THE ANALYSIS OF PARALINGUISTIC FEATURES
IN
TEXT
THESIS
Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment for Requirements
For The Sarjana Sastra Degree in English Department
Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts
Sebelas Maret University
By:
Sabila Rosdiana
C0308006
FACULTY OF LETTERS AND FINE ARTS
SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY
SURAKARTA
PRONOUNCEMENT
The researcher honestly declares that the thesis The Analysis of Paralinguistic
Features in Twitter Textsis not a plagiarism. The thesis is originally written by the
written in quotation and stated in the bibliography.
If the pronouncement is proven to be incorrect, I will be ready to accept any
academic consequence and penalty, including the cancellation of the thesis and
academic degree obtained from completing the thesis and study.
Surakarta, November 2012
(Waltz Disney)
(Surah Al-Insyirah 5)
(Onew, SHINee)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
, praise and gratitude are to the Most Merciful
and the Most Beneficent, Allah SWT, for blessing the writer in accomplishing this
thesis entitledTheAnalysis of Paralinguistic Features in Twitter Texts. I would
like to express her deepest gratitude and appreciation to the people who have ever
helped her in finishing this thesis.
1. Drs. Riyadi Santosa, M.Ed.,Ph.D. as the Dean of Faculty of Letters and
Fine Arts for giving the approval for this thesis.
2. Drs. Agus Hari Wibowo, M.Hum.,Ph.Das the Head of English Department
for supporting the finishing of this thesis.
3. Dr. Sri Marmanto, M.Humas mythesis consultant for guiding me in
accomplishing this thesis. Thank you for the patience and suggestion to
assist me in finishing this thesis.
4. Dra. SK Habsari, M.Hum.,Ph.D as my academic supervisor for the
assistance during my study. Thank you for the guidance and support
during my study in Sebelas Maret University.
5.
although it was just a short time we met, thank for your kindness and
support.
6. All the lecturers in English Department, who had taught me, thank you for
7. The lifetime motivators, my endless lovemother and father, my two
brothers, my sister in-law an coming-soon
thank you for thesupport, and pray that is always spoken every time.
8.
me happy when I was getting bored in finishing my thesis.
9. My Shining Stars, Skull Princess, KANSAS, Kiki unnie and Momo.
Thank you for being my eternal friends.
10.My Twitter , Unay
unnie, Ekka,Oliph,KBS fellas and everyone whom I could not write here.
Thank you for the support.
11.All English Department 2008students.
12.Everyone whom I meet in my life.
13.The last but not least, My Infinite, SHINee and B1A4 boys who always
accompanied me in finishing my thesis. .
I realize that this report is not perfect, in order to make it better, I accept
some advice and criticism. Finally, I wish this research paper would be useful for
all readers.
Surakarta,November 2012
CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS
A.Introduction to Data Analysis 38
B.Data Analysi 39
C.Discus 92
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
A. 101
B.Suggest 107
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1 12
Figure 2.2 Smiley 22
Figure 2.3 Verified Account on Twitter 24
commit to user
They live in society which most activities are usually done relating to each other.
Therefore, they need communication to interact with others. Communication
happens between two or more persons whom relate to each other. It is used by
human beings to get their needs. It is also needed to maintain good relationship
with others. In short, communication holds an important role for human beings.
To communicate, human beings need a tool called language. Language is
the main instrument in communication. It is used to convey meaning from one
person to another. According to Sapir, Language is a purely human and
non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of
voluntarily produced symbols (1921:8). Symbols are sounds or things which have
meaning given to person by the users and originally, the meaning is arbitrarily
assigned. In other words, language is built from symbols and constructs a meaning
(O'Neil, 2006). Language is as a systematic, the conventional use of sounds, signs,
or written symbol in a human society for communication and self-expression
(Crystal in Tonkin, 2004). In short, human uses language to express emotion or
ideas in order to communicate with many kinds of variation symbols that have
been conventionally assigned whether by any certain of group or large group.
Nowadays, with the development of technology, people could
computer and laptop are always being developed to the more sophisticated one in
order to help people become more mobile in communication for instance SMS
(Short Message Service) and it is called Computer Mediated-Communication
(CMC). Mostly the CMC is text-based which is similar with written
communication (Herring, 2001). Moreover, Internet access is also being a part of
CMC that attracts many people to use it. It is also stated that language will change
1). The sophisticated
technologies, the developments of new products and new experiences must need
new proper words to refer them more clearly and efficiently. Internet itself makes
some changes into the nature of language. It is called Internet Language or
NetSpeak. Davis and Brewer, quoted from Crystal (2001), explained that it is
writing that very often reads as if it were being spoken and as if the sender were
writing talking. Internet language or NetSpeak is invariably more dynamic,
unpredictable, spontaneous, and public (Thurlow, 2001). Therefore, it appeals its
users since every written message is read as it is spoken by the sender. The
different types and styles of language are being written as it is spoken, for instance
language of geeks and its jargons which has a strong influence to the characteristic
of NetSpeak (Crystal, 2001: 25).
It is clear that the NetSpeak has different mode which combines the
spoken and written mode. One of the differences between the spoken and written
mode itself is the usage of paralanguage. In spoken mode, people could transfer
message featured with intonation, tone, pitch, etc which helps the sender to
quite different. Although it is text-based, the user of NetSpeak still could employ
some paralanguage expressions which make it looks like it is being spoken
face-to-face. Thus, the form of paralanguage itself is also in written form. The
existence of paralanguage in NetSpeak somehow appeals many users to join the
conversation or getting related into Internet. It is also stated that without that kind
of expressions, the chatting on the Net would be pretty boring (Roeder in
Voichici, 2004).
Commonly, paralanguage is always related to non-verbal elements such
as tone, pitch, facial expression, gesture and many more but it is quite different in
NetSpeak. Everything is written and so does the expression. For the example, the
use of exaggerate of exclamation mark (!!!!) which means that the sender wants
something to be necessarily noticed. There are some others paralanguage features
which would clearly present later. As the nature of paralanguage, it is not literally
seen as language, but one of the language properties which seem to have
important role in the communication of meaning (Crystal, 1975: 163).
