• 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: 830

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

Slexipedia: A Corpus-based Analysis of the Word-Formation Processes and Social Use of a Second Life-specific Code

Authors: Abdullah, Ashraf Riadh
Submitted by: Abdullah, Ashraf Riadh (University of Leeds, United Kingdom)

The neologism Slexipedia, coined from the blending of Second Life (SL) and Crystal's lexipedia (Crystal, 2004), reflects the kinds of words and word-formation processes found in the vocabulary of the language of residents in the Second Life online virtual world (Boellstorff 2008). In addition to identifying and introducing a SL Glossary, this paper investigates the innovative word formation processes of SL vocabulary that have emerged ecologically (Creese et al 2010), and the manner in which this language is used socially (Eckert 2000) in conversational interaction in an environment representing virtual urbanism. The corpus was built by the author over a 3 year period and consists of 190 thousand words. Participant observation in SL and empirical analysis of the corpus led to two approaches: computational (quantitative) using WordSmith Tools and CFL Lexical Feature Marker, and descriptive (qualitative) analysis of the use of SL lexis in online interaction. A morpho-pragmatic analysis, including frequency counts and distribution of the use of the vocabulary items, led to the results that showed that in addition to new words formed according to the processes mentioned in scholarly work such as Bauer (1983), there were new processes like acronym-word blending (as in SLexipedia) and acronym compounding (e.g. SLurl: SL + URL) that haven’t been accounted for previously in linguistic studies.

The creative process of producing new sets of linguistic forms online is considered a part of language play or 'Cyberpl@y' (Danet, 2001) and is a distinguishing characteristic of synchronous computer-mediated communication in general and the code in the SL speech community in particular. The enregisterment of such a code plays a dominant role in the construction of a virtual social identity (Agha 2006) which is vital so as to establish oneself and gain acceptance into the SL virtual community. This study has implications for sociolinguistics in that new technologies are still generating new linguistic forms and the use of these forms or 'codes' participates in determining one's identities and roles in these additional virtual speech communities. Forming a coherent SLexipedia contributes to our understanding of some of the current processes of language variation and language creativity in general and provides insights into understanding Second Life identities in particular.         

References:

Agha, Asif. 2006. Language and Social Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bauer, L., 1983. English Word-Formation. Cambridge, Cambridge University press.

Boellstorff, T., 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Creese, A., P. Martin and N. H. Hornberger (Eds.) 2010. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2^nd Edition, Volume 9: Ecology of Language. Springer.

Crystal, D., 2004. A Glossary of Netspeak and Textspeak. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press

Danet, B., 2001. Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Eckert, P. 2000. Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell