TWITTER SLANG: A LINGUISTIC INNOVATION

LOUIE CRISTIAN ESTRELLA SIMBAJON

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS PROPOSAL PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE, COLLEGE
OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, CENTRAL MINDANAO
UNIVERSITY, IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE

BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ENGLISH

NOVEMBER 2019
 Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

With the advent of technology, more people are now using social media as a means

to communicate their thoughts and feelings. As recorded by Forbes, there were 2.4 billion

internet users in 2014, which increased to 4.4 billion in June 2019 amounting to an 83%

increase of internet users. It means that the connectivity experienced in the digital age

results to the faster appearance of new words (Astrero, 2017), which is attributed to the

presence of media, language contact, and other forms of word formation like compounding,

borrowing and coining. The digital age is a 21st century period in the human history,

characterized by the shift from the ‘traditional industry’ into ‘technological pluralism’

strengthened by economy based on information technology. One vivid example of that is

the creative use of language on social media. Social media had a drastic impact on the

volume of how people use the English language and in the way people communicate

(Foster, 2019). The most notable impact social media brought is the designation of

additional meaning to existing words and the creation of new words. Example is the word

‘wall’ which traditionally refers to the one in a room, but have now a new meaning in social

media context referring to a persons’ homepage. In connection to the creation of new

words, few of them had made it to the Oxford dictionary; ones that have, include: ‘YOLO’

(you only live once), DM (direct message), OMG (Oh my god) and LOL (laugh out loud)

(Foster, 2019). While many slang terms spread and gain popularity on social media,

platforms such as Twitter is a birthplace of its own widely used slang terms since per

records, there are 682 million tweets per day (Schultz, 2019).

Henceforth, with the use of English language in social media, problems have occurred

about how the informal usage of English in the internet emanates a negative impact to the

current English. Mark McCrindle as cited in Keuchenius (2014) concludes that there are

56% of tweets misspelled per day making twitter as a culprit to ruining proper English.
Second, Hlavac (2014) in his study ‘Internet slang in the online community’ founds out that

63% of the respondent feels that internet slang exerts a negative impact on their speech.

In 2013, Pew Research center made a statement that students become more impatient

with the proper academic speech and writing by using social media slang. Also, spelling,

grammar, and sentence structure are of no importance to learn from a student perspective

since technology will do the job to check these conventions (Purcell, Buchanan, & Friedrich,

2013 as cited in Dela Rama, 2019). Lastly, there are many articles that talks about how

twitter is ruining proper English (Nordquist, 2019; Biddle, 2011; Kalnins; Foster; & Behr,

2018).

However, there have been empirical results showing that the use of slang in social

media sites especially twitter do not have a direct effect on the destruction of the English

lexicology. Russ (2012) demonstrates how Twitter can be used as a valuable and abundant

source for linguistic research. With millions of tweets per day, varied and diverse linguistic

phenomenon is happening since twitter is in the middle-zone between speech and writing.

Even if tweets contain misspellings, it does not have any direct impact to the English lexicon

since communication in social media is concerned with being pragmatic and

comprehensive as its highest priority (Hoffman & Bublitz, 2017). In addition, Piller (2018)

professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie and editor of ‘Language on the Move’ said

that, “Social media has both the characteristic of being informal in terms of spoken and in

written mediums and if people will measure it from that, an impression may arise that the

language is being degraded.” Nevertheless, people use social media to communicate and

people know how to shift between informal and formal language depending on the situation

and context.

Moreover, Isa (2014) in the study ‘Language Use on Twitter among Malaysian L2

Speakers’, confirms that language is neither deteriorating nor are users less efficient to

convey their message clearly when using social media. Using snowball sampling approach

and frequency calculation, it was found out that the language of twitter is closely related to
the traditional written language, having a quality of being complete and clear, which is

essential for clear message delivery.

Furthermore, slang in social media functions in a variety of purposes. These are social

identity, humor, fun, playfulness, to be creative, to reduce the excessive seriousness of a

conversation, to be secretive, for group identity and solidarity (Partridge, 1993 as cited in

Sabandal, 2019). Therefore, slang in social media aids communication in different ways

Among the studies conducted, there have been no study about slang words

contextually analyzed from twitter in the Philippine setting, which is realized from its lexical

features using Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory on semantics. Therefore, it is

foreseen that the conduct of this study will give comprehension on twitter slang in the

Philippines and the importance of how the use of slang in tweets help in creative language

usage. Thus, the study will be conducted to categorize slang words found in tweets, to

identify the lexical features of slang words in tweets, and to analyze the meaning of slang

words used in tweets.

 Statement of the Problem

Generally, the study aims to analyze twitter posts containing slang words.

Specifically, it aims to answer the following questions:

1. What are the kinds of slang words found on twitter posts?

2. What are the Lexical Features of the slang words used in twitter?

3. What is the meaning of the slang words in tweets?

Objectives of the Study

Generally, the study aims to analyze twitter posts containing slang words.

Specifically, it aims to:

1. Categorize the kinds of slang words found on twitter posts;

2. Identify the lexical features of the slang words on tweets; and

3. Determine the meaning of slang words in tweets.

 Significance of the Study

New words and expressions appear and evolve. The words used by social media users

nowadays can be radically different from those used in normal conversation. With the study’s

outcome in analyzing data, this study would be significant to the following:

First, this study will be beneficial to the tweeters to comprehend what meaning does a

slang word entails.

Second, this study would give benefits to English and Sociology teachers for them to

acknowledge and understand the presence and the use of slang words in social media and

how it affects the communication process. The presence of the slang words will either enhance

or decrease the language proficiency of the youth they are teaching, which are one of the

greatest users of social media. The results of the study will help teachers appreciate the use

of slang for colorful and creative language purposes in relation to the trends of the 21st

century.

Third, the findings of this study could also give benefits to future researchers especially

those who would like to study linguistic features of language, especially in Lexical and in

Semantic Analysis. The outcome will also give future researchers more ideas on what to

examine next in their research and what to add in connection to this research.

Lastly, it is visualized that the result and outcome of this study would contribute

knowledge and new information to the society, academe and to the research domain.
 Scope and Delimitation of the Study

In this study, Twitter will be used as the corpora of the study because of the date and

time-stamped information provided with each tweet. The tweeter or the user name of the

person who posted on twitter will be captured also. In addition, twitter is geo-coded enabled

which means you can determine the place where the post is posted. For the purpose of this

study, “word forms” should be considered as a case-insensitive thread of alphabetic

characters and of punctuation marks since twitter is a platform of creative spellings.

