Analysis

Key
Swearwords Sociolect:(sick) Accent Ellipsis Abstract nouns: (love ,peace, joy) Elision: (wanna)
Capitals, Internet slang, Punctuation mistakes, Politeness:(please, thankyou) Direct question
Exsageration: (sooo) Repetitive words: (so so so)

Politeness

I began my investigation by looking at how polite the tweets were, I looked at all the male tweets, there was more politeness from the male pop stars. The majority of male rappers used non Standard English. One rapper used the word ‘PLEASE’ in one of his tweets this was Tyler The Creator although Kayne West also used ‘please’ however the circumstance that he was in was that his song had been leaked so he was asking people to remove it in the nicest way possible.

Abstract nouns

The rapper Lil B used the abstract noun "love" in three of his tweets, this makes him seem more polite, this is opposite to the stereotypical opinion of a rap artist. Chris Brown "Love GOD Love ya self! Love everyone!" the word "love" would of been a abstract noun but in this case it's a command like you must love god its very preachy and almost like a imperative this is influential power, the sentence sounds more emotive and meaningful which makes the command seem very polite but really its a type of language to persuade someone to also love god.

When I investigated the politeness of the female celebrities I found that like the male pop stars were the most polite. There was one female rapper Iggy Azalea and one of her tweets read "Love you all and thanks a million times" this has an abstract noun and it acts positivity towards her fans, Iggzy is one of the newer more upcoming well known rap artists. She might wright this way to get a better approval from all the different types of people who follow her on twitter. All the other rap artists show little of being polite.
 

When I looked at the tweets from the male pop stars all of them at least used a form of sounding polite, here is the evidence:

Justin Bieber: "ThankyouBoston", "Thanks", "I care about all of u".

Bruno Mars: "Thank you guys".

Olly Murs: "congratulations to Will & Kate" and he uses an adjective "amazing fans" this makes the fans feel more important.

Justin Timberlake: "Thanks for having… http://instagram.com/p/bmqK-SSdrG/’ and’ What an honor that was... Thank you.".

Female pop stars also showed the same gratitude like the male pop stars:
Beyoncé: "I am honoured".
Rhianna: "Thank you to all the supporters of my song"
Pink: "Thank youfor being awesome"
Demi Lavato: "LOVE her".  Pop stars what ever the sex behave in a politer manner towards their followers/fans on Twitter whereas with the evidence shown rappers use less politeness. This doesn't mean they are horrible people but it just shows that pop stars show more influential power this enforces authority with their fan base.

 

Internet slang

When I looked at the amount of Internet slang used there was very little from the celebrities.

Tyler the creator "HAHA"

Honey Cocaine "WTF", "lmao"

snow.tha product "lol", "wtf"

Azealia Banks "lolololol"

 Demi Lavato "K"

Justin bieber "U"

The use of Internet slang is a way to abbreviate something in a more quick way, this shows that mostly the female rap artists used this language whereas the pop stars I guess kept more formal, this makes their writing look professional. Justin Bieber used "U" a couple of times ,as a young thriving pop star perhaps he doesn’t have much time to write formally and he is alot younger and the younger generation use more informal. I was surprised that women used more Internet slang but I wasn't that surprised because they were rappers as rappers almost every time use informal language in the words that they speak. I also would of thought overall it would of been the men that used the most slang. This slightly jeopardises my hypothesis.

Ellipsis

All of the celebrities used ellipsis, pop stars tweets were very formal but the ellipsis used has suspense, they were getting their fans to think whereas rap artists used ellipsis by missing out words; this made the sentences hard to read and a lack of understanding. For example if we take a tweet from Demi Lavato "But like.... You guys can keep voting for that Best Female VMA nod if you waaaant... I won't complain....." this is a type of persuasive technique ,this makes it more polite. Demi also exaggerates on the "waaant" to make out that fans don’t have to vote however she would actually appreciate it. Now if we take a tweet from Lil Debbie (rapper) "men talk on the phone more than women do..... that shit blows mind "the last part doesn’t make sense however her fans  would understand it.

I compared the males that used ellipsis. Olly Murrs tweeted "Out with my wee cousin today!! Taken him out for his birthday that I missed... BAD COUSIN!!!"
and then compared to Himanshu suri (rapper) "bullshit that popped collars is synonymous with white frat douchebag now cuz the black spanish indian older dudes in my hood were doin that" just like the female celebrities this is exactly the same with the different uses of ellipsis. Overall this shows rappers like to miss out words in sentences to then make sense to them self’s and to their followers. They all use this technique (ellipsis) to engage there readers in different ways to show a certain power to keep them entertained.

Swearwords

The amount of swear words used with all rappers was high, the informality and the use of elision of spelling words incorrectly or improperly written was used for near enough every tweet. Pop stars also had elision but had little swear words there was one or two from Rhianna and Pink. What I found during my investigation backed up my hypothesis that rappers are more informal than pop stars and they do swear a lot more. I have also learnt pop stars do use elision also and are heaps more polite.

