The use of tonal indicators to reduce ambiguity in online computer-mediated communication : are they /j or /srs?

Abstract

This paper assesses a new phenomenon occurring within Computer-Mediated Communication on the social media platform Twitter. Due to the intonational ambiguity commonly found in written communication, writers have developed and utilized different techniques like letter repetition, and emojis or emoticons to minimize opportunities for misunderstandings (Baron, 2001; Sampietro, 2016; Aldunate et al., 2018; Darics, 2013). However, these methods continue to have a degree of ambiguity and can still be misrepresented, thus Twitter users have adopted Tonal Indicators (TI) as a new contextualization cue. These TI can appear at any point of the utterance, although they appear more prevalently at the end of the tweet, and their introduction is marked with a forward slash, followed by the abbreviation, like /srs for serious and /j for joking. Through Gumperz’s (1982) Interactional Sociolinguistics approach this paper will analyze Tonal Indicators as written contextualization cues. In this article, readers will encounter an integral initial look into this new phenomenon as it analyzes the userbase, the locations of the TI within the sentence, and the popularity of each TI found, among other aspects.