Internet access makes people invent new tool in communication which is
well-known as Social Networking. The emergence of Social Networking Sites
(SNS)leads people to interact more often to share interest, activities, ideas or
real-life connections within their individual network. In 2005, Facebook was
introduced by Mark Zuckerberg. This sophisticated technology where people
could share their daily-life activities and photos becomes one of the most popular
sites in the world. According to Hachman (2012), there are over 900 million
interest on Social Networking. One year later, a new site came out namely Twitter.
It also made a hit in lately worldwide raking of Social Networking services which
already have had 200 million active users in 2012 (Twitter Blog, 2012). It is quite
different from its competitor, Facebook. The most striking difference is the
limitation of words that people could share. Facebook has no limitation words to
say, people could write whatever they want to say. Meanwhile, Twitter only
tweets
Twitterdistinguish and also considered as online micro-blogging. The other one is
communication concept. Widely known, the Facebook user should ask the other
Otherwise, Twitter follower and following
tweets, they will get many followers. While following
is like if the users have the same interest or want update news, they will follow
some accounts which contain their interest without asking permission. Twitter
somehow is more public than Facebook if the users do not lock their tweets.
Tweets contain of many things such as news, spam, promotion,
pass-along value, pointless-babbles and conversation. According to pearanalytics
(2009), pointless-babbles and conversation have the biggest percentage while the
rest share in the similar percentage. Pointless- I am
watching TV now tweet, is like sharing their daily life activities or does not
contain any serious thing on the tweets. While the conversational is like chatting
@
Twitter is one of the social media where the paralanguage features could
be found easily. Twitter is also a place where people make new term in
abbreviating or committing a new symbol of emotion or known as emoticon. Even
though, the users only update their status, they mostly like to put some unique
symbols to express their condition or feeling at that time. It could be seen at the
example below:
DAY 2 complete This filming is killin me a bit more than usual for some reason
-_-This was tweeted by Ryan Higa (American Youtube artist) when he had a
tour in March 15, 2012. Seeing the tweet, it might be unfamiliar to people who do
not have a Twitter account. Firstly look, it is included as informal language.
on the second day when it was completed. He expressed what he felt on
that day using symbols.
It can be seen that the paralanguage features is used to make the tweet
news or only the daily life which is known as pointless-babbles. Although it is a
pointless-babble, they always use an informal language or usually known as
colloquial. They share everything they have like they are talking to many people
whom will respond them. That is Twitter where many people get together in one
place to share their daily life like they communicate to each other.
Besides, there are many people registered on Twitter including men,
women, young, adult who have many different interests and jobs including
celebrities as well. Twitter allows celebrities to have the blue-checked mark as a
sign that it has verified that the account is the real account from the celebrities.
The American Celebrities Twitter accounts would be used as the object of this
followers so it could be a good representative
since their style could be imitated .
Therefore, based on this phenomenon, this research is focused to analyze
the paralanguage features on tweets, containing babbles and conversational
between the Twitter users. The object of this analysis is the tweets written by
American Celebrities. It attempts to find out the variety of paralanguage features
used on Twitter and describe the meaning of each paralanguage feature in the
tweet. PARALANGUAGE
B. Problem Statement
The research is conducted to answer the following problems:
1. What are the types of paralinguistic features that are commonly used on
Twitter?
2. What is the meaning of each paralinguistic features which is employed
in tweets on Twitter?
C. Research Objective
The research is conducted to:
1. Find out the types of paralinguistic features that are mostly used on
Twitter.
2. Describe the meaning of each paralinguistic features which is employed in
tweets on Twitter
D. Research Limitation
The research is to find out the types of paralanguage features that are
mostly used on Twitter and to describe each meaning. The types of paralinguistic
features are using the classification from the most common strategies used by the
user on Internet from Thurlow (2001) and Carey (1980). It consists of vocal
spelling, lexical surrogates and many others which will be explained more detail
more than five hundred thousand millions of followers and are also verified by
Twitter.
E. Research Methodology
This research belongs to a descriptive research. It refers to the method of
solving problems by collecting, classifying and interpreting the data of the
research.
In this research, the paralinguistic featurescommonly used on Twitter are
described. Firstly, choose the Celebrities whom fulfill the requirement which are
verified by Twitter. Thus, the data are collected from the tweets that are written by
the Celebrities, the data must tweets which contain the paralanguage feature.
Then, classify them into the determined categorizations to find out the type of
paralinguistic featuresused on Twitter. Finally, analyze the paralinguistic features
to describe what its meaning.
F. Research Benefits
The research is expected to be beneficial for:
1. students of the English Department: to let them know that the new social
networking services, considered as micro-blogging, named Twitter makes
such a phenomenon in English language. It also gives information that
Twitter is a place where people use the paralanguage features in written
2. lecturers: to provide information paralinguistic features that is used in
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) especially on Twitter. The
forms of paralinguistic features are served in order to be beneficial for
further research especially on the paralanguage expression.
3. other researchers: to inspire a good alternative to conduct researches in
language study and to give the information with the evidence about the
contribution of Twitter in our language especially English and its Internet
Slang used by the American Celebrities on Twitter.
G. Thesis Organization
CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION. It covers Research Background, Problem
Statement, Research Objective, Research Benefits, Research
Limitation and Thesis Organization.
CHAPTER II : LITERARY REVIEW. It discusses Communication,
Language, Speech Community, Internet Language,
Paralinguistics, Paralanguage in CMC, Twitter, Celebrities,
and Other Related Study.
CHAPTER III : RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, covering Type of
Research, Data and Data Source, Sample and Sampling
Technique, Research Procedure, Technique of Collecting Data,
CHAPTER IV : ANALYSIS. It covers Introduction to Analysis, Data Analysis
and Discussion.
