A linguagem no Twitter: um enfoque sistêmico-funcional

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the characteristics of language on Twitter, focusing on (i) its communicative purpose, (ii) its discursive participants and (iii) its interpersonal relations. In the belief that language is a systematic resource for the production of meaning, we found in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) a theoretical foundation for the research. Halliday (1994) argues that linguistics is the study of how people exchange meanings through language. Thus, we find in Twitter a varied corpus which further reinforces the theory of SFL, when it states that we, language speakers, are the only ones responsible for our lexical choices, knowing how and where, contextually speaking, we can apply a linguistic activity we are engaged. The research material is made up of the compilation of 671 comments posted on Twitter in 2010. Data obtained from the analysis of this compilation confirms the argument by Crystal (2011) that the expression of opinion is the main communicative purpose of tweets posted on the microblogging service. Thus, after selecting only tweets which express exclusively opinion, we ended up with 201 tweets resulting from two surveys, carried out at different points in time and in different social situations: one, after the news about an incident of aggression against a teacher; the second, moments before and during the World Cup 2010. The results point to differences between the samples, mainly due to the discursive topic. Although a tone of indignation characterizes both samples, only in the soccer sample is there an attempt at guiding the actions of other people. Still within the domain of interpersonal relationships, the use of features that characterize face to face interaction is present in both samples, but only in the soccer sample does one notice the use of swear words. Finally, regarding the overall characteristics of Twitter, the following language features were identified: the use of reduced language, in the form of emoticons or abbreviations; the use of interjections and exclamations; the use of evaluative language, irony and rhetorical questions for the expression of indignation, but the latter three features seem to be affected by aspects of the context of situation, rather than by characteristics of Twitter