However, the research will not cover foreign posts, memes, texts with videos,

tweets that mentions other users, and tweets that also tags other users. Furthermore, the

research is limited only to identifying the slang words used by tweeters and categorizing them

to the kind of slang words they fall into; identifying the lexical features of the slang; and

analyzing the meaning of the slang words used in twitter posts. What is included as slang in

this research are the kinds of slang by Sabandal (2019), Barseghyan (2014), cant language,

jargon, and all swear words.

Moreover, the study will utilize the ‘Concept of Slang’, Systemic Functional Linguistics,

and the Linguistic Features of Short Texts (Ling & Baron, 2007) and Shortening Strategies

(Dabrowska, 2011). The twitter posts will be purposively chosen, if a twitter post contains

any kind of slang anywhere on the post, then it will be included in the corpus of the study.

In addition, the study corpus will be collected for a week. Twenty (20) posts per day

will be gathered and in totality, the researcher will collect 140 tweets within the span of seven

(7) days or in a week in the Philippine setting. The researcher will use ‘Twitters Advanced

Search’ in the computer browser to verify the gathered tweets by its specific location to assure

that the tweets and the tweeter is in the Philippine setting.

The data collection will be done using purposive and observations method which is

screenshot using a Twitter application in the mobile phone to screenshot (screen capture) the

tweets, twitter username, date, and time of posting. The researcher will also use a computer
accessing Twitter site through a browser using ‘Twitter’s Advanced Search’ to verify the

accuracy of the Tweeter’s location since this feature of Twitter is only available in computers

and not available in mobile and tablets.

 Definition of Terms

In order to guide the readers of the terms used in the study, this section provides the

definition of terms based on theoretical and operational uses.

Social Media. This term refers to forms of electronic communication which people create

online communities to share information, ideas, messages, photos, and videos. In this study,

it refers to Twitter that also uses electronic devices enabling users to share and use

information, ideas, and messages.

Twitter. The term refers to a social media platform that enables people to posts short texts

with a limitation of one-hundred forty (140) characters ‘only’ every post. The one-hundred

forty-character limitation includes the letters, numbers, punctuations, and even the

emoticons. In this study, it also refers to the same social media platform with a one-hundred

forty (140) characters limitation every post considered as the general corpus of the study.

Slang words. This term is a particular kind of language. It refers to the words and

expressions that are extremely informal. Slang helps to make speech vivid, colorful and

interesting but used easily in an inappropriate manner. The term slang (“vulgar language”)

is of Scandinavian origin and a derivation of Icelandic slyngva (“to sling”), which can be

compared with the Norwegian verb slengja (“to sling the jaw”) and the Norwegian noun

slengjeord (“slang word”), used for insulting words, swear, and vulgar words. In a similar

vein, slang words in this study refers to originally informal words used in Twitter posts and

these are slang words defined by Barseghyan (2014), Sabandal (2019), cant, jargon, and

swear words used in twitter posts.

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Halliday and Matthiesen (2014) considers

language as a system for meaning in a context. It can be applied to-specifically understand

texts, what it means, what the text does, and why texts are valued as important as it is. It

also views language as a strategic, meaning-making resource. SFL develops a theory that
language is a social process as well as an analytical methodology that permits the detailed

and systematic use of language patterns. In this study, SFL will be use as a theory

specifically on lexicogrammar, to understand the lexical features and or the lexical choices

of slang words in tweets and on analyzing its meaning using semantics.

Lexicology. This term refers to the study of the structure of a language used by a group of

people. It involves the examination of vocabulary in all its aspects: words and their meanings,

how words relate to one another, how they may combine with one another, and the

relationship between vocabulary and other levels of language such as phonology,

morphology and syntax (Halliday and Matthiesen, 2014). In this study, it refers to the general

English lexicon and to the lexicon of the slang language used in Twitter posts and how the

lexicon of slang words in twitter are combined to form meanings and its lexical creation

processes.

Semantics. This word refers to the study of the meaning of words and phrases in language

(Halliday and Matthiesen, 2014). In this study, semantics will be used to study the meaning

of words and phrases used in twitter posts to examine the meaning of the words of slang in

twitter.

Lexical Feature. Is a term of or relating to words or the vocabulary of a language as

distinguished from its grammar and construction (Halliday and Matthiesen, 2014). In this

study, the lexical feature refers to the distinguished form of the slang words used in tweets.
 Theoretical Framework

The present study is interested to categorize Philippine twitter slang according to the

kinds of slang, to examine the lexical features of tweets, and the semantic analysis of the

slang words in twitter. The study uses Systemic Functional Linguistics for semantics (meaning

of slang) and to determine the lexical features of slang. The study adapted two other

frameworks: Shortening strategies (Dabrowska, 2011) and the Features of Twitter Language

(Ling and Baron, 2011).

Systemic Functional Linguistics

Systemic-Functional theory has its origins in the main intellectual tradition of

European linguistics that developed following the work of Saussure. Like other such theories,

both those from the mid-20th century (e.g. Prague school, French functionalism), it is

functional and semantic rather than formal and syntactic in orientation, takes the text rather

than the sentence as its object, and defines its scope by reference to usage rather than

grammaticality. Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a theory of language centered around

the notion of language function. While SFL accounts for the syntactic structure of language, it

places the function of language as central (what language does, and how it does it), in

preference to more structural approaches, which place the elements of language and their

combinations as central. SFL starts at social context, and looks at how language both acts

upon, and is constrained by, this social context. SFL is an appliable theory: the emphasis of

SFL on social accountability. Also, its use develops rapidly and one of the most important

factors is its practicality and applicability (Halliday & Matthiesen, 2014).

In Hallidayan perspective, grammar is defined as a system of available options from

which the speaker or writer selects in situations contextually, thus it is said that grammar is

characterized by levels of organization under the study of language and of the way language

work, which is Linguistics. In the levels of organization, there are four connected stratum of
networks in grammar: register is to situation, semantics is to meaning, lexicogrammar into

wording, and phonology is to expression as reflected in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Stratification (Halliday, 2004)

Furthermore, the lexical features of twitter slang will be identified using the theories below.