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter will concern with the literature review which describes
some points the theories as the bases to the analyses. In order to make this
analysis is well understood, the researcher needs some theories related to support
the ideas and to solve the problems found in the analysis.
a. Communication
Middle English (Old
French) comunicacion, from Latin communicatio(n-), from the verb communicare
'to share'. So, communication is a way to share thoughts and express emotions
which contains a message, so that there will be understanding among those who
involve in it.
Communication is a process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts,
feelings and emotions through speech, signal, writing, or behavior (Notes Desk,
Williamson (2008) also tries to explain communication with a diagram
Figure 2.1. Diagram of Communication
In another point, Cooley (in Effendy, 1981: 40) explains communication
as the mechanism causing relationship between human and thing that develop
symbols of thought, along with the device to send the message in space and to
record it in time. This includes gesture, mimic, sound, written text, telegraph,
telephone and any latest invention to master space and time.
As stated above, it can be concluded that communications is a process of
transmitting information, ideas, feelings, and attitudes from one person to another
which have the same interpretation toward the massage transmitted so that the one
who gets the message could give response to the sender.
b. Language
As stated in Chapter I, language is the main instrument of
communication. Harttman also states that language is the most fundamental means
of communication (1972: 123). Therefore, every communication needs language
to transfer a message or idea. Practically, language is divided into three forms.
Firstly, it is spoken language. It is language that is transferred orally or with
spoken words. It can be face-to-face communication or speech, or communication
written, language that is delivered by written form and symbols. Lastly, it is silent
language. It is language which is not spoken and written. It is language that is
transferred with body gesture like hands or facial expression.
Many experts also define language into some definitions. According to
Yawkey (quoted in Mukhtar Abadi, 2010: 1), language is arbitrary system of
articulated sound made of by a group of human as means of carrying on their
society. The other definition from Sapir, he says that language is a purely human
and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by
means of voluntarily produced symbols (1921:8). It can be concluded that
language is a symbol that is produced by human to communicate.
c. Speech Community
According to Morgan (2004) explains that speech community is a
concept which takes a fact that language represents, embodies, construct and
constitutes meaningful participation in a society and culture.
Bloomfield (as quoted in Morgan, 2004), states that speech community is
a group of people who used the same set of speech signal. The members of the
group share the same set norms about the use of language which is distinctive
with any other groups or community.
In short, it might be concluded that speech community is a group of
people who shares the same way of speaking. They use sign, symbol and style
which are different with the other groups. The one who do not belong to the
not recognized how to use the language and what kinds of signal employed in the
community.
d. Internet Language
Internet language is language which broadly used by the users of
Internet. Linguists are called it as NetSpeak or Computer-Mediated
Communication (CMC). What makes different between language and internet
language is only the medium of transferring the language itself. The Internet is an
electronic, global and interactive medium and each of these properties has
consequence for the kind of language found there (Crystal, 2001: 24).
Furthermore, Herring (2001) states that CMC is communication produced by
people interact with one another by transferring messages via network computer.
Instead of the medium, the other difference is the way of transmitting the
language. Commonly, people have already known about the form of how
language is transmitted, such as spoken and written language. According to
Vincent & Kathryn (2005), spoken is a dynamic transfer of information since it
could employ signal like gesture, intonation, volume, pitch, pause, movement and
any visual cues such as appearance while written is a fairly static from of transfer
as it could only employ written symbols or signs to transfer the message. Based
on the way a person exploits words, oral and written are a
Donnell, as quoted in Chafe & Tannen (1987: 386), finds that the written
contained more gerunds, participles, attributive adjectives, passives and modal
progressive auxiliaries. Seeing the differences, what NetSpeak should be included
addition, Hale and Scanlon (1999) in Wired Style explain that NetSpeak is
NetSpeak is a mixture
between spoken and written language. Crystal (2001:28) also adds that NetSpeak,
as a form of communication, belongs to both spoken and written mode. Most of
CMC (include NetSpeak) are text-based which is messages are typed on a
computer keyboard and read as text on computer screen, typically the sender and
the receiver are in the different location (Herring, 2001). Although it is written,
tal 2001:29).
According to Crystal (2001: 6), there are four situations on Internet
boards which could be distinguished which their language is seen significantly
distinctive. There are Email, Chatgroups (Synchronous and Asynchronous),
Virtual worlds, and WWW (World Wide Web).
Email originally comes from the phrase . It is the use
of computer system to transfer message between users (Crystal, 2001: 10). It is
quite similar with SMS (short message service) which they transfer their message
users
account on some sites for instance Yahoo!, Google, Live Messenger, etc.
Chatgroup is divided into two situations which are distinguished by the
time of the users log on. The one is asynchronous group chat. This kind of
only read the news or issues. Although the members of the group are already late
with the news or discussions, they still could catch up everything since the sites is
stored in some format and made in available for every users (Crystal, 2001: 11).
For examples are bulletin boards and mailing list.
The other one is synchronous group chat. It needs the user to register and
log on for entering the site. According to Crystal, this situation is when the user
spite of time, some of the sites does not record and save the conversations. So, it
is difficult for people to join conversation if they do not log on at the same time.
The next one is Virtual worlds. Crystal (2001) explains that virtual
worlds are all imaginary where people could enter and use text-based, they have
fantasy social interaction. The social interaction might be in campus, in school,
market and many more. It also has correlation with online games. This kind of
games use Internet to play and the users could interact with other players on it.
The last one is WWW
other persons, somehow they would directly relate it with the Internet. Crystal
(2001: 13) also says that the full collection of all computers linked to the Internet
which contains documents or graphics that are freely accessible by any persons or
discussing some issues. In short, WWW is a place where linguistic varieties are
gathered as for example the four situations above are also using WWW to make
their own site or domain. Crystal (2001: 195) also adds the language varieties are
happened in all language features on NetSpeak such as graphic (the typewritten,
handwritten, and printed text), the orthographic features (like spelling,
punctuations and capital letters), as well as a distinctive grammar and vocabulary
features.