Socialect theory

Information gatherd from a Polish writer http://www.staff.amu.edu.pl/~inveling/pdf/Lewandowski_20.pdf
From the Anglo- Saxon period ,from Hudson to Trudgill all theory's happen to say the same ,socialect,what is it? It has been said that the term socialect is ovently used interchangeably with social dialect( this means that the this type of language are preferred).Peter Trudgill says its language spoken by a particular social group,class or subculture.It's dertamants include gender and age.

With a increase and development of a variety of social dialect.At this point of time an  executive amount of research had to be taken place, Hudson had the idea and argued that with a increasing amount of socialect's being identified meant that rather than with regional groups and that especially in Britain the class took precedence over geography as a determinant of speech.
 

What I found interesting reading the polish article was the idea of Grabia, the two sections below identifies which could relate to the socialects of the celebrities I have chosen.

Occupational socialects: Professiolect Wilken(1989)- The way language items are designed are to convey thoughts in a precise and effective manner for example the socialects of hunters,soilders or seamen, the variety that these groups show exclde from society at large such as criminals or prisoners.

Espressive socialects: Slang(intentionally uncoded) the language is designed to convey emotions or attitudes for example students language or teenage slang shoe intentionally coded varieties, this experiments with language also when children have secretive language.

Looking at the ideas of Grabia another polish pro-socialist Kołodziejek came up with three ideas socialectual vocabulary:

Colloquial language- by being the profound of all social dialects the variety is broadly understood and used by native speakers of a particular language.

General slang vocabulary- this is used by young people regardless of their social group.

Social group-specific vocabulary-  The layer of lexis which separates different social groups for example soldiers,seamen and hunters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Methodology

I began my investigation by collecting my data. I transcribed five tweets from each participant. I chose five because I thought it would be enough to analise however to take my investigation further next time  I will tanscribe more tweets to get a more presise result. I collected random tweets from a certain month (July) this meant they were all writing things at the same time as one another and this made finding data easier for me. Also because they weren't all written on the same day it makes it more specific. 

The process, for my main data, I collected five tweets from each celebrity, copy and pasted them onto a word document. I then highlighted with different language techniques that I could compare and what were similar. For example I highlighted the use of swearwords, the formality of a sentence, accent, ellipsis, abstract nouns, and Internet slang.

This process was reliable as the tweets were directly from the celbrities twitter accounts . However there is false hope that a celbrity could of had somebody else writing there tweets for them this is called a ghost celbrity, somebody impersinating them because they are told what to write for them. In this situation I assume there was no observer parodox because that could change the reliability in my results. 

The participants for my data were well known rap artists and well known pop artists so all of the celebrities are widely known which makes the investigation more interesting to see the language they use to maintain their followers (fans) happy with the things they write. It was difficult and impossible to get results from celebrity's that were simular ages so there is a variety. Despite the age differences they are all in the same situation with a fan base and they all have the responsibility for their own actions.

I intended to anaylise my data on two frameworks, lexis and grammar. I have focused on politeness , swearwords, abstract nouns, Internet slang,ellipsis and socialect. These are going to help prove my hypothesis.

 

Introduction-Do rappers on twitter use more non-standard english language than pop stars whether they are male or female?

My hypothesis is, male and female rap artists use non-standard English and Internet slang , whereas pop-stars, male and female use more formal language and politeness.

There hasn't really been studies on the types of language used on social networking. I am looking at the variations of language. My investigation focuses on the different  language celebrities use on the social networking site Twitter. I am comparing tweets from a selection of rappers and pop artists. I am interested to see the difference in politeness and do they act a certain way with their followers/fans on Twitter rather than any other medium?

I have taken into account that rap artists of both genders use informal language and swear, pop stars use more formal language. However this may not be the case, my hypothesis is very stereotypical , who am I too judge somebody just by the music they produce. This is why I want to challenge my judgements, I could be wrong. I came across a article on the Internet (http://www.ugo.com/music/top-11-conscious-rappers) which I found very interesting. This is an important website which shows opinionated on how much rap artists swear.

An physiologist would say swearing is to achieve an certain emotion to release stress, anger, joy or to be surprised. Is swearing too mainstream? What the media thinks, "The mainstream media's been painting the genre with a pretty wide brush, and we think that's, as the kids say, wack" . Rap music/lyrics educate the person who listens to their music or who you are talking to this is overgeneralising a conversation you can have day to day.
I will be looking into lexis and grammar during analysis of the tweets I have collected. Lexically, I will look for Internet slang words, socialect and politeness. I am investigating into the vocabulary of my participants, for grammar I am going to be looking at Abstract nouns, elision, punctuation mistakes and direct questions. Theorists such as Lakoff, Brown and Levinson all challeneged what politeness is. I also think sociolect theorists such as Trudgill and Hudson will help me during my investigation. Peter Trudgill says it's language spoken by a particular social group, class or subculture.It's determinants include gender and age. I'm testing this theory with "particular social group" and linking it to the type of music my chosen artists produce.

ttp://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/03/30/why-do-we-swear/

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/07/12/swearing-reduces-pain/