An investigation into the english language used on facebook social network by vietnamese learners of english

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ LINH AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE USED ON FACEBOOK SOCIAL NETWORK BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NGÔN NGỮ ANH ĐƯỢC NGƯỜI HỌC TIẾNG ANH Ở VIỆT NAM SỬ DỤNG TRÊN MẠNG XÃ HỘI FACEBOOK) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.0201 HANOI – 2013 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ LINH AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE USED ON FACEBOOK SOCIAL NETWORK BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NGÔN NGỮ ANH ĐƯỢC NGƯỜI HỌC TIẾNG ANH Ở VIỆT NAM SỬ DỤNG TRÊN MẠNG XÃ HỘI FACEBOOK) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.0201 Supervisor: Kiều Thị Thu Hương, PhD HANOI – 2013 DECLARATION I hereby, certify the thesis entitled “An investigation into the English language used on Facebook social network by Vietnamese learners of English” is the result of my own research for the Minor Degree of Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other universities or institutions I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can be accessible for the purposes of study and research September, 2013 Nguyễn Thị Linh i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to show my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis I have sincere thanks to the Post-graduate Department of ULIS, VNUH for giving me permission to commence and go ahead with this M.A thesis and to use departmental data I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Vice-Dean of the English Faculty – Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, whose encouragement, guidance and support enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject and to accomplish the final version of the thesis as expected This thesis would not be possible were it not for my lecturers in the M.A course, namely Prof Dr Hoàng Văn Vân, Assoc Prof Dr Lê Hùng Tiến, Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang, Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm, Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, Dr Ngơ Hữu Hồng, Dr Lê Văn Canh and Dr Huỳnh Anh Tuấn I would like to thank them for their interesting lectures, devotion, assistance and valuable hints Especially, I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents whose endless love and encouragement helped me finish this work Lastly, I offer my regards and blessings to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the study ii ABSTRACT Languages in general and English in particular evolve and diversify over the time Especially with the outburst of computer-mediated communication like the social network Facebook, English language incessantly gets its new look The undertaken research examines the statuses and comments published on the Facebook sites of Vietnamese graduates of English to observe the trendy features of English language The level of formality/informality of online written English is considered as well The study focuses on the main aspects of the language‟s grammar, namely morphology, syntax and punctuation Thanks to the descriptive, analytic, comparative and contrastive methods, the results reveal the tendency of the participants‟ using abbreviated expressions on Facebook This also proves their preference of maintaining informality on this social network Nevertheless, most instances indicate the hesitation of Vietnamese graduates of English in creating brand-new English, which now becomes the trend of Facebook users iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vi ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS vii PART I – INTRODUCTION 1 Statement of the problem Objectives of the study Research questions Significance of the study Scope of the study Design of the study PART II – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Written English 1.1.1 Morphology 1.1.2 Syntax 1.1.3 Punctuation 16 1.2 English phonemes 16 1.3 Informal English 18 1.4 Conversations 19 1.5 Review of related studies 19 CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 22 2.1 Methodology 22 2.1.1 Subjects 22 2.1.2 Data gathering instruments 22 2.1.3 Procedure 23 2.2 Findings and discussion 24 iv 2.2.1 Morphology 25 2.2.2 Syntax 32 2.2.3 Punctuation 39 2.2.4 Discussion 40 PART III – CONCLUSION 42 3.1 Conclusions 42 3.2 Limitations of the study 43 3.3 Suggestions for further study 43 REFERENCES I ENGLISH I VIETNAMESE IV APPENDIX .V v LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures Figure - The preference of each abbreviated form 25 Figure - Proportion of phrase types on Facebook status .33 Figure - Proportion of sentence types on Facebook status 37 Figure - Proportion of sentence types on Facebook comment 38 Tables Table - Chart of English consonant phonemes 17 Table - List of Sound-based Substitutes on Facebook 27 Table 3- List of Initialisms on Facebook 28 Table - List of Clippings on Facebook 30 Table - List of Sound Imitations on Facebook .31 Table - List of Colloquialisms on Facebook 32 vi ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS A Adverbial Adj Adjective AdjP Adjective Phrase Adv Adverb AdvP Adverb Phrase C Complement Comb Combination Exc Exclamation Int Interjection Mod Modal (verb) N Noun NP Noun Phrase O Object P Preposition PP Prepositional Phrase S Subject St Sentence SNS Social Networking Site ULIS University of Languages and International Studies VNUH Vietnam National University, Hanoi V Verb VP Verb Phrase & and i.e in other words e.g for example n.d no date vii PART I – 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 brandnew 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 language (n.d.) In Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary (8th ed.) Retrieved from http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/language 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-newlanguage-of-facebook/245897/ that the verb must be bare infinitive to go with the first person pronoun „I‟ – the person who write the phrase – the subjective entity Meanwhile, the second writer has a more complex conception that he considers himself an objective entity – „the writer‟ As a result, the main verb „to be‟ in (2) is in the form of the third person singular present – „is‟ In short, to express the Facebook users‟ action, event or state by themselves, verb phrases can be used in the first or the third person singular form b Sentence According to Quirk et al (1987), sentence can be divided into four types based on structure: simple sentence, compound sentence, complex sentence and compoundcomplex sentence Apart from the last type which is not used in any status, each of the others is taken a sample from the collected statuses and analyzed in Example as follows Example 5: (1) Simple sentence Home is the best