It could be seen that the Internet Language, now, might lead to some
changes in our language. The users play some new words, ignore the punctuation
and use emoticons (would be explained later). Some linguists are still observing
with the unique features on NetSpeak which could attract many users. They also
want to know whether what the impacts of NetSpeak to our language or how the
language is employed by us on NetSpeak.
e. Paralinguistics
Paralinguistics is a study about paralanguage. Thus, according to Crystal
(1975: 162), paralanguage is not a language but it is rather a bridge between
non-linguistic forms of communicative behavior and the central areas of verbal
linguistic study such as grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Paralanguage is
also a non-lexical component of communication by speech, for example
intonation, pitch and speed of speaking, hesitation noises, gesture, and facial
expression (http://oxforddictionaries.com/). It could be seen that paralanguage
the way people transfer message with exploiting such kind of non-verbal elements
to modify meaning and convey emotion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralanguage). Thus, Crystal (1975: 163) also adds
that these kinds of elements seem to have important role to play in the
communication of meaning.
Therefore, it could be concluded that paralanguage is an element such as
pitch, intonation or facial expression which is employed by the sender to express
their emotion in communicating the messages.
analysis can be directed towards forms of print which mimic, contain elements of
oral communication. These include comic strips, novels, graffiti and computer
f. Paralanguage in CMC
The presence of Internet Language does make some distinctive features.
As it has been stated before, CMC or NetSpeak has distinctive way of
write they way people talk CMC
or NetSpeak is actually text-based which means that it is lack of prosody and
paralanguage. Hence, the users of NetSpeak or CMC are different. They start
employing some features which could be indicated as paralanguage. This feature
is one of the reasons why somehow the NetSpeak written speech
Paralanguage is commonly related with oral communication such as
intonation, pitch, gesture or facial expression. Thus, they are non-verbal element
other hand, somehow NetSpeak or CMC still could express their facial expression
or give the intonation to the text. The way they express their feelings and add
intonation with the use of punctuations, capitalizations, etc. There are some
paralanguage features which have been categorized from into five (Carey, 1980):
1. Vocal spelling
These features include non-standard spelling which can bring
attention to sound qualities such as //weeeeell//, //breeeeak//, etc.
2. Lexical surrogates
People use words to describe their tone of voice in the message,
for example //
all the problem involved in transmitting files//.
3. Spatial arrays
Spatial arrays are actual graphics: arrangements of letters to
, users often leave the space
between words, combine words together, or skip line within
paragraph. This kind of features is clearly seen in the example below:
//$$$$$$$$$$$$$ When the next bill comes in from EIES//
4. Manipulation of grammatical markers
Grammatical markers such as capitalizations, periods, commas,
etc are manipulated by users to add stress, modify tone and a signal
change of voice. It could be seen in the example:
//Welcome Abroad!!!!!//, //
5. Minus features
The absence of certain features could exploit the tone of the
message. For example, a user may have spelling error and not pay
attention to paragraphing or capitalization. It indicates that the user is
in hurry in typing the message.
As it has been mentioned before, NetSpeak leads to language change. The
changes here mostly happen on the language varieties. Crystal (2001: 67) explains
that the arrival of NetSpeak, as the emerging of varieties. The Internet users start
to search the new vocabulary to describe their experiences, to capture the
character of the electronic world and to overcome the communicative limitation of
its technology.
Different with the classification from Carey, Thurlow (2001) states that
communication nowadays as the emergence of Internet is highly interactive that
demands for speed, spontaneity and often brevity. Therefore, he has categorized
some the most common strategies more detail that are usually used by the user to
keep it up on Internet. He classified it into eight groups:
1. Abbreviations
It includes the letter homophones, acronyms and the mixture
of both. Letter homophones are Internet Slang that is the most used
In the same notion,
Crystal (2001:86) states that individual word could be reduced or
shortened two or three letters e.g
Meanwhile, acronyms are quite similar with the
abbreviations, but it might contain not only word or phrase, but also
sentence (Crystal, 2001:86) e.g.
2. Punctuations
There are some unique forms used by the Internet users for
3. Capitalizations
It is the use of capital letters in the sentence, phrase or word.
4. Symbols
5. Onomatopoeic
It is word that imitates of the sound that it describes.
on the NetSpeak which is more or less quite same with interjection,
such as wow, yeaah, etc.
6. Emoticon
some punctuations and form human facial expression, for instance
7. Direct requests
It is an acronym which is commonly used to ask the identity
in the conversation. This is mostly happened on mIRC (massive
Internet Relay Chat) A/S/L
8. Colored graphic
This kind of Internet Slang depends on the program which is
featured by the medium. For example for coloring text, what are ya
doin? and smiley like the figure below
Figure 2.2.
g. Twitter
1. Brief History of Twitter
Twitter was created in March 21, 2006 and launched in July in the same
Flickr. twttr
since so many people was randomly following the twitter team makers. Thus, they
and not randomly followed by random users. The users could manage their
following users as they want.
As twitter.com launched, back then only a few people knew its value. It
was like a common social media since there were no limitation characters as it
worked for months. It was quite similar to SMS (Short Message Service). It is
written only 160 characters but it can be multiple as long as they want to say and
then send it. Then, the team maker decided to place a limit on number of
characters which finally settled on 140 characters. In February 2007, Jack Dorsey
Finally, twitter.com has reached its success as it won an award in the
Blog category. Although not many people registered on twitter, at least people
already recognized that there was a new term on social networking site that only
allows you to write in only 140 characters which let you make a change to the
world (Sagolla, 2009). Dom Sagola is the co-creator of Twitter who was in the
same team with Jack Dorsey when they launched and developed Twitter.com.