Lexical Features

Two frameworks were used to analyze the lexical features: (1) the linguistic features of

short texts (Ling & Baron, 2007) and (2) shortening strategies (Dabrowska, 2011). See table

1 and 2.
 Table 1. Shortening Strategies, adapted from Dabrowska (2011)

One of the ways that can be used to shorten a message is by clipping and contracting

some words. According to Dabrowska (2011), users do this by cutting the beginning, middle

or ending of the words. The next one is vowel omission, which is quite a common strategy in

online communication. It will save some space especially when constructing a tweet within the

140 character limitation. Furthermore, even though some words are shortened by omitting the

vowels, they are still comprehensible given the consonants that remain as these consonants

are ‘the main message carriers’. Examples are ‘ppl’ for people, ‘I wd hv’ for I would have, and

‘pls’ for please. The third one is the word-to-letter substitution, participants tend to substitute

a word with a letter which carries the same sound as the word. Especially for the English

language, it makes users easier to use this strategy as the language has a lot of monosyllabic

words (Dabrowska, 2011). Example is ‘U’ of the word you, ‘C’ for the word see, and letter ‘Y’

for the word why. Then, next is the word-to-number substitution. Example is the most

commonly substituted words in online communication are ‘4’ for ‘for’ and ‘2’ for ‘to’. According

to Crystal (2008), the modification of spelling in making a word shorter and less complex does

not demonstrate that a user is uneducated (as cited in Dabrowska, 2011). Sixth is ‘deletion of

pronouns and auxiliaries’. Example is ‘craving mangoes’ than ‘I am craving mangoes’, and

‘heart is beating faster than before’ instead of ‘My heart is beating faster than before’. The last

strategy stated by Dabrowska (2011) is the deletion of apostrophe. Example is ‘im not feeling

good’ instead of putting ‘I’m not feeling good.’

Table 2. Examples of Shortening Strategies

Shortening Strategies Examples

1. Clippings and Contractions 1. Can you write down your add (address)?

2. I will see you this Mon (Monday).

2. Vowel Omission 1. I don’t want to reply to your msg (message).

2. Pls (Please) be here as soon as possible .

3. Word-letter Substitution 1. U (You) should respect your parents.

2. Would you like to b (be) my seatmate?

4. Word-number Substitution 1. The neighborhood is praying 4 (for) you

2. She wants 2 (to) be a cum laude.

5. Non-Standard Spelling 1. I shud (should) go to skool (school) now.

2. It wud (would) be fun to jog brotha (brother).

6. Deletion of Pronouns and 1. Just landed (I have just landed) in the Philippines 50

Auxiliaries seconds ago.

2. Back (I am back) from a long holiday in the Philippines.

7. Apostrophe Deletion 1. Im (I’m) too tired to write. Cant (Can’t) we just stop for

a minute?

2. Shes (She’s) not my friend. Dont (Don’t) you know

her?
 Table 3. Features of Twitter Language, adapted from Ling and Baron (2007)

In the features of the twitter language by Ling and Baron (2007) there are three

linguistic areas that are involved: (1) length of each transmission in terms of the number of

characters, words and sentences per transmission, (2) emoticons and lexical shortenings with

an emphasis on the occurrence of contractions (e.g., shouldn’t rather than should not),

abbreviations (e.g., U rather than you) and acronyms (e.g., LOL for laughing out loud or OJ

for over joy), and (3) sentence punctuations that look into the use of required punctuations

especially at the ends of sentences such as the period and question mark. This framework

was used due to the fact that it was also used to study texts within a character-limited medium

similar to Twitter which was SMS, and since this framework was used initially in the American

context, it was then hoped to shed light into the use of language in the Philippine context. The

study made comparisons between the linguistic features of American SMS and IM
Semantic Metafunctions

The semantic system is organized into three-functional semantic components. These

metafunctions are ideational, interpersonal, and textual.

First is the ideational metafunction that is part of the meaning that concerns how

external reality is presented on the text. This is the meaning which suggests the content of the

meaning as many would understand and would thought first upon reading. Second is the

interpersonal metafunction which is the relationship of the speaker or writer to the addressee

or reader. Then the third metafunction is the textual which refers to how sentences and clauses

are conjoined structurally and semantic-logically. Concerned with how cohesive and coherent

the text can be achieved in terms of grammatical units’ application and the organization of the

message. This type of meaning focuses on thematic structure, information structure, and text

cohesion.

This study will use the textual metafunction of semantics to analyze the meaning of the

slang words used in tweets.

 Conceptual Framework

This chapter presents the framework for the conceptualization of this research.

Twitter posts

Categorization of the Kinds of Slang on Twitter

Lexical Features of Twitter Slang

Meaning of Slang on Twitter

Figure 2. Realization of the Lexical Features and Meaning of Slang

The study centers on the analysis of Twitter Slang. The researcher will purposively

select Twitter posts containing any kinds of slang and the study corpus will be collected for

a week every 8:00 p.m. until 10:00 in the evening. From the identified Twitter posts, the

slang words will then be categorized. Then, lexical features of Twitter slang will be analyzed

using the concept of lexical processes and word choice formation from SFL. The meaning

of the slang words will then be realized from the lexical features they possess and from the

slang categories or the kinds of slang words.

 Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND RELATED STUDIES

Language plays an important role in human civilization, communication, and in

human life as a whole. Thus far, as much as experts studying language and society value

language and everything that goes with it, the fact remains that some people consider

language study as redundant. As Leonard Bloomfield says, "Perhaps because of its familiarity,

people rarely observe it, taking it slightly for granted, as people do breathing or walking. The

effects of language are notable; it also includes much of what distinguishes man from the

animals.”

This study focuses on the importance of language use concurrent to an expansive

and extensive use of technology and the terms that goes with it specifically the terms used in

twitter.

Review of Related Literature

Slang

Gordon (2001) said that the etymology of the word slang is disputable, for it is a

complex, difficult, and an inevitable on-going language phenomenon. Its emergence is caused

by historical, social, and cultural tendencies of life in certain language communities. Slang is

the result from playing with words and renaming things and actions among the young and

lively; some invent new words, or harm, or misapply the old, for the desire of novelty, while

others catch up such words for the pleasure of being in the fashion, peers, and trends. These

descriptions are colorful that they cannot be made without good imagination, examples are:

the think-machine (brain), sparkler (diamond), pickers (hands), canned music (musical disk)

are more vivid and expressive than their normal terms.

