The Linguistics of Social Media

This accessible textbook introduces concepts and frameworks from linguistics and uses them in the analysis of language on social media. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics and with examples drawn from 12 different social media platforms, including TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

Lists of illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of internet slang and abbreviations; About this book; 1. Language and social media; 2. Using social media for your purpose: Exploring genre, register and style; 3. Using social media to speak to your tribe: Considering Audience Design, language choice and multilingualism; 4. Using social media to get things done: Analysing speech acts and politeness; 5. Using social media to be yourself: Examining indexing, gender and communities of practice; 6. Using social media to save the world: Theorising metaphor; 7. Using social media to influence public opinion: Surveying texts with Move Analysis and corpus linguistics; 8. Using social media to amuse and entertain: Introducing word-formation and grammatical constructions 9. Using social media to rally for your language: Measuring linguistic vitality and language endangerment; 10. Epilogue: Ethical considerations and language change; Index; Index of languages; Index of social media platforms