Postdoctoral fellowship in the sociolinguistics of online communication
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Arts Languages and Cultures
Abstract
My ESRC postdoctoral fellowship will have six aims.
The first aim is to undertake additional research based on my PhD work. Specifically, my doctoral research led to the finding that sentences that contain emojis can convey more meaning than sentences that just use words. However, this topic was not directly relevant to my PhD research, and thus I could not explore it further at that point in time. During my fellowship, I will revisit the topic as I have the data to discover new and valuable findings about the role of emojis in human communication.
Moreover, as emojis are becoming more and more prominent on social media and other websites, my work on the meaning of emojis could potentially be interesting to technology users and technology experts. Specifically, my research could change the way people understand emojis and also influence the work of technology experts who design emojis. Therefore, one of the primary aims of my fellowship will be to seek opportunities to communicate my research findings to members of the public and those working in the technology industry.
Thirdly, I wish to publish three articles in leading academic journals in order to share my innovative findings with other academics who can benefit from and build on my work. Based on the research I completed during my PhD studies, I have two clear ideas for journal articles that I can realistically write and submit for consideration during my fellowship. The first, which I will submit to 'Journal of Sociolinguistics' by November 2021, will introduce to my fellow linguists a method for identifying the people who invent words online and also the people who circulate those terms to the wider online community. The second article, which I will submit to 'Language in Society' by January 2022, will introduce and model novel indicators that can be used to identify the social characteristics of online community members who introduce and circulate new terms. Towards the end of my fellowship, I will also write and submit a third article based on my additional research into the role of emojis in online communication described above.
Fourthly, during my fellowship, I will apply for research grants which, if successful, will allow me to embark on an ambitious new research project that will have a demonstrable effect on society following the conclusion of my twelve-month fellowship. Specifically, I will spend time during my fellowship writing proposals for an ESRC New Investigator Grant and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship grant.
Moreover, my future research would benefit greatly if I had a more thorough understanding of Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP is a subfield of linguistics that is concerned with using computers to analyse large amounts of language data. I have many of the fundamental skills required to understand this topic, but the fifth aim of my fellowship will be to undertake online training to expand my knowledge to a more advanced level.
My final aim is to develop an educational programme aimed at GCSE and A-Level students. This programme, which will be structured around key findings from my doctoral research, will allow young people the opportunity to undertake their own mini-research project centred on online language creativity. The programme, which will be specifically targeted at students from demographics currently underrepresented at Russell Group universities such as working class-males and students from minority ethnic groups, would also encourage young people to consider attending university after finishing school/college and highlight the advantages of studying linguistics at university level.
The first aim is to undertake additional research based on my PhD work. Specifically, my doctoral research led to the finding that sentences that contain emojis can convey more meaning than sentences that just use words. However, this topic was not directly relevant to my PhD research, and thus I could not explore it further at that point in time. During my fellowship, I will revisit the topic as I have the data to discover new and valuable findings about the role of emojis in human communication.
Moreover, as emojis are becoming more and more prominent on social media and other websites, my work on the meaning of emojis could potentially be interesting to technology users and technology experts. Specifically, my research could change the way people understand emojis and also influence the work of technology experts who design emojis. Therefore, one of the primary aims of my fellowship will be to seek opportunities to communicate my research findings to members of the public and those working in the technology industry.
Thirdly, I wish to publish three articles in leading academic journals in order to share my innovative findings with other academics who can benefit from and build on my work. Based on the research I completed during my PhD studies, I have two clear ideas for journal articles that I can realistically write and submit for consideration during my fellowship. The first, which I will submit to 'Journal of Sociolinguistics' by November 2021, will introduce to my fellow linguists a method for identifying the people who invent words online and also the people who circulate those terms to the wider online community. The second article, which I will submit to 'Language in Society' by January 2022, will introduce and model novel indicators that can be used to identify the social characteristics of online community members who introduce and circulate new terms. Towards the end of my fellowship, I will also write and submit a third article based on my additional research into the role of emojis in online communication described above.