 In addition, Slang is a term commonly used to refer to lexical innovation by different

social groups—among them adolescents—implying a qualitative difference from other kinds

of lexical innovation. Although slang is commonly thought of in terms of individual words, it is

generally also part of a style. This style may be adequately elaborated to be comprehensible

only within the community that produces it. For example, the distance of the slang used in the

favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Roth- Gordon, 2001) or the Verlan spoken by a predominantly North

African and poor adolescent population in the suburbs of Paris (Méla, 1997) is an indication

of the distance of their speakers from “standard” society. In addition, the extent and the ways

in which these slangs transform Portuguese and French give them an insolent and threatening

quality. Both Méla and Roth-Gordon emphasize that slang usage that originates in, and

represents, disaffected groups of adolescents, also is picked-up by more middle-class youth

to establish their connection to youth culture. However, their orientation to the communities

where the slangs originate is limited to a desire to preserve their autonomy— to set themselves

off from the older generation but not to set themselves off from the middle class. Similarly, in

the United States, White Anglo kids use Latino and African American vernacular English

features to signal coolness, toughness, or attitude. Although these acts of identity may indicate

admiration, the admiration is for a specific set of attributes and, as such, preserves the racial

hierarchy (Bucholtz, 1999; Cutler, 1999; Hill, 1993).

In the Philippine setting, slang was widely called to be the gay lingo or swardspeak,

which is a language spoken by Filipinos one era to another as distinguished by Carino (2012)

cited in Fernandez (2014).

Swardspeak is believed to have originated from the 70’s during the Dulaang UP ‘a

lingo’ invented by one of the original theatre crowd, which was Ricardo ‘Rikki’ Dalu. Examples

of the words that was used were ‘bonggs’, ‘badaff’, that later become ‘bading’, ‘imbyerna’, and

many groups of gayspeak that follows. Also, Filipino slang exist where words constantly

changes from a generation to the next (Megacities, 2013 as cited in Fernandez, 2014). Slang

in the Philippines is not only popular to gays but also to high school and tertiary students and

the youth exposed to social media and words used in partying. Accordingly, Filipino slang is
used in many ways; could be in greetings or making contact, expressing opinions and feelings,

characterizations, asking, and/ or questioning.

History of Slang and its Development

It is necessary to say “at any given time” slang could be of good use yesterday and

may pass in the standard vocabulary of tomorrow. Slang has been described and thought to

be hanging on the outskirts of legitimate speech, but continually pushing itself into a

respectable use. Yet it is a part of language and cannot be ignored. One of the developments

that must certainly be credited to the nineteenth century is the growth of a more objective and

scientific attitude toward this feature of language. The word slang does not occur in Johnson’s

Dictionary. It first occurs a few years later and in its early use always has a derogatory force.

Webster in 1828 defines it as “low, vulgar, unmeaning language.” The definition in the Oxford

Dictionary, expressing the attitude of 1911, is very different: “Language of a highly colloquial

type, below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words, or of

current words employed in some special sense.” Here slang goes from being “unmeaning

language” to having a “special sense,” and it is treated frankly as a scientific fact.

One reason why even Puritans cannot ignore Slang is that, it has not infrequently

furnished expressions that the Purists uses without suspecting their origin. Even a student

studying language could sometimes be surprised if corrected by an older generation that the

term the student used was improper or regarded as non-standard. The expression ‘what on

earth’ seems to us an idiomatic concentrated and certainly would not be questioned in the

speech of anyone today like that of the word ‘joke’ which was once slang (Baugh, 2002).

Moreover, in surveying contemporary English, people should not just put their attention

only to slang used by the literate but should also put importance to the slang words fitted as

the slang itself; the non-standard, abusive, and creative lexical choices. It is because people

uses slang terms every day in different occasions. Slang results from an idea of style and

creative expression. If a person does not limit himself or herself to the rules of the Modern

English Lexicology, the more that person is inclined to appreciating slang. An expression is
hard to define as slang, which is why slang is determined contextually and not literally. Drink

is proper enough if one talks to children but could become a slang if one talks to teenagers

and adults who refer ‘drink’ not as a water but to alcoholic drinks.

It is dangerous to generalize about the reputation and use of slang in the

contemporary and in the older era, but it would seem that the role it plays today is greater than

at certain times in the past. The cultivation of slang has become a feature of certain types of

popular writing. Examples of popular writers are George Ade, who wrote Fables in Slang, or

Ring Lardner or O. Henry. They are not only the creators of a certain style in writing that have

become part of the slang of the day, but they have established that slang could also be used

as a tool for creative writing.

The literal meaning of slang according to the Oxford dictionary is a type of language

consisting of words and phrases that is regarded as very informal, these are more common in

speech than in writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.

Finegan (2008) said that slang is particularly popular among teenagers and college students

in general.

Such linguists as: David Crystal, V.A. Khomiakov, I.V. Arnold, G. Antrushina, R.S.

Ginzburg, I.R., B.K. Dumas, C. Eble, J. Lighter,E. Mattielo, E. Partridge, and P. Kegan studied

slang as a social phenomenon, a language innovation, language creativity and an occurrence

that even in its informal form- linguists and lexicographers alike cannot ignore due to its

specific, unique, and various uses in communication, may it be verbal or written.

In addition, the speaker uses slang in order to achieve social dynamics with the people

to whom one is speaking and slang outlines social spaces and attitudes towards slang. It also

helps identify and construct social groups, individual, and social identity (Adams, 2009). It

means that when you use slang, you expose your ideas, your feeling, your attitude as how

you want to perceive the people who talks to you and how you want those people to perceive

you. Adams believe that slang can just as well be playful and of rebelling against standard

language to mark the difference between age groups, but the children do not necessarily have

wicked intentions with the use of slang. He also mentions that slang is not slang until someone
recognizes it to be slang. It means that the addressee must be able to recognize the speaker’s

intent and to determine that what they are hearing is slang.

Slang is probably the most famous register if compared with jargon. The different

function between slang and jargon is that slang is used to show speaker’s attitude while jargon

is used by speakers who have the same profession. For example, two information

technologists talk about the terms they use in computers and technology. According to

(Fasola, 2012) in linguistic approach, slang is regarded as the use of ordinary words in

extraordinary senses or of extraordinary words in ordinary senses. This approach emphasizes

the aspects of novelty and freshness of slang.

From Mattiello (2008) as mentioned in Fasola (2012), slang distinguished from

standard language in its morphology and its semantics. In morphology, “it is characterized by

clear insubordination as regards the standard word-formation rules”, and in semantics, “it only

renames everyday objects, but also enriches and specifies them”.