Twitter is being established in many ways to make it more perfect. In
June 2008, twitter launched a verification program. Stone (2009), co-founder
Twitter, says:
He also adds that due to so many fake accounts, the reason why Twitter
introduces this program. There is special seal for those who deserve it like blue
check mark on their profile, as shown below:
Figure 2.3. The Verified Account
2. How Twitter works
Twitter is a unique social networking site which people need time to
know and get familiar with it. Twitter actually is quite similar with Yahoo!
Messenger or mIRC but twitter is somehow more public. Twitter is built not only
for chatting or having conversation but also for sharing news or daily life updating
like we usually see on Facebook.
Firstly, getting start on twitter, we should register and wait for the
confirmation on our Email. As the confirmation come, we could sign in with the
accept friend or ignore
follow and unfollow lla (2009) adds
the interaction model and visual metaphor for the services were constantly in flux.
regularly. So, everyone, even they are strangers, still could communicate if only
they have the same interests. being followed or follow someone is not always that
we are being friends like we know on Facebook, it is more like we need to know
everything from someone, for instance celebrities daily activities or news, so that
Steven Johnson (2009) describes twitter in very clear and quite simple
that:
principle of followers. When you choose to follow another
page. so that, if you follow 10 peo
tweets scrolling down the page containing breakfast-cereal updates, interesting new links, music recommendations, even about the news of educations.
3. The Features of Twitter
There are many devices that are served by twitter. These devices
somehow are really unfamiliar for those whom use it at the first time. These are
some explanations about the features of Twitter:
1. Tweet = everything which is posted by the user. It could be
containing pointless-babbles like sharing their activities or news.
2. Mentions or Replies =
3. Direct Message = it is Twitter feature when the users do not want to
in the SMS (short message service).
4.
the mentions instead of only typing her/his username. He/ she replies
with quoting the mentions that he/she gets.
For example:
Retweet = i just did little monster :-) RT @thefaithmonster I wonder
it @ladygaga will ever notice my tweets :-(
--- @thefaithmonster.
Quoting = TheRealRobyD: @xzibit Whats The Name Of The
---- @TheRealRobyD.
5. Hashtag
Tuning into a hashtag on Twitter is a handy way to dig into any
interest, topic or timely conversation (Twitter blog, 2011). It is word
Trending Topic hashtag on Twitter:
arose the hashtag #here2help in support of those who were affected.
By clicking on the hashtag in a Tweet or doing a direct search, you
others who are sharing information and offering aid to those looking
These are some article and journals related about Twitter:
1. The New Media Consortium (2007).
It concerns about how communication is (still) changing. It
says that nowadays internet has made a big progress and impact
towards communication. When email has been found, then people
start keeping in touch everywhere and in anytime like diminishing the
time and place. It does not take a long time to people to
communicate. Even now, the emergence of Social Networking Sites
short messages
Language. He adds by saying that language is evolving and changing,
and it is fundamentally unable to be static. He wrote in his article
that:
As Twitter supporters have pointed out, a clear timeline and up-to-date commentary show real-time
reactions to breaking news. Twitter also facilitates
studies of sociolinguistics, as it is easy to follow word trends for different regions and demographics. Social sciences theoretically are in favor of
vehicles like Twitter, which provide
unprecedented glimpses into the evolution of language,
thought that human language evolved in universally
linguistic structures in our brains. Instead, language seems to have evolved along varied, complicated paths, guided less by neurological settings than
cultural circ So it is culture that shapes
In short, Twitter is an interesting object to observe since this
features and even people see twitter as the matter of debating issues.
h. Celebrities
In entertainment industry, artists are usually stated as celebrities. The
xford Dictionary, is originally from late Middle English (in
the sense 'solemn ceremony'): from Old French celebrite or Latin celebritas,
it could be said that celebrity is
someone whom honored by people. Celebrities are close to fame and being
famous, so that they could give a big impact to society. King (2011) also wrote an
article about celebrity and impacts on society. She explains that:
I use celebrities as examples because they act as good reflections for us. When Larry King has a heart attack and tells his audience how it prompted him to stop smoking, he
Montel Williams for MS. When Teri Hatcher reveals that her uncle sexually abused her, it makes it easier for us to admit that it happened to us as well. When Britney Spears is brought to the hospital and evaluated for bipolar disorder, we feel differently about our own depression. When another politician is caught having sex with someone not his spouse and tries to squirm out of it, we see our own reluctance to reveal our own secrets. So the impact of celebrities can be positive as well as negative.
It is clearly stated that celebrity does give a big impact to society both
their life or their speaking or writing style somehow based on the celebrity that
they like.
i. Other Related Studies
Paralanguage is non-verbal element in communication. People
unintentionally employ it when they have conversation or speech for instance
intonation, pitch or facial expression. Meanwhile, the arrival of Internet has made
some changes to how the way people communicate and the language used. It is
usually called as Internet Language. It is quite new in the field which people could
not easily acknowledge with. Therefore, there are only a few people have started
observing it. It also could be hard enough to observe since nowadays there is no
fixed theory and rules used on Internet. Internet somehow a place where people
could create any kinds of new words, new terms of using punctuations, or even
new way in expressing their feeling freely. Hence, there are two journals which
also discussed about the non-verbal communication (paralanguage).
The one is Annamaria Kilyeni (2009), University of Timisoara. Her
elements which are usually employed in the printed advertisement. She found that
some of nonverbal elements were used in the Advertisement for example the
pictures, the alphabetic letters, etc. She emphasized that paralanguage also plays
an important role in communicating the advertisement.
The other journal is entitled Mediated Gesture: Paralinguistic
gesture on Computer-Mediated Communication. He found that some gestures
were employed by the user in the way they communicate like they were talking
face-to-face. Based on this research, the researcher is interested to observe the
paralinguistic features which are used on Twitter as of the most popular social
media. Thus, the objective is to know the types of paralinguistic features used on
CHAPTER III
Research Methodology
a. Type of Research
This study belongs to a descriptive qualitative research. It is a qualitative
which employs descriptive method. Qualitative research is a research relying
primarily on the collection of qualitative data (Johnson and Christensen, 2000:
17). Qualitative research is a research which is conducted with observation and
interview, and the data are usually in the form of words. So, it is different from
quantitative research which always employs numbers in the research.
