The Pragmatics of Retweeting

The Pragmatics of RetweetingA case study of academic uses of Twitter

Augsburg, 20.04.2012

Dr. Cornelius PuschmannHumboldt-Universität zu Berlin

1. Citing and quoting across genres and media• How is the discourse of others reproduced?• What linguistic problems arise when discourse is reproduced?• How do genre and medium influence quoting?

2. From retweeting to quoting?• Quoting in asynchronous CMC• Form and function of retweets• Corpus data• Quoting vs. retweeting

3. Theoretical implications for CMC research

This Talk

How is the discourse of others reproduced?

• “The relationship to another‘s words was equally complex and ambiguous in the Middle Ages... the boundary lines between someone else‘s speech and one‘s own speech were flexible, ambiguous, often deliberately distorted and confusing.“ (Bakhtin 1981, p. 69, from Moore 2011)

• “[..] reported speech is a crucial linguistic and stylistic problem.“ (Jakobson 1971, p. 130, from Moore 2011)

❖ reproducing the discourse of others is a linguistically and technologically complex process

How is the discourse of others reproduced?

speech

writing

sour

ce

analog

digital

reproduced in

targ

et

speech

writing analog

digital

direct quote

indirect quote

resu

lt

How is the discourse of others reproduced?

speech

writing

sour

ce

analog

digital

reproduced in

targ

et

speech

writing analog

digital

direct quote

indirect quote

resu

lt

analog

How is the discourse of others reproduced?

speech

writing

sour

ce

analog

digital

reproduced in

targ

et

speech

writing digital

direct quote

indirect quote

resu

lt

How is the discourse of others reproduced?

speech

writing

sour

ce

analog

digital

reproduced in

targ

et

speech

writing analog

digital

direct quote

indirect quote

resu

lt

How is the discourse of others reproduced?

• Quotatives to mark direct quotation in English:

• spoken: reporting verbs, be like X, be all X

• written: quotation marks, italics, indention, color

• gesture: air quotes

direct quotation indirect quotationMary said “I love you“. Mary said [that] she loves[/loved]

me.

encoding of two different origos requires an unambiguous marker(e.g. say + quotation marks)

harmonization of origo leads to shift in• tense• person• pronouns• spatial/temporal expressionsaddition of (optional)• complementizer

often assumed to be exact(+form +meaning)

assumed to be approximate(-form +meaning)

❖ use of indirect quotation over direct quotation depends on the available technological means❖ use of indirect quotation over direct quotation depends on the available technological means

How is the discourse of others reproduced?

How do genre and medium influence quoting?

• Quoting in journalism:

• "Quotes should be faithful to the words and meaning of the speaker." (Clark 1995, para 1)

• Quoting in academia:

• "Ethics, copyright laws, and courtesy to readers require authors to identify the sources of direct quotations and of any facts or opinions not generally known or easily checked." (Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, p. 594)

• "Whenever you quote or base your ideas on another person's work, you must document the source you used." (Online Citation Guide, U of California, Berkeley)

Quoting in asynchronous CMC

• The advent of the computer has changed the practice of quoting and citing considerably, introducing:

• “copy and paste“

• hyperlinking

• interface actions for sharing content such as liking on Facebook, reblogging on Tumblr, retweeting on Twitter, etc

Quoting in asynchronous CMC

janed@ABC.bigtel.com (Jane Doe) writes:>I can't believe how horrible Natalie looks. Has>she put on a lot of weight?I agree, but she has always had a somewhat round face, so if she did put on weight, I think that would be accentuated.

"For the receiver, quoting serves to situate the response in a discourse context [..] and thus facilitates the perception of an extended conversation as coherent. For the sender, it facilitates composition by allowing direct response without having to paraphrase the original message." (Eklundh 2010, para 3)

Quoting in asynchronous CMC

janed@ABC.bigtel.com (Jane Doe) writes:>I can't believe how horrible Natalie looks. Has>she put on a lot of weight?I agree, but she has always had a somewhat round face, so if she did put on weight, I think that would be accentuated.

"Quoting creates the illusion of adjacency in that it incorporates and juxtaposes (portions of) two turns [..] within a single message. When portions of previous text are repeatedly quoted and responded to, the resulting message can have the appearance of an extended conversational exchange" (Herring 1999, p. 8)

Quoting in asynchronous CMC

janed@ABC.bigtel.com (Jane Doe) writes:>I can't believe how horrible Natalie looks. Has>she put on a lot of weight?I agree, but she has always had a somewhat round face, so if she did put on weight, I think that would be accentuated.