Kinds of Slang

The research used the kinds of Slang defined and studied by different researchers

through time to create a wide range availability, applicability, accurateness, and variety of the

kinds of slang found in many studies as follows: Sabandal (2007) used the types of slang by

Partridge (1998) in his book ‘Slang today and yesterday’ Commerce Slang, Publicity Slang,

Medical Slang, The Church, Public School and Universities, Society Slang, Art Slang, the

Theatre, and Cant; Liana Barseghyan from Yerevan State University with her article ‘On some

aspects of Internet Slang’ added other kinds of slang from the way they were created

according to the morphological processes it undergoes and the common established internet

slang forms and these are Letter homophones, Punctuation, Capitalizations and other

symbols, Onomatopoeic spellings, Keyboard-generated icons and smileys, Leet, Flaming,

Derivation, Compounding, Shortening (abbreviation, clipping), and Blending.

Kinds of Slang by Sabandal (2007) Partridge Theory

1. Society Slang

For many people, the centre of the universe is society. Now society is never in the

search of novelty, and it is limited body of well to do women and men of leisure. From the

almost association of these persons with one another, there arises a kind of special

vocabulary, which is constantly changing with the changing fashions. On the passage, there

is much jargon, but there is also much slang, in the colloquial speech of society. Slang is

concerned with the spirit of the universe, the world, life, and it is general, it also hovers,

joyously or jauntily, over the object and the practices of the slang user’s own calling. Examples

of the society slang are cold tub means a cold morning bath, flapper means a very immoral

young girl in her early teens, and not too nice means bad, unpleasant.

2. Slang in the Public School and University

In public school, as in boarding school and in private, for more than two centuries,

been two kinds of slang: a slang proper and gibberish, the later consisting in the addition of a

hocus-pocus syllable either to the beginning or the end of every word or else at the end of

every syllable in a dissyllabic, tri-syllabic, or polysyllabic word. The other kind of slang is almost

impossible to generalize, for every school has its special words known to no other school.

Mucking means Westminster for idling or hanging about and’ what’s the mat?’ means what is

the matter?

3. Slang in Art

Slang in art is related to the slang in the society. The slang of art is quickly adopted by

society, which however knows only a few words of artistic slang. The society likes to use it

because it was a fun thing for them. The meaning is hard to guess even in the present day.

Examples of slang in art is frame means picture; let means said of a sparsely filled canvas;

and rags means old lace used for decorative purposes.

4. The Slang of Commerce

This slang used in trade. The words are closely related to the trade or commerce. This

kind of slang is present day money market terms. Examples of this term: to axe means to cut

down expenses, sometimes by dismissing employees in the effort to economize, be on the

stump means to go about the constituencies making public speeches and go on the dole

means to receive unemployment benefit.

5. Slang in Publicity

Much of the success of modern commerce depends on publicity. This type of slang

used for commerce such as for advertisement. Examples of slang in publicity: sunlight means

soap, sunny means from the advertisement of force, worth a guinea a box means pills.

6. Slang in the Church

Slang can be known in the church. It means that slang is not only used in the street,

but it can be found in the holy place. Slang has long since penetrated into the forum, and now

people meet it in the senate, and even the pulpit itself is no longer free from intrusion. There

is no wish here, for one moment, to infer that the practice is general. On the contrary, and in

justice to clergy, it must be said that the principal disseminators of pure English throughout

the country are the ministers of our Established Church. Examples of slang in the church:

candle shop means a broad church term for either a Roman Catholic chapel, massites means

a low church invention for (and gravely accepted by) those members of the Anglican Church,

and Liea at the Pool of Bethesda means of theological candidates waiting for a benefice.

7. Medical slang

Medical slang is the use of acronyms and informal terminology to describe patients,

other healthcare personnel and medical concepts. Medical slang tends to be restricted to oral

use and to informal notes or E-mails, which do not form part of a patient’s formal records. It

may also be used among medical staff outside of the hospital. It is not found on patients’

charts and, due to growing awareness of medical slang, often not used in front of patients

themselves. Temp for temperature, meds for medicine, and ambu for ambulance.
8. Cant and swear words

Cant and swear words are sometimes the secret language of criminal such as thieves

and slayer, has contributed many things for slang and colloquial vocabulary of English

language. Such as piker, small time gambler, ringer, illegally substituted horse, shoo-in, fixes

race, easy win, and others. Other words acquired from argot have lost their specific connection

with the questionable activity that gave rise to them. Today one can OD or overdose on legal

substances like ice cream as well as on drugs. Other generalized expressions that originated

in argot are clip joint, business establishment that overcharges, close to the vest,

incommunicative, cold turkey, total and abrupt deprivation, junkie, addict, and stool pigeon,

informer. However, not all groups that contribute to the slang or colloquial vocabulary of

English are associated with the underworld. For example, in the cellar, in last place comes

from sports fans tubular, excellent from surfers, scuttelebutt, gossip from sailors, and smokey

the bear highway patrol officer from truckers.

Examples of the words that are part of the swear words are those that are typically

offensive such as shit, fuck, son of a bitch, asshole, slut, and dickhead among many others.

15. Slang in Theatre

Slang in theatre is related with slang in art, because theatre is one art term. The origin

of slang in the theatre is not known exactly. Theatre slang starts to work out in 19th century

and has expanded on ordinary and informal spoken English. The appearing of the new artists

who use slang in his piece and their story made the performance in the theatre. Such as the

Roman writers Plautus, Horace, Juvenal, and Petronius also employed slang for stylistic

purpose. There are some familiar term that is used in theatre slang, such as actor who is

professional called pro, a number of actors who marked in the audience is named superb.

Kinds of Slang by Barseghyan (2014) On some aspects of internet slang

Internet slang constitutes a wide language variety. It differs according to the user and

type of Internet affairs. Coming straight from the language of short messages or SMS, in which

words are replaced by their phonetic equivalent into single letters or figures.
1. Letter homophones

This group includes abbreviations and acronyms. An abbreviation is a shortening of a

word, for example "CU" or "CYA" for "see you (see ya)". An acronym, on the other hand, is a

subset of abbreviations and is formed from the initial components of a word. Examples of

common acronyms include "LOL" for "laugh out loud" or "lots of love" and "BTW" for "by the

way". There are also combinations of both, like "CUL8R" for "see you later". Other examples

are:

Slang Meaning

asap as soon as possible

b2u back to you

c/t can't talk

10q thank you

d/m doesn't matter

Imy i miss you

Omg oh,my god

Y why?