Fourthly, during my fellowship, I will apply for research grants which, if successful, will allow me to embark on an ambitious new research project that will have a demonstrable effect on society following the conclusion of my twelve-month fellowship. Specifically, I will spend time during my fellowship writing proposals for an ESRC New Investigator Grant and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship grant.
Moreover, my future research would benefit greatly if I had a more thorough understanding of Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP is a subfield of linguistics that is concerned with using computers to analyse large amounts of language data. I have many of the fundamental skills required to understand this topic, but the fifth aim of my fellowship will be to undertake online training to expand my knowledge to a more advanced level.
My final aim is to develop an educational programme aimed at GCSE and A-Level students. This programme, which will be structured around key findings from my doctoral research, will allow young people the opportunity to undertake their own mini-research project centred on online language creativity. The programme, which will be specifically targeted at students from demographics currently underrepresented at Russell Group universities such as working class-males and students from minority ethnic groups, would also encourage young people to consider attending university after finishing school/college and highlight the advantages of studying linguistics at university level.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Lisa Donlan (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
| Description | The first component of my programme of activities consisted of training in Natural Language Processing. NLP is a computational methodology at the forefront of much of theleading work in my discipline of computational sociolinguistics (Nguyen et al. 2016). Although I had some pre-requisite knowledge of the topic, through my research grant, I was able to achieve a more sophisticated understanding of advanced NLP methodologies that informed the research study outlined below I also undertook a study into the use of laughter in online communications. Specifically, I explored the hypotheses that emoji-based laughter is used more by women and the "haha" form is used more by men in tweets from UK-based users. The evidence supports the first of these hypotheses, with the caveat that 16-19 year-old males use emoji-based laughter as frequently as their female counterparts, and thus the hypothesis does not hold across all generations. The second hypothesis, however, is not supported by the data: the relationship between gender and haha is not statistically significant. Nevertheless, the findings show that age is a significant factor in predicting haha usage, with the form being strongly preferred by under-40s and disfavoured by over-40s. The results for the 30-39 sample, however, suggest that their apparent preference for haha is attributable to the strong correlation between haha and laughter in tweet-initial position rather than a true preference for the variable. Also, as part of my programme of activities, I also drafted and submitted two articles to leading peer-reviewed academic journals. The first draft of article one, which introduces to my discipline a replicable and viable methodology for identifying online linguistic innovators and trend leaders is current under consideration for publication by the journal Linguistics. And the second, which documents innovative methods to identify the social characteristics of the leaders of language change is currently under consideration by the Journal of Internet Pragmatics. Publishing not only increases the potential impact of my work through the circulation of my findings and contributions to others in my discipline, but also by allowing me to further establish my track-record of producing high-quality publications. |
| Exploitation Route | My findings on the use of laughter in online communication can inform further scholarly research on the topic. There is also some scope for the findings to have commercial/industry relevance relating to the use and design of laughter-related emojis. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
| Title | Reddit "Popheads" Corpus. |
| Description | The Reddit Popheads corpus is a large database containing every post made to an online community dedicated to pop music between the community's inception in October 2015 to the time of data collection at the end of May 2018. All data is time-stamped allowing for diachronic analysis and limited meta-information is available for each author. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | N/A yet |
| Description | Sixth Form Research Projects (Connell Co-op College & Ashton Sixth Form) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | I deliver an outreach programme focused on the study of digital/online language in schools and colleges in the Greater Manchester region. The aim was to teach students advanced digital language analysis skills they could use in their language research projects. Teachers provided the following feedback: "The sessions Dr Lisa Donlan delivered to our students were absolutely spot on in terms of the level and data used. The clear and engaging activities on the processes and discipline of collecting data, developing a hypothesis and analysing findings were ideal for our English Language students at this point in the academic year as they start to develop their own language investigations." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |