Facebook pages of Vietnamese graduates of English thus descriptive method seems to be the most suitable methodology for the study The study was conducted with participant observation and unstructured interview as two research instruments In addition, such methods as analytic, comparative and contrastive are also utilized to describe and analyze, to compare and contrast the database so as to bring out similarities and differences between Facebook English and Standard English The X-bar model and the tree diagram are used as the two linguistic analysis tools
In order to serve the aims of the study, each observation sheet comprises a table with six columns titled site of information, Facebook user, updated time, content, uncommon language elements and type of language phenomenon and two rows named status and comment
• Site of information – this column is to indicate whether the expressions are observed from status or comment
• Facebook user – name of users on the site
• Updated time – the time when the statuses and comments were posted
• Expressions – what are posted in statuses and comments
• Uncommon language element – this column is to point out whether there is any strange language element in the observed expressions
• Type of language phenomenon – this column aims to sort the uncommon language phenomena found in the observed expressions
In the process of finding out the uncommon cases of using English on Facebook, the researcher herself cannot decode the entire language phenomena Therefore, some unstructured interviews are vital to get information from the users These unstructured interviews are just like a short-time forum with normally one or two questions about the meaning or explanation of what they have posted on Facebook, which are obscure, such as sr, plz, wassup,… Hopefully, unstructured interviews help much with fulfilling the observation sheets
In this stage, the survey research design was carried out The researcher created her own Facebook account to make it possible to be active on the social networking site The participants were selected based on the expected features and invited to join the researcher‟s friend list Observation sheet was also designed to serve collecting data
First of all, the participants‟ Facebook pages were observed day by day to investigate the trendy characteristics of English in the statuses and comments This step was implemented during the study for over one year The data was added in the observation sheet In this step, unstructured interviews were sometimes used when there were any linguistic phenomena that the research cannot catch the meaning
After that, with the collected findings, the researcher analyzed and synthesized all the data to find out the answer for the two research questions
Some considerations about free access and privacy matters should be taken into account Although the access of these sites is free, no authentic private information are published in the examples provided in this study Private personal information in the statuses and comments has been modified, but keeping similarities with the original as a proof of the authenticity of the written word
The data of the observation sheet were used to analyze the English used on Facebook by the participants The entire language phenomena collected through observation were grouped in order to make the analysis procedure easier The results were transcribed into charts, tables and diagrams Afterwards, the researcher analyzed, compared and contrasted the English on the Facebook pages to the Standard English so as to find out the trendy features of the language on this site.
Findings and discussion
In order to seek the answer for the research questions, the study bases on what have been collected through the observation together with the supplement of unstructured interview
As mentioned above, this linguistic study is restricted to the field of grammar with morphology, syntax and punctuation Therefore, the data accumulated is analyzed under these three aspects of grammar
Morphologically, the findings show that the abbreviated form of expressions and the frequent usage of colloquialisms are the most outstanding linguistic phenomena on the Facebook status and comment
The findings expose that twenty-seven out of thirty participants used to put abbreviated expressions into their Facebook statuses and comments, followed by 64% of the former and 81% of the latter in the corpus appearing the use of abbreviated forms The participants manipulate abbreviated words, phrases and clauses in many ways, which are grouped into four categories: Sound-based substitution, Initialism, Clipping and Sound imitation The preference of each kind of abbreviated form is shown in the following chart
Figure 1 - The preference of each abbreviated form
As can be seen from the chart, abbreviated expressions are utilized more in comments than in statuses With the percentage of 56% for status and 73% for comment, the participants seem to most prefer sound-based substitution In contrast,
Vietnamese learners of English rarely use sound imitation to shorten their expressions To be more specific, only twenty-two out of 185 comments and three statuses expose the use of this type Meanwhile, initialism (with 34% for status and 36% for comment) and clipping (with 41% for status and 45% for comment) seem nearly equal in the degree of the users‟ interest In short, no matter what type of abbreviated form it is, Vietnamese learners of English tend to shorten their expressions when writing statuses and comments on Facebook
In the rest paper, the researcher would like to analyze several Facebook statuses and comments existing abbreviation and also make a list of each abbreviated form so that the reader would have a deeper look at this language phenomenon on Facebook a Sound-based substitution
This process of forming words has not been mentioned in the previous works
Sound-based substitution, in this study, is the process of replacing an expression with a shorter one – a word or even a letter which has the same or nearly the same pronunciation with the substituent However, there is no relation of meaning between the substitute and substituent
As the most preferred way of manipulating words by Vietnamese learners of English on Facebook, sound-based substitution discovered in the intervened statuses and comments is listed in the table as follows
Sound – based abbreviation Sound Meaning u // you ur // your urs // yours r // are n // and coz // cause bcoz // because b4 // before wassup // What‟s up
Table 2 - List of Sound-based Substitutes on Facebook
The findings show that the first four sound-based abbreviations „u‟, „ur‟, „urs‟, „r‟ are the most frequent used in statuses and comments of the participants The reason may root from the characteristic of the SNS Facebook which serves communication, followed by the regular appearance of the second-person pronoun „you‟ and its conjugation of verb „to be‟ „are‟ Here are some examples of statuses and comments with sound-based substitution
- U have changed a lot…or even changed too much…!