Meanwhile, the purposes of descriptive research are describing the facts,
their characteristics and also the relationship among the phenomena being
observed systematically, factually and accurately (Nazir, 1988: 63). Employing
descriptive qualitative research, the researchers generally focus on the
phenomenon, collect the data and draw a conclusion.
b. Data and Source of Data
Subroto (1992) points out that data are the materials which are selected in
a research, for instance, in the form of words or phrases. The data source refers to
the subject from which the data are taken from magazines, newspaper, or some
others media.
The data in this research are the tweets that written text containing
paralinguistic features used by the American celebrities. The data were taken on
verified account from the American celebrities because later this research wants to
find out the paralinguistic features used by the users of Twitter and celebrities are
taken as the sample. Hence, the celebrities are somehow the portrait of common
people whom could imitate their style.
c. Sample and Sampling Technique
According to Moleong (1989), sample refers to a group of individual
which are taken from population. The purpose is to describe specific things in
data. It is taken selectively as much as needed meanwhile it is already represented
all the data. The act of selecting the sample is sampling technique (Mason and
Bramble, 1997: 113). Sampling technique concerns with the way of researcher to
select the data and to limit the number of data from data source. In qualitative
research, the data source should represent the information rather than the
population (Sutopo, 1989: 37).
Twitter is a new communication which publically opens for anyone
whom wants to keep in touch with others. As stated in Chapter I, twitter contains
not only conversation, but also pointless babbles, news, self promotion, spam and
pass along value. Meanwhile, the intention of this research is finding out the
paralinguistic features used by the users of Twitter especially American
celebrities, therefore the tweets which are taken are only the conversation and
pointless babbles since it usually contains the paralinguistic features. Besides,
content. The criterion for the sample of this research is that the tweets should
show the paralinguistic featureson Twitter.
d. Research Procedure
Research procedure is a series of activity which are done by the
researcher to do a research. The research procedure is arranged as follow:
1. Collecting the data
5. Drawing conclusion and giving suggestion based on the result of the
analysis.
e. Technique of Collecting Data
In qualitative research, a technique to collect the data must be concerned
to obtain the adequate data. As mentioned before, the data of this research include
the tweets that are written on Twitter by the American Celebrities which contains
the paralinguistic features. Those data were obtained through carefully reading all
tweets such as words, phrase, sentence and even symbols that contains the
2. Reading all their tweets from the American Celebrities.
3. Collecting all their tweets that contain paralinguistic features.
4. Choosing the tweets to have it as the sample since there are a lot of
tweets containing same paralinguistic features.
5. Getting about five tweets every celebrities. It was thirty five tweets
taken totally.
f. Data Coding
To make the analyzing of data easier, data coding is employed based on
categorization. The data coding is as follow:
1. The types of paralinguistic features are classified as follow:
Abb: Abbreviations
This group is divided again into two groups:
- LH : Letter homophone
PUNC: Punctuations
This group is divided again into three groups:
- A : Asterisk (*)
2. Arabic numbers (01, 02, 03,...) are used to indicate the series of data.
The illustration of data coding as explained above is as follow:
For example Datum PUNC/I/5/KC should be read as: the datum is no. 5
of the category of Punctuation. The more specific classification is Multiple
Exclamation Marks. It is taken from Kelly Clarkson tweet (KC).
g. Technique of Data Analysis
The data had been collected are analyzed by conducting following steps:
1.) Classifying the paralinguistic features with the theory from Thurlow
(2001), the data are divided based into six groups. There are
abbreviations, punctuation, symbols, capitalizations, onomatopoeic,
and emoticon.
2.) Analyzing all the data in the form of tweets (written text) containing
babbles and conversation.
3.) Describing all the paralinguistic features used on Twitter based from
each classification.
4.) Interpreting the tweet as well as explaining the function of the
paralinguistic featuresone by one.
CHAPTER IV
research will focus on the various types of paralinguistic featuresused on Twitter
and describe its meaning. This chapter will give detail descriptions about the
problem stated.
This chapter comprises of three parts namely Introduction, Data
Analysis, and Discussion. The first part is Introduction. It is the general overview
of the steps to analyze the data. As it has mentioned in Chapter III, the research
producer has five important points which the first and the second have been
explained also in the Chapter III. Therefore, this chapter will analyze the data one
by one based on the types of paralinguistic features.
The second part is Data Analysis which classifies the types of
paralinguistic features as it is used by Twitter users especially the American
Celebrities as the object of this research and conveys its meaning. It involves the
analysis of data which is defining and classifying the tweets the types of the
paralinguistic featuresand analyzing the data based on the problem statement in
the research. The paralinguistic features found on Twitter are classified and later
defined each features to make it easy to recognize. Each analysis contains the
the Data Interpretation, mentioning type of paralinguistic features to analyze its
meaning. The last chapter is Discussion. It will present about the result of the data
analysis. It will also discuss about the findings from the results as it is used to
answer the questions in the problem statement.
B.Data Analysis
B.1 Types of Paralinguistic Features
C. Thurlow (2001) theory classifies the most common features of
NetSpeak used by its users into eight groups. Meanwhile, in this research, the
researcher only found six groups of all. They are Abbreviations, Punctuations,
Symbols, Capitalization, Onomatopoeic and Emoticons. As it has stated from the
Chapter III, the data are totally thirty five from seven American Artists. From all
the data, the researcher got seventy five paralinguistic features employed by the
American Artists. Based on the classifications, the numbers of paralinguistic
featuresderived from the types are shown in the following list:
Table 4.1. Classifications of Paralinguistic Features
The Classification of paralinguistic features Number
The types will be explained more detail in the following analysis below.