Btw Between

t2ul talk to you later

Idk i don't know

Yt you there?
2. Punctuation, capitalizations and other symbols

Such features are commonly used for emphasis or stress. Periods or exclamation

marks may be used repeatedly for emphasis, such as "........" or "!!!!!!!!!!". Grammatical

punctuation rules are not so strict in the internet. "G-mail" may simply be expressed as "gmail",

and apostrophes can be dropped so that "Henry’s book" becomes "henrys book". Examples

of capitalizations include "STOP IT", which can convey a stronger emotion of annoyance as

3. Onomatopoeic spellings

Onomatopoeic spellings have also become popularized on the internet. One well-

known example is "hahaha" to indicate "laughter". Onomatopoeic spellings are very language

specific. For instance, in Spanish, laughter will be spelt as "jajaja" instead. Deliberate

misspellings, such as "sauce" for "source", are also used.

4. Keyboard-generated icons and smileys

Emoticon is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using punctuation marks,

numbers and letters, usually written to express a person's feelings or mood. Emoticons are

generally found in web forums, instant messengers and online games. They are culture-

specific and certain emoticons are only found in some languages but not in others. The

Western use of emoticons is quite different from the Eastern usage, for example the Japanese

equivalent of emoticons, kaomoji (literally "face marks"), focus on the eyes instead of the

mouth as in Western emoticons. They are also meant to be read right-side up, for example,

^_^ as opposed to sideways, =).

5. Leet

Leetspeak, or 1337, is an alternative alphabet for the English language which uses

various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters. For example, Wikipedia
may be expressed as "w1k1p3d14". It originated from computer hacking, but its use has been

extended to online gaming as well.

6. Flaming

Flaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet

users, often involving the use of profanity. Flaming usually occurs in the social context of an

Internet forum, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Usenet, by e-mail, game servers such as Xbox Live

or PlayStation Network, and on video-sharing websites. It is frequently the result of the

discussion of heated real-world issues such as politics, religion, and philosophy. It can also

be provoked by seemingly minor differences. As the mentioned classification illustrates, slang

words are mostly created according to the common morphological principles of the English

language.

7. Shortening (acronyms and abbreviation)

This is the most productive way of word-building in English. There are hundreds of

chat abbreviations. The large group of lexical items created this way was coined in order to

save time during online chatting; these can be whole phrases and sentences. And, of course,

there are abbreviations of special Internet terms. According to Merriam Webster dictionary “an

acronym is a word formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or
major parts of a compound term (eg. NASA, PAGASA, or ILY for I Love You). These

components may be individual letters (as in CEO) or parts of words.

In English and most other languages, such abbreviations historically had limited use,

but they became much more common in the 20th century. Acronyms are a type of word

formation process, and they are viewed as a subtype of blending. Acronyms have always been

an integral part of computer culture, and they have since created a new language on the

Internet. Commonly thought of as a series of letters that make up a 'word' there is a distinction

between acronyms and shorthand. The online practice is to refer to shorthand, initialisms, or

abbreviations as acronyms.

Online enthusiasts think that shorthand terms are in fact called acronyms, but this is

incorrect. The difference between acronyms and shorthand is that with acronyms, you

pronounce the letters as a new word (for example, 'FUBAR' is pronounced 'foo-bar' and

'RADAR' is pronounced 'ray-dar'). In contrast, shorthand pronunciations are like an initialism

(a set of initials) in which you say the letters one-by-one (for example, 'ESP' is an initialism for

‘English for Specific Purposes’ whereas 'esp.’ is an abbreviation for especially). There are

many acronyms, and their domain is a hard task to identify since it has multiple definitions for

one.

However, the research would like to draw your attention to some of the most widely

used acronyms and shorthand terms, that will be identified from this research, which is from

Twitter.

ASAP: As Soon As Possible Forever GR8: Great

BF: Boyfriend LOL: Laughing Out Loud IMHO: In My Humble

Opinion

BBL/BBS: Be Back L8R: Later IDK: I Don't Know

B4N: Bye For Now NM: Nevermind TTYL: Talk to You Later
 BTW: By The Way CYA: See You ROFL: Roll On the Floor

Laughing

BFF : Best Friends NP: No Problem GF: Girlfriend

BFFL: Best Friends for Life DBEYH: Don’t Believe SMH: Shaking My Head

Everything

BRB: Be Right Back You Hear OIC: Oh, I See. HTH: Hope This Helps

Later/Soon FAQ: Frequently Asked FB: Facebook

Questions

KTHX: OK, Thanks OMG: Oh My God OTOH: On the Other Hand

FYI: For Your Information ILY: I Love You J/K: Just Kidding

ORLY: Oh Really? TMI: Too Much Information IRL: In Real Life

SFW: Safe for Work W/O: Without WYSIWYG: What You See

Is What You Get

YW: You're welcome

8. Clipping

It is a common means of reducing or shortening words without changing their meaning.

It is another common linguistic means of word formation found on the computer and telephone

mediated communication. Some frequently used examples are: advertisement – ad,

examination – exam, telephone – phone, website – site, photograph – photo, statistics – stats,

hamburger – burger, graduate – grad, teenager – teen.

9. Compounding

It is also widely used to create a great deal of lexical items. People have been able to

identify several words that are very common in compounds that belong to internet slang; they

are line, name, down, up, dot, net, spam, book and web (for example: online, offline, webcam,

website, webpage, download, downshift, update, upgrade, netbook, notebook, cellphone,

smartphone etc.).

10. Derivation

Analyzing words from the point of view of derivation, one will be able to identify several

prefixes and suffixes that are the most productive in creating internet slang words. The prefixes

are cyber-, de-, en-, giga-, hyper-, inter-, meta-, micro-, multi-, pre-, un-, techno, -ise/ize, and

-ware. First is cyber-: cyberspace, cyberlife, cyberchat, cybermarket, cyberlove; Second is de-

: deactivate, decode, delink, deregulate, deauthorise, delist. Another one is the word hyper-:

hyperactive, hyperlink, hypermedia, hyperspace, hyperactive -ise/ize: then, authorize,

popularize, symbolize, computerize, socialize, auto-mize, globalize - ware: emailware,

bookware, software, SIMware, postcardware

11. Blends

These are words created by combining first the element of one word with the final

element of the second word. It is also common in the internet language. Sometimes a blend

includes elements which are common for both of the words. The most widely used are

additives, when two independent stems are combined, like French+English= Frenglish,

Spanish+English=Spanglish, Breakfast+Lunch=Brunch, Smoke+Fog=Smog.