- Look!!! U r now too far, too different from ur sound self…
- U also have lost ur sense of self, havent u?!
- I‟m on the way though, do u want to eat anything i‟ll buy for u!
Frankly, in the first glance, the kind of those sentences makes no sense However, when the readers speak them out or read them in mind, their pronunciation will lead them to the expected meaning Taking advantage of words with similar sounds, Vietnamese learners of English can lessen characters of what they post on Facebook, followed by their less time of typing b Initialism
Table 3 shows the list of initialisms which are used by Vietnamese learners of English on Facebook status and comment
Initialism Full form bf boyfriend btw/ BTW by the way fb/ FB facebook plz/ pls please sth something sr sorry
Table 3- List of Initialisms on Facebook
To be formed by the initial consonant of each syllable, some initialisms may be referred to different meanings For example, „bf‟ can be understood as „boyfriend‟ or „best friend‟… At this time, its semantic meaning plays a really important role to make a successful conversation Take Example 2 for instance
Status : Plz stop any questions about my bf I‟m totally single at the moment Ok?
In the above status, the Facebook user uses an initialism „bf‟ in the first sentence If the status stopped there, at the sentence „Plz stop any questions about my bf‟, it could direct to a request about her best friend („bf‟) But with the existence of the word „single‟ in the next sentence, it comes to the realization that „bf‟ cannot mean
„best friend‟ „Single‟ implies the state that someone has been alone without anyone in love Therefore, „bf‟ should be relevant to something or somebody about love, which must be „boyfriend‟ instead of „best friend‟ Catching the correct meaning, other Facebook users can make a successful conversation by giving related comments
In short, despite the widespread use, initialisms still need to depend on their semantic roles to meet the expected meanings c Clipping
Not only shortening words based on their sounds and their initial consonants of syllables, Vietnamese learners also eliminate some part of a word when posting statuses and comments on Facebook The most familiar clipping should be „pic‟ which is shortened from „picture‟ With the widespread of pictures on Facebook (Bonds-Raacke & Raacke, 2008), the frequent appearance of this word is a plain matter The remarkable point is that the full-formed word „picture‟ seem not to exist in the statuses and comments Instead, its clipping „pic‟ became preferred By citing several statues and comments of different Facebook users, Example 3 partly shows the overwhelming use of this clipping
- just a few pics of a small town near the Swiss Alps, …
- just some random pics taken by my iphone
- yeah, everything just came into it in the right place at the right moment the flag, the statue, the wind I just couldn‟t create such a pic on my own will God made it!!!
- Look at that pic then miss u so much bro Minh Ming!
Other clippings are gathered in Table 4 as follow
Clipping Full form bro brother
Congrats Congratulations pic picture sis sister
Table 4 - List of Clippings on Facebook d Sound imitation
As the least preferred word formation by Vietnamese learners of English on Facebook, characters imitated by sound appear inconsiderably As can be seen in Table 5, there are only two sound imitations found in the studied statuses and comments: „zzz‟ to imply that the writers are sleepy and „shhh‟ as a sound to ask someone to hush
CONCLUSION
Limitations of the study
Despite considerable devotion of time and efforts, the study cannot avoid some shortcomings which can be noted as follow
Firstly, if the study had been implemented with more participants in a wider range of age, the results would be more popularized thus more valid
Secondly, due to the scope of a M.A thesis, the research can only focus on the terms of morphology, syntax and punctuation – the main components of a grammar (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002) As a result, the study can only take a glance at the issue
In short, the limited time, scope and participants, to some extent, impede the validity of the research.