The data analysis will be analyzed based on each type. These are the
paralinguistic features found by the researcher:
B.1.1 Abbreviations
B.1.1.1 Letter Homophones
1. Working on a new vid with @chestersee for the next week with
some VERY special guest..
2. Sometimes you just have to let people grown up on their own. Even
if u 4 them.
3. Just finished rehearsals. Resisting the urge 2 stuff my face w/ pizza,
what's my healthier option here?!
4. Aw! Ur cute! Hope u feel better!
B.1.1.2. Acronyms
1. When a good song comes on makes you run faster on the treadmill
lol
2. OMG
3. RIP Adam Yauch
5. Glamberts FTW!
B.1.2 Punctuations
B.1.2.1 Multiple Exclamation Marks
1. My man @Luccadoes KILLED it tonight on @NBCTheVoice!!!
Wow. This dude is the real deal!!!
2. Hope everyone tunes into #Glee tonight!!!!!!!
3. #payphone is officially number one!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
Thanks to all who made it happen!!!!
4. Twitter PARTY!!!
5. Today I am 30 years old YEAHHHHHHHH!!!!
6. sorry all!!!! i wish i could keep chatting, but work calls!!!! xoxo
7. #THANKYOU!!!
3. Tomorrow we narrow it down to our top10... So much
nice... and working which is the best!
8. oh, one more thing.... you can follow me at @DameLindsay
9. Lmao, Pacman destroyed Bradley... Someone got paid big time
4. Please support @mikelohan and @SmokeyRobotic to make the
Top 3.
5. but, i'm spending #1on1 time with my mum @dinalohan which is
nice... and working which is the best!
6. Working on a new vid with @chestersee for the next week with
some VERY special guest..
7. My man @Luccadoes KILLED it tonight on @NBCTheVoice!!!
8. Please vote for my boy @jermainepaul on the voice tonight!
B.1.3.3. Number Sign
1. Day 1 of #interneticon complete!
2. Just finished rehearsals. Resisting the urge 2 stuff my face w/ pizza,
what's my healthier option here?! #midnitesnack
3. but, i'm spending #1on1 time with my mum @dinalohan which is
nice... and working which is the best!
4. #payphone is officially number one!!!!!!!!!
5. 2 million followers? What are you people thinking? :)
#THANKYOU!!!
6. Hope everyone tunes into #Glee tonight!!!!!!!
7. Check out this #OMA Fan Army Manifesto featuring a few of my
amazing fans
B.1.5 Onomatopoeic
1. oh, one more thing....
2. dang
3. gonna be a looooong flight home!
4. Aw! Ur cute! Hope u feel better!
5. hahha I think they're old kill city jeans
6. Go team Blake!!! WOOHOOOO!!!!
7. Wow. This dude is the real deal!!!
8. Amen! Haha
9. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! Thanks to all who made it happen!!!!
10. oh... it was just a rumor...
11. Today I am 30 years old YEAHHHHHHHH!!!!
B.1.6 Emoticon
1. This filming is killin me a bit more than usual for some reason -_-
2. I knew all of this travellng & no sleep would make me sick :-(
3. I'm excited :)
5. Excited to see the official Billboard 200 when it comes out
tomorrow! ;)
6. The fan request song tonight is one of my favorite artists so I'm
very excited :)
7. sorry all!!!! i wish i could keep chatting, but work calls!!!! xoxo
B.2 Meaning of Paralinguistic Features
variation of abbreviations and acronyms (David Crystal, 2001:81). This type will
be explained in the following:
Data Interpretation:
On this tweet, he shared about his new video and worked with his friend
Chester See (@chestersee). Seeing the bold word, it is included as a contraction.
The bold word vid
Datum Abb/LH/2/KK
Sometimes you just have to let people grown up on their own. Even if u know
4 them. They will look back & realize their mistakes
Context of Situations:
It was tweet-ed by Kim Kardashian in May 9, 2012. She is an American
Socialite who sometimes becomes actress and model. As a socialite, she has many
followers whose tweets are always be concerned about.
Data Interpretation:
On this tweet, she wanted to share something about living. She asked her
followers to realize something that she had before about life. There are two
abbreviations on this tweet, such as u and 4
Phonologically, these two
forms of abbreviations are similar with the original one.
Just finished rehearsals. Resisting the urge 2 stuff my face w/ pizza, what's my healthier option here?! #midnitesnack
Context of Situation:
It was tweet-ed by Katy Perry in May 23, 2012. She stated that she just
finished her rehearsals. She seemed get a bit tired as she stated that she tried not to
eat the pizza. Then, she asked her followers about something good to eat in the
midnight.
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, there are two abbreviations employed by the user. There are
2 and w/
Datum Abb/LH/4/KP
Aw! Ur cute! Hope u feel better! RT @RyanSeacrest: Backstage still singing
@katyperry, love that song. Who knew we had night vision cameras?
Context of Situation:
The tweet is from Katy Perry in April 26, 2012. She was being a guest star
presenter) tweet for her. As Ryan Seacrest met Katy Perry at American Idol, he
he was cute and she hoped that Ryan Seacrest would get better. In that time, Ryan makes you run faster on the treadmill lol
Context of Situation:
It was tweet-ed by Kim Kardashian. She wanted to tell her followers about
her daily life. She said that she already had workout and she added that when you
were listening to music, you would get more power.
Data Interpretation:
although it did not make sense. Therefore, the user employed this abbreviation to
express that as if they also laugh in real life, the users mostly use this on their
Datum Abb/Acr/2/KK
OMG
Context of Situation:
The tweet above is from Kim Kardashian in May 21, 2012. She said her
trending topic in the world. Getting a
tweet-ed about her
tweet. Her tweet was unknowingly
being trended on Twitter and she did not expect before.
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, t Oh My God actually. It is also
included as acronym since the user only wrote the initial letters. The user
employed since she was amazed. She did not expect that her tweet
d in worldwide trending topic.