"Quoting creates the illusion of adjacency in that it incorporates and juxtaposes (portions of) two turns [..] within a single message. When portions of previous text are repeatedly quoted and responded to, the resulting message can have the appearance of an extended conversational exchange" (Herring 1999, p. 8)

❖ direct quoting in CMC creates the illusion of immediacy

Twitter

• Twitter is a microblogging service launched in 2006

• short messages of up to 140 characters (tweets) are posted through the Twitter website and various clients via a computer or mobile phone

• 140 million users

• 340 million tweets produced each day

• widespread use in news, entertainment, political discourse, activism

single timeline

User timeline

aggregation of the timelines of other users

“All friends“ view

retweet counter and button

Native retweeting

Form and function of retweets

form function

• old form:manual addition of RT @USERNAME or via @USERNAME to a copied tweet

• new form:native retweeting by clicking a button

• pass on information

• comment/respond

• present own interests

• build social capital

• assembled between January 7th, 2010 and August 31st, 2010

• 589 unique users (scientists, science journalists)

• 410,609 tweets (~2.3 mio. tokens)

• 55% contain a URL

• 22% are retweets, of those

• 72% unmodified

• 28% modified

‣ academics use Twitter to disseminate information and comment on the tweets of others

The Scientwists Corpus

Retweets at the Free Culture Research Conference (#fcrc)

(1) RT @WSJHealth: The Hidden Benefits of Exercise http://bit.ly/8R6uG7

(2) RT @timmytink I was saving my virginity for Jesus, but I can't resist your intelligent design. #teapartypickuplines

(3) I want to know how students use them to improve mine. RT @drisis: RT @palmd Faculty websites suck. Help improve them http://bit.ly/8jfdLp

(4) interesting reading RT @JohnSharp: Googling Ourselves — What Physicians Can Learn from Online Rating Sites http://tinyurl.com/yh9lc3r

(5) Thanks Ruth! RT @shortyvotes: @DrStuClark, you were nominated by @ruthseeley for a Shorty Award in #astronomy http://bit.ly/5eZcTm

Examples of unmodified and modified retweets

• interjections (Wow!, Ha!, Yay, LOL!)

• evaluative expressions (Nice!, Awesome!, Excellent)

• speech acts of thanking and congratulating (Thanks!, Thank You, Congrats!)

• expressions signalling agreement (Agreed, Indeed, Yes, Ditto, So true)

• use of 1 PP sing (I, me)

• use of 2 PP (you)

Common pragmatic features of retweet comments

• emoticons ( :-) :D ;) )

• exclamation marks ( !!! )

• questions ( ? )

• quotes ( “ )

• stars ( * )

• reduplication ( aaa|eee|ooo|www|rrr|sss|yyy )

Common pragmatic features of retweet comments

• Nice! (67x)

• Cool! (66x)

• Awesome (65x)

• Interesting (52x)

• Brilliant! (28x)

Common evaluative expressions in retweet comments

• 'Micropig' or 'Piglet'? RT @rachel0808 Oh. My. God. Want one: http://bit.ly/9cR5B2

• ". looking into history of science, one thing really stands out is its glorious unpredictability." http://cot.ag/bhJz7h RT @SETIInstitute

• "Climate change scientists in bed with Terrorists" RT @NatureNews Bin Laden says ‘climate change is real’ http://ff.im/-f3Px2

• "I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education." -Wilson Mizner (RT @ChrisPirillo)

• "larynx" RT @RichNeville: @ozdj "ctenoid" #WordsThatLookKindOfStupid

• Hee hee! RT @enniscath: "Would", not "will", surely :) RT @NatNetNews LD Manifesto details how it will affect http://bit.ly/cYJOZp #NatNet

• "worst in history" RT @thejives RT @Revkin: Oil Flow Is Stemmed, but Could Resume, Official Says - http://nyti.ms/bdEgyH #oilspill

Use of quotation in retweet comments

“traditional“ citing and quoting retweeting

long short

planned spontaneous

argumentative emotive

aimed at reader aimed at reader and quotee

quoting (conceptually written) orchestrated dialog (conceptually oral)

Quoting vs. retweeting

Theoretical implications for CMC research

• form and function of quotation are extended by technology

• quotation in newer forms of CMC

• tends to be direct because verbatin reproduction comes at no cost to the quoter

• tends to be short because long verbatin reproduction comes at a high cost for the reader

• blurs the line between quotation and (pseudo-) dialog

• is frequently emotive and phatic

• is increasingly a form of social grooming, rather than argumentation

Thank you for your attention!

References

• Blyth, C., Recktenwald, S., & Wang, J. (1990). I'm like, "Say What?!": A New Quotative in American Oral Narrative. American Speech, 65 (3), pp. 215-227.

• Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1990). Quotations as demonstrations. Language, 66 (4), pp. 764-805.

• Coulmas, F. (1986). Direct and Indirect Speech. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986.

• Herring, S.C. (1999). Interactional Coherence in CMC. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4 (4).

• Severinson Eklundh, K. (2010). To Quote or Not to Quote: Setting the Context for Computer-Mediated Dialogues. Language@Internet, 7, article 5.