Functions of Slang

The function of slang is to signal an identity. Slang is a rich means both for arbitration

of meaning and for the production of social and interactional identities that comes from a

certain use of words and phrases. Bucholtz (n.d) stated that slang is particularly well suited to

the construction of identity for several reasons: (1) as part of the lexicon, it operates above the
level of conscious awareness and thus is easily used and recognized; (2) as one of the most

socially meaningful kinds of lexis, it can provide detailed information about the speaker’s

identity; and (3) it is prone to rapid change since slang words occur and re-occur if its use

downsided. Slang therefore, functions on marking off racial boundaries, signaling coolness

and engagement in different trends and age-groups’ culture.

Effects of Slang

Mattielo, (2005) states that the meaning effect of slang range from secrecy and

intimacy to playfulness and offensiveness, so as sympathy and mitigation as well. For

example, some in-group slang words are used to hide secrets from people in authority. Say

for example the words hit, shot, etc. It may also establish intimacy with group members (e.g.

chick, cool, babe, nuts). Other slang expressions are used to mock people (e.g. cocky cow,

fruit-cake, beautiful-slut) but these words may appear offensive if added with non-normal

intonation. Other effects is to show sympathy, self-pity, avoiding words on social taboo like

cussing or using of swear words blatantly, social levelling, humor, and could also be used in

the classroom setting so that the learners and or students will be more participative.

Review of Related Studies

A study by Isa (2014) entitled “Language use on twitter among Malaysian L2

speakers” aimed to examine the linguistic features of tweets constructed among the Malaysian

L2 users, identify the strategies used to construct a tweet, examine the gender differences in

the linguistic features and strategies used, and to find out users’ perceptions about their

language use in Twitter. The research used Frequency Calculation and the Linguistic Features

of Tweets by Ling and Baron (2007) to examine the linguistic features of tweets. It was found

out that there are three (3) linguistic features in tweets and these were: emoticons and lexical

shortenings like emoticons, acronyms, and abbreviations; then sentence punctuation; and

length like transmission in characters, words, and sentences. The tweets also uses

Dabrowska (2011) ‘Shortening Strategies’ and identified six (6) shortening strategies namely
clippings and contractions, vowel omission, word-letter substitution, non-standard spelling,

deletion of pronouns and auxiliaries, and apostrophe deletion. In addition, it was found using

‘Snowball Sampling Approach’ that female participants used more emoticons, construct longer

tweets, and delete vowels, pronouns and auxiliaries in their tweets more than the male

participants. Conversely, the male participants used more acronyms and non-standard

spellings. Lastly, using ‘Likert scale questionnaire’, it shows that users do not encounter

problems of not having enough space to convey their message. They know exactly how to

convey their thoughts within the parameter of the medium. The study in the end has rejected

the popular belief that decries Twitter as a medium that degrades a language. This study is

relevant to the researchers’ study since both the shortening strategies and the linguistic

features will be used in the conduct of the present study.

Moreover, a study “Mapping lexical innovation on American social media” by Grieve et

al. (2018) aimed to map the regional patterns of lexical innovation in American Twitter. The

study employed ‘Multivariate Spatial Analysis’ which is a method for detecting common

patterns of regional variation in dialect maps. The MSA has two stages which were the ‘Getis-

Ord Gi. local spatial autocorrelation’ analysis from Getis (2009) and the ‘Exploratory Factor

Analysis’ (Fabrigar & Wegener, 2012). The first stage compares the values of the variable

around each location to see if that location is part of a high or low value cluster, where the

search space is defined by a spatial weights matrix (Getis, 2009). In the second stage of the

analysis, the local spatial autocorrelation maps for the complete set of linguistic variables are

subjected to an exploratory factor analysis to identify the most important patterns of regional

variation. In essence, the factor analysis compares the local spatial autocorrelation maps for

every pair of variables to find the most commonly attested patterns in the dataset, much like

searching for bundles of isoglosses in a traditional dialect study. It was found that there were

five (5) common patterns that represent the lexical emergence maps under the study and

these were the West Coast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Deep South, and the Gulf Coast. It was

then concluded that the regional patterns of lexical innovation can be observed in written

online communication, even though most of these words do not appear to have first occurred
on social media. Then, emerging words on Twitter tend to originate from a small number of

hubs of lexical innovation and spread along relatively consistent pathways of diffusion. Next,

the emerging words on Twitter tend to originate from urban areas, but the cultural influence of

an urban area appears to be more important than its size. Also, the diffusion of emerging

words is affected by geography and population density, as predicted by the wave and

hierarchical models, but also by cultural patterns, with emerging words tending to spread

within cultural regions first. Lastly, African American English is the main source of lexical

innovation on American Twitter. The study is useful to this research since the current research

also tackles a geographical location to examine twitter slang in the Philippines.

In addition, a study by Hlavac (2014) entitled “Internet slang in the online community”

aimed to identify the features of the youth slang in modern English language and to analyze

the usage of slang expressions among young generation. Hlavac used a questionnaire for

thirty (30) students in Kazan University to take part on determining the features of the youth

slang and many of students use Anglicism’s at university and the internet, however the most

part has answered that they use these words everywhere (58%). 71% use loans in the speech.

Many young people (80%) have specified that they understand the value of Anglicism. More

than a half of students (40%) use borrowings on a habit. The study employed linguistic

analysis to analyze the usage of slang among the students and the findings was slang is not

a literary language, it is characterized by familiar coloring- a form of linguistic adaptation. The

study also explained that slang is divided into two groups: common and well-known slang. The

slang of the Russian youth has a big variety of shades and many words are unclear for

population. It is possible to note such characteristic of a slang as common knowledge and

wide common use. Furthermore, it was found that 63% are sure that slang exert negative

impact on their speech and 37% of respondents are sure that the use of an English-speaking

slang promotes enrichment on their vocabulary. The data obtained during the research confirm

the assumption of a wider use of Anglicisms. The youth slang in most cases represents the

English borrowings or phonetic associations. It is always necessary to show consideration for

attraction of foreign words and furthermore when this process has such high speed. This study
is relevant to the current study since it studies the features of slang, which is related to the

identification of the lexical features of slang in twitter, one salient point in the current research.

Also, this study analyses slang usage, still close to the semantic analysis of the slang words

in twitter that will be done in the current research.

