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Luận văn tiếng Anh: 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 Thesis Linguistics: 60 22 02 01
Nhà xuất bản: University of Languages and International Studies
Ngày: 2013
Chủ đề: Tiếng Anh
Mạng xã hội Facebook
Ngôn ngữ
Miêu tả: 44 p. + CD-ROM + tóm tắt
M.A. Thesis English Linguistics -- University of Languages and International Studies. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 2013
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ..................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES .................................................................... vi ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ...................................................... vii PART I – INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 1. Statement of the problem ................................................................................ 1 2. Objectives of the study .................................................................................... 2 3. Research questions .......................................................................................... 2 4. Significance of the study ................................................................................. 3 5. Scope of the study ............................................................................................ 4 6. Design of the study .......................................................................................... 5 PART II – DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................... 6 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................. 6 1.1. Written English ....................................................................................... 6 1.1.1. Morphology ........................................................................................ 6 1.1.2. Syntax................................................................................................. 9 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 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 PART I – INTRODUCTION 1. 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 Giúp 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 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. 2. 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. 3. 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? 4. 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. 5. 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) 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. or „best friend‟… At this time, its semantic meaning plays a really important role to make a successful conversation. Take Example 2 for instance. Example 2: 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. Example 3:
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Nhà xuất bản: University of Languages and International Studies
Ngày: 2013
Chủ đề: Tiếng Anh
Mạng xã hội Facebook
Ngôn ngữ
Miêu tả: 44 p. + CD-ROM + tóm tắt
M.A. Thesis English Linguistics -- University of Languages and International Studies. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 2013
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ..................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES .................................................................... vi ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ...................................................... vii PART I – INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 1. Statement of the problem ................................................................................ 1 2. Objectives of the study .................................................................................... 2 3. Research questions .......................................................................................... 2 4. Significance of the study ................................................................................. 3 5. Scope of the study ............................................................................................ 4 6. Design of the study .......................................................................................... 5 PART II – DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................... 6 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................. 6 1.1. Written English ....................................................................................... 6 1.1.1. Morphology ........................................................................................ 6 1.1.2. Syntax................................................................................................. 9 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 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 PART I – INTRODUCTION 1. 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 Giúp 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 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. 2. 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. 3. 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? 4. 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. 5. 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) 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. or „best friend‟… At this time, its semantic meaning plays a really important role to make a successful conversation. Take Example 2 for instance. Example 2: 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. Example 3:
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