The quote I will be focusing on: “Every speaker is learning how to write exquisite layers of social nuance that we once reserved for speech, whether we mark them by switching alphabets, switching languages, or respelling words,” (McCulloch, 57).
In the spirit of McCulloch, who has spent a majority of the second chapter of her book, Because Internet: Understanding how language is changing, talking about how tweeting changes the game for linguists, I will be talking about a Twitter conversation between two actors I follow. Both of them starred on the popular Netflix show, Umbrella Academy, and they are close in real life as well as on the show. In the last half of her second chapter, McCulloch talks about how a study conducted by Jacob Eisenstein and Umashanthi Pavalanathan suggests that in order to address a group of people (such as all of one's followers), people use hashtags. Whereas, if they are addressing specific people (@), they use less formal language. I propose that though this hypothesis may be true on a small scale, like for instance with an ordinary individual, on a larger scale, there is a third option of using direct tagging as a way of making a point to the whole group as opposed to the individual. This third option is mainly seen in tweets or posts by celebrities or famous people with a major following, such as the actors I have chosen to analyze.
The original tweet sent out by Justin H. Min contained a mixture of a short message (“it’s 9am,”), a tag (@DavidCastanedaJ), and a picture of a text message (pictured below). On the surface, you can see the informal language choices Justin chose with the lower-case letters and the actual number nine in the tweet instead of the number spelled out. This informality directly correlates to Eisenstein and Pavalanathan’s hypothesis, even going as for bringing in the tagged user making the message more personalized. The tag both telling his audience who he is talking about and who he is responding to.
However, despite the seemingly personal theme of the message, the picture that is posted with the tweeted message is of a text message. Thus resides the implication that Justin is in possession of David’s phone number. Therefore, logically, if Justin wanted this to truly be a more personal and direct message, he could have texted the message back to David, or even used the direct messaging feature on Twitter itself. Justin purposefully created the message and picture proof to share with his followers. In this situation, Justin was not tweeting for the purpose of answering David back. Instead, he was tweeting this message with the purpose of directing it to his followers. In response, David also directed the picture response to the followers. One can only assume the reason for this interaction was to try to expose each other in a teasing way. The use of the pictures combined with the tweeted message created a very nuanced experience for those to who the message was directed and the ones who created the posts.
Works Cited:
McCulloch, Gretchen. "Chapter 2: Language and Society." Because Internet: Understanding
how language is changing. Harvill Secker, 2019, pp. 17-62.
H. Min, Jusitn. (@justinhmin). "it's 9am,." 14 May 2021, 9:29 am. Tweet.
I agree with this very strongly! I think "ordinary" people also do this too when they @ famous people on Tumblr that they know won't reply. Mind you, it's Twitter, so sometimes you'll get in a beef with a senator for another state (ask me how I know) instead, but I think your point remains.
ReplyDeleteI think the Tumblr version of this is sending an ask to a mututal off of anon and that mutual publishing it publicly*. I've done that before with a few writing partners of mine, and it's, exactly like you said, kind of a performance of sorts. A good natured one, but a performance nonetheless; we want to make the whole group (people who follow us) aware of what we're saying, rather than just messaging either other (we have about 800 ways of contacting each other than aren't our very full Tumblr inboxes).
*Note: If you don't understand how Tumblr works this sentence is utterly nonsensical.
*@ famous people on TWITTER. Did you know you can't edit comments on Blogger? We better start proofreading these bad boys huh.
DeleteNow that I know this I will for sure be proofing myself constantly... :)
DeleteYes, I agree! Most of the time celebrities do not reply to the comments left under their tweets on Twitter, yet many times hundred and thousands of regular people reply to the comments. I never thought about this point before you brought it up, but I completely agree. "Ordinary" people who @ celebrities are most likely doing it for the audience and not directly to the celebrity. If it were the case that they wanted it to be directly to the celebrity, they could dm it.
DeleteThis phenomenon is so interesting, Ally! Thanks for bringing it up. I think one could write entire papers about this, at either a micro or macro level. There's also all the baggage/background that comes from simply tagging someone, right? That simple tag brings them and their "public" identity into the utterance. It's a kind of shorthand that (again) makes me think of poetry.
ReplyDeleteLee: you are right about that one sentence about Tumblr. I know a bit about that world, but yeah! Color me a bit lost. (Not a complaint. I like realizing how much I don't know! And I don't need you to explain--that's not your job. Ha.)
Dr. H, this concept was one that I was contemplating on writing a paper about for response 1, but ultimately I chose another route. I was also thinking that this would be a great topic for maybe a final project...?
DeleteYes! I think it could be!
DeleteYou have a great point here. Most of the time when celebrities @ other celebrities, they aren't looking for the celebrity's to respond, but rather their main goal is to get attention from their followers. You could find so many instances of this happening between celebrities, it is so interesting.
ReplyDelete