Another research entitled ‘Sward speak (gay lingo) in the Philippine context: a

morphological analysis’ by Pascual (2016), aims to to determine the speakers of gay slang, to

identify the words most commonly used by gays in their daily conversation, and to identify the

method or strategy used in the formation of gay slang and the reasons for using it. The

research utilized the descriptive design and the purposive sampling technique for 100

respondents. A questionnaire and an informal interview was used and conducted among the

respondents. Among the 100 respondents, 75 percent were gays and the remaining 25

percent were the gay women, also known as the “babaengbakla”. The gay women refer to

those women who use and understand gay language. Borrowing is commonly used like the

following: cash and carry (alright/okay), balay (house), chaka (gossip), chipangga (cheap),

dyutay (small), dugyot (dirty), fly (leave), gurang (old), kuning (deceitful), lafang (to eat).

Moreover, they also use words by playing with words like in the following examples: bahoma

(odorous), batsi (to leave), bogmali (blow job), alaws (none), damatan (old man/woman), jinit

(warm), jirap (difficult), mashonda (beautiful), and borlog (sleep). The methods or strategies

used in the formation of gay slang are blending, acronym, repetition, substitution, affixation,

borrowing, and coining. The study then concluded that the world today is sophisticated. The

gay language is flourishing and it had influenced various people. Hence, it could be a way that

people will accept the presence of sward speak or gay language wholeheartedly since it is a

socio-linguistic phenomenon, which do not digress from the rules and standard of Filipino and

English language but enhance it instead. This study is relevant to the current research since

the study centers on sward speak or the gay lingo, which is also a kind of slang included in

the corpus of the study.

In addition, Astrero, (2017) studied ‘The millenials’ awareness and understanding of

Philippine English’. The study aimed to answer what is the awareness and understanding of
the respondents towards the specific words in the lexicon of the Philippine English and how

do the respondents view the lexicon of Philippine English with regards to formality. Through

descriptive analysis using frequency count, it was found that 100% of the respondents

completely understand the words like ‘querida’ and ‘TY’, while the words ‘carinosa’ and ‘gives’

are the words they are least aware of or the participants’ least understand. Fourteen out of 35

words in Philippine English in1960s have retained the same word today. These words are

pasalubong, sayang, traffic, Pinoy, istambay, advanced, bongga, busted, eat and run, masa,

japayuki, macho dancer, taglish and trapo.. On the other hand, 16 new words have come to

replace the old words. Also, using survey questionnaire based from the study of Bautista

(2006), it was found that the respondents do not give much attention to the appropriateness

of the words in terms of formality. Forty eight or 87% of the respondents exclusively use the

words. The study concluded that the creation of new words happened and is in a continuous

process because of the presence of mass, social media, and the internet. Thus, millennials

understood the words from 1990’s until the present, even the new meaning of the old words,

the millennials understands. It means that language change is a phenomenon not only

experienced by one but by a large community. This study is relevant for the current study since

it studies the lexicon of the Philippine and English language, which is helpful in the second

objective of the current research, which is the identification of the lexical features of twitter

slang.

Another study from Université de Bretagne Occidentale by Banks (2016) entitled

‘Systemic functional linguistics as a model for text analysis’ aims to to show that Systemic

Functional Linguistics (henceforth SFL) is a useful and indeed powerful tool for the analysis of

text and to discuss the differences between the two texts which are brought out by the

analyses. It was a comparative analysis of two works; one in physics and one article is about

English for specific purposes or ESP. It was discussed that SFL is an approach not simply a

technique for textual analysis, it is rather a total theory of language. Using EFL the research

was concluded that the distinction in SFL of three levels (metafunctions) within the semantic

component of the model helps highlight the features of the text in a particularly clear, powerful,
and objective fashion. It is very relevant for this current study because it uses the same theory,

which is the Systemic functional linguistics on textual analysis.

The current research deals with the study of the lexical features of Twitter slang. The

aim of the research was to analyze the usage of slang expressions in twitter posts. The

relevance of this research is that, slang is in a continuous development, thus, modern slang

in English, being an integral part of language, represents one of the most urgent and

contradictory problems of the modern lexicology. The research aim to identify the distinctive

lexical features of the studied phenomenon as well as helping readers to understand the kinds

of slang present in the modern world and to inform the readers about the meaning or meanings

that a slang word functions in tweets.

 Chapter 3

METHODOLOGY

This section presents the research design, sampling procedure, and the data

gathering procedure of the study.

Research Design

The study is descriptive qualitative in nature that is designed to deal with the

complexities of meaning in the social context and linguistic which are not controlled and

observational (non-experimental).

Sampling Procedure

Purposive sampling method and observation (screenshot) method will be used. The

research will screenshot (screen capture) the tweets, twitter username, date, and time of

posting in the Philippines and by a Filipino tweeter only. The researcher will also use a

computer accessing Twitter site through a browser using ‘Twitter’s Advanced Search’ to verify

the accuracy of the Tweeters’ location since this feature of Twitter is only available in

computers and not available in mobile and tablets. The twitter posts will be purposively

chosen, if a twitter post contains any kind of slang anywhere on the post, then it will be included

in the corpus of the study.

Data Gathering Procedure

In conducting the study, the following procedures will be followed: First, the study

corpus will be collected for a week. Twenty (20) posts per day will be gathered and in totality,

the researcher will collect 140 tweets within the span of seven (7) days. To ensure that the

tweets’ location is in the Philippine setting, the researcher will use ‘Twitters Advanced Search’

or via twitter.com/search-advanced in the computer browser to search for tweets by a specific

location accurately. In cases where users put a fake address in their profile, the correct

location will be verified by the ‘Twitter-Advanced search’ and with the use of Latitude and
Longitude coordinates, since Twitter is a geocoded app, which means posts and users can be

traced with accuracy using Twitter’s geocoding.

Second, after the gathered corpora of the study, common Twitter posts containing

slang words will be categorized into the ‘Kinds of Slang’.

Third, it will then be analyzed using the ‘Linguistic Features of Short Texts’ (Ling and

Baron, 2007) and Shortening Strategies (Dabrowska, 2011) to get the lexical features of twitter

slang and Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory on semantics through the analysis of twitter

slang found from tweets to determine the meaning of the slang words in twitter. It is through

the textual metafunction, which is concerned on the cohesion and coherence of the text.

Lastly, the conclusion will be drawn from the results of the study. Recommendations

will also be given for future researchers to use, contributing to the body of knowledge related

to the improvement of language and literature.

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