• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1018

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Commodifying digital discourse: The interaction between online and offline linguistic practices in urban textscapes

Authors: LEE, Carmen
Submitted by: LEE, Carmen (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China))

The past decade has seen significant shifts in how internet-based technologies are adopted. With the advent of mobile technologies, communication media that used to be confined to certain institutional contexts are now embedded in people’s everyday social lives. The domestication of technologies blurs the boundary between the so-called online and offline worlds. At the same time, language and discourse also travel in and out of the computer screen. Linguistic expressions that are traditionally considered to be peculiar to “online” communication have gradually made their way to our everyday off-screen contexts. An example in point is the extensive use of the @ sign, which used to be an accounting symbol and has then been popularized by its major function in email addresses. In recent years, @ has been extensively employed to replace the preposition “at” in offline spaces such as advertisements, road signs, and even the logo of academic departments such as English@CUHK. Another example is the pragmatic extension of the Facebook ‘like’, a feature that allows users to support or show approval of a post or comment; nowadays, it is commonly found in non-Facebook contexts such as advertisements, face-to-face talk, or even election campaigns. It is such commonplace presence of online discourse in the off-screen world that inspires the study reported in this talk.

The overall aim of this talk is to revisit the so-called online-offline dichotomy in linguistic terms. Following the developing tradition of linguistic landscape (Shohamy & Gorter, 2009), the study relies heavily on photography. I first present a small corpus of images collected from different locations and sources and describe some ways of remixing Netspeak-inspired linguistic codes for new uses outside the online communication world, as captured in the images. I then explore the functions and social meanings given to these linguistic items by drawing upon concepts in contemporary approaches to situated language and literacies, such as discourses in place, linguistic landscape, and social literacies. In particular, I explore the ways in which some of the online language features have been seen as representative of the internet world (such as combining < and 3 to form a heart ♥, and emoticons like J) and how they have been “commodified" (Heller, 2010), that is, being assigned economic values, as a symbol of globalization. From a descriptive linguistic point of view, it may be true that few novel linguistic items are introduced to our language and that what has been referred to as Netspeak is quite unlikely to develop itself into a truly independent variety in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, the values, social meanings and functions attached to such language items are unprecedented and are even becoming increasingly significant in urban lives. It is thus important to tease out these broader social meanings and values through analyzing observable instantiation of such online linguistic influence in everyday contexts. 

Heller, M. (2010). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 101-114.

Shohamy, E. & D. Gorter (Eds), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery (pp. 88-104). London: Routledge.