Datum Abb/Acr/3/KP
RIP Adam Yauch
Context of Situation:
It is tweet-ed by Katy Perry in May 5, 2012. Katy Perry is an American
to be an American rapper and songwriter. He died in May 4, 2012. This tweet
above was tweeted by the user and dedicated it to the late Adam Yauch.
Data Interpretation:
The user, at beginning of the tweet,
from Rest In Peace. She tweeted RIP
expresses her condolence to Adam Yauch.
Datum Abb/Acr/4/RH
Lmao, Pacman destroyed Bradley... Someone got paid big time
Context of Situation:
It was tweet-ed by Ryan Higa in June 10, 2012. At that time, there was a
Boxing match between Manny Pacquiao (Pacman) and Timothy Bradley. Finally,
Bradley won over the great boxing player, Pacquiao.
Data Intepretation:
lmao tweet. It actually
stands f . The user stated that if Pacman could beat
Bradley, someone would get much money this time.
win over Bradley. The user used the acronym to show what his feeling about the
match.
Datum Abb/Acr/5/AL
Glamberts FTW! Check out this #OMA Fan Army Manifesto featuring a few of my amazing fans
Context of Situation:
This tweet is from Adam Lambert in June 23, 2012. He asked his followers
to check the blog containing about his fans getting nominated in the O Music
fans club name of Adam Lambert.
Data Interpretation:
The datum above contains one unique form of word. It i FTW
to be a winner in the awards. He felt delighted when he saw his fans really
FTW
as his fans had become the real winner according to him.
From the data above show that the abbreviations could be concluded is a
way people simplify their statement by replacing the word with numbers or only
writing the initial letters of the phrase. Thus, the abbreviation could also be an
These abbreviations could be found
Internet. Besides, these expressions could modify or change the interpretation of
the reader.
B.2.2. Punctuations
B.2.2.1. Multiple exclamation marks
People are already used to know about the form of exclamation mark (!)
which is commonly used to command or ask someone to do something.
Meanwhile, on NetSpeak, the users have many different forms. They employ
multiple exclamation mark (!!!!!!!) on their statements. This type will be
explained in the following examples below:
Datum PUNC/I/1/ALV
My man @Luccadoes KILLED it tonight on @NBCTheVoice!!! Wow. This dude is the real deal!!!
Context of Situation:
This tweet tweets as he posted in May 1,
2012. He watched the Voice (an American talent show) and he watched that one
of the contestants named Tony Lucca (@Luccadoes) was really great in that night.
Data Interpretation:
The meaning of the multiple exclamation marks (!!!) that the user intends
performed at that time. He for Tony Lucca while also
added the multiple exclamation marks (!!!). It shows that the contestant was
amazing so he employed the many exclamations to give more emphasize in his
statement that Tony Lucca had the best performance.
Datum PUNC/I/2/LL
Hope everyone tunes into #Glee tonight!!!!!!!
Context of Situation:
tweets which she tweeted in May 16, 2012.
She asked her follower to watch Glee, American drama TV-series, since she was
being a guest star there.
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, the multiple exclamation marks means that she wants to
give an extra emphasize so that she really hoped that her followers really watched
multiple exclamation marks as it implies the song was really on the top in the
music chart.
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, the way he expressed what his feeling whose song was
getting the first and his gratitude to his fans, he employed multiple exclamation
marks (!!!) as he was really happy and he really thanked to his fans whom made it
being the top of the chart. It is used to give more stress which finally the song was
ranked the top. He also thanked for his fans who voted, downloaded and many
more so it could be the top chart.
Datum PUNC/I/4/AL
Twitter PARTY!!! C'mon ask me bout this album
Context of Situation:
It was tweet-ed by Adam Lambert in April 18, 2012. He stated that he had
Twitter party as he was welcomed many questions about his new album to be
answered by him.
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, he employed multiple exclamation marks (!!!) means that it
him about his new album. He exaggerated that he started the party by giving the
exclamation marks as he also wanted to catch his fans attention.
Datum PUNC/I/5/KC
Today I am 30 years old YEAHHHHHHHH!!!! I am happy, healthy, and looking forward to my thirties! Have an awesome day everybody!
Context of Situation:
tweets which she tweet-ed in April 24, 2012.
That day was her birthday. She stated that she was happy, healthy and looking
forward for her thirties.
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, she used the multiple exclamation marks (!!!) as giving
extra emphasize that today was her birthday and she became 30 years old. It
means that she finally reached the age of 30 and she was very happy about it.
Datum PUNC/I/6/LL
sorry all!!!! i wish i could keep chatting, but work calls!!!! xoxo have a glorious day!
It was tweet-ed in May 23, 2012 by Lindsay Lohan. She was very sorry to
her followers since she should stop their chatting as she should go to work. Before
she left, she wished her followers a glorious day.
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, she employed the multiple exclamation marks (!!!) there.
The meanings are quite same. The first one, she wanted to apologize for her
followers. It is reflected by the way she employed the exclamation marks after the
she was very sorry at that time. The other one, she
stated that she really wanted to keep chatting but she could not since she had to go
to work.
Datum PUNC/I/7/ALV
2 million followers? What are you people thinking? :) #THANKYOU!!!
Context of Situation:
This tweet tweets as he posted in April 10,
2012. He got more over two million followers.
Data Interpretation:
He gave multiple exclamation marks (!!!)
implies to give more stress which expresses his thanked to his followers. He was
really thankful with all the follower that he has.
Context of Situation:
The tweet above is from Kim Kardashian in May 21, 2012. She said her
trending topic in the world. Getting
tweeted about her
Data Interpretation:
In this datum, she employed multiple exclamation marks (!!) there to give
extra emphasize that actually she loved Bruce, her stepfather. Although what she
said had been trended, but she showed that she really loved him as she gives the
multiple exclamation mark.
Datum PUNC/I/9/AL
Context of Situation:
This tweet tweets in May 18, 2012. He is
an American singer. It was actually a tweet from Hannah Eileen (@_Tayshell) for
Adam Lambert (@adamlambert