Suggestions for further study 43 REFERENCES I ENGLISH I VIETNAMESE IV APPENDIX
Other researchers who also delve into the English language on Facebook may further look into the issue from different angles
First of all, if time allows, researchers can investigate other kinds of participants, teenagers or undergraduates, for instance
There have been several researchers studying the language of these subjects on social network sites such as Clark & Gruba (2010), Morris, Cunliffe & Prys (2012), and Vũ, N N K (2012); and new studies may bring interesting findings
In addition, apart from status and comment, a further study can be extended to other applications on Facebook such as message, note or chat room
Last but not least, other researchers may concern other fields of linguistics like semantics and pragmatics in order to have a deeper insight into English language used on Facebook
Anderman, G M & Rogers, M (2005) In and Out of English: For Better, for
Worse Great Britain: Cromwell Press Ltd
Anwaruddin, S M (2012) “Learning English in the Age of Facebook” Journal of
Aronoff, Mark (1983) “A decade of morphology and word formation”
Baron, N S (2008): Always on: Language in an Online and Mobile World New
Blattner, G & Lomicka, L (2012) “Facebook-ing and the Social Generation: A
New Era of Language Learning” Alsic Magazine, 15 (1)
Blattner, G & Fiori, M (2009): "Facebook in the Language Classroom: Promises and Possibilities" International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 6 (1), 17–28
Bonds-Raacke, J & Raacke, J (2010) “MySpace and Facebook: Identifying
Dimensions of Uses and Gratifications for Friend Networking Sites”
Chomsky, N (1970) “Remarks on Nominalization” In: R Jacobs and P
Rosenbaum (eds.), Reading in English Transformational Grammar (pp
Clark, C & Gruba, P (2010) The use of social networking sites for foreign language learning: An autoethnographic study of Livemocha In C.H
Steel, M.J Keppell, P Gerbic & S Housego (Eds.), Curriculum, technology & transformation for an unknown future Proceedings ascilite
Sydney 2010 (pp.164-173) http://ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney10/procs/Cclark-full.pdf
Duthler, K., W (2006): "The Politeness of Requests Made via Email and
Voicemail: Support for the Hyperpersonal Model" Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11 (2), 500 – 521.
Ellsworth, B & Higgins, J A (1997) English grammar simplified Longman
García, I I T (2005) Aphasia and the Theta system Utrecht University.
Huddleston R., Pullum G.K (2002) The Cambridge Grammar of the English language Cambridge University Press
Jackendoff, R (1977) X-bar syntax: a study of phrase structure Cambridge MA:
Kornai, A & Pullum, G K (1990) The X-bar theory of phrase structure US:
Milroy, L (1987) Language and Social Networks (2 nd ed.) Oxford; Basil
Morris, D., Cunliffe, D & Prys, C (2012) “Social networks and minority languages speakers: the use of social networking sites among young people” Sociolinguistic Studies, Vol 6, No 1
Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary (8 th ed.) (2010) Oxford: Oxford University
Pasfield-Neofitou, S E (2007) “Intercultural internet chat and language learning:
A socio-cultural theory perspective” Learning and Socio-cultural Theory:
Exploring Modern Vygotskian Perspectives International Workshop 2007,
Pugh, J L (2010) A qualitative study of the Facebook social network: The desire to influence, associate, and construct a representative and ideal identity
Pérez-Sabater, C ( 2012) “The Linguistics of Social Networking: A Study of
Writing Conventions on Facebook” Linguistik online, 56
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G & Svartvik, J (1987) A university grammar of
Roach, P (1998) English phonetics and phonology Cambridge University Press
Social Networking Reaches Nearly One in Four Around the World (2013, June 18)
Emarketer Retrieved from http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-
Networking-Reaches-Nearly-One-Four-Around- World/1009976#bGpi5vTHD1rIwudR.99
Terantino, J & Graf, K (2011) “Using Facebook in the Language Classroom as
Part of the Net Generation Curriculum” ACTFL's The Language Educator, Nov 2011, 48-51
Trask, R L (1999) “Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics” In Stockwell, P
(2 nd ed.) (2007) Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts Oxford,
Young, K (2009) "Online Social Networking: An Australian Perspective"
International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, 7 (1), 39 –
Yule, G (1996) Pragmatics Oxford: Oxford University Press
Yus, F (2011) Cyberpragmatics: Internet-Mediated Communication in Context
Zimmer, B (2011, September) “The rise of the Zuckerverb: The new language on
Facebook” The Atlantic Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/the-rise-of-the- zuckerverb-the-new-language-of-facebook/245897/
Zuckermann, G (2003) Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli
Nguyễn, D T T, Nguyễn, T T T & Nguyễn, T T H (2008).“A study on the impact of @-language on the mother tongue” In Hội nghị Sinh viên Nghiên cứu Khoa học (6 th ) Da Nang University Retrieved from http://www.kh-sdh.udn.vn/zipfiles/sv2008- tb20/5R.THANH%20TRANG%20-%20THANH%20THUY%20KP.pdf
Võ Đại Quang (2005) Một số vấn đề cú pháp, ngữ nghĩa, ngữ dụng và âm vị học
NXB Văn hóa Thông tin
Vũ Nguyễn Nam Khuê (2012) Ngôn ngữ của giới trẻ trên các mạng xã hội Thư viện đề tài Nghiên cứu Khoa học Euréka
30,8 triệu người Việt Nam sử dụng Internet (2012, Oct 19) Retrieved from http://nhipsongso.tuoitre.vn/Nhip-song-so/516689/308-trieu-nguoi-Viet-Nam-su-dung-Internet.html