The Linguistic Features Of Facebook Discourse And Its Socio-Cultural Background

Nowadays, as the Internet permeates through people's everyday life, human-to-human communication via computer networks is enjoying vast popularity and rapid development. This new mode of communication is referred to as Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). Language, as a central medium of human communication, has been undergoing changes and acquiring new features. During this process, a unique symbolic system came into being: Computer-Mediated Discourse (CMD) or "Netspeak". In English-speaking communities, along with the renowned search engines such as Google and Yahoo, Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as MySpace and Facebook are also popular sites. Studies on Netspeak have been quite active among linguists and sociologists. These studies involve various research methods, perspectives and disciplines. As a quite popular SNS, Facebook has been enjoying large numbers of highly embedded communicators, a unique target audience, a broad communicator community and wide public attention. Despite the substantial media coverage of Facebook, there has been little academic work exploring this SNS and its discourse. Most of the current thinking is based on superficial phenomena and numbers in media coverage rather than empirical or case studies, not to mention explanatory study of the socio-cultural background and technological factors behind the features in Facebook discourse as well as the influence of CMC on communicators.The present paper is mainly concerned with the linguistic features of Facebook discourse, the socio-cultural background and technological factors that lead to those features and the influence of CMC on communicators. The paper is composed of seven parts. The first part is dedicated to a general introduction to the nature and role of CMD and CMC as well as a detailed introduction to the focus of the paper - Facebook and its discourse. The second part briefly reviews previous studies of CMC and CMD. The third part provides a classification of Facebook discourse based on its multiple functions and offers some brief explanations for each function. The language used in these functions is the target language of research. The fourth part explores the linguistic features of Facebook discourse, with authentic examples taken from Facebook SNSs. The fifth part analyzes the socio-linguistic background and technological factors which lead to the features of Facebook discourse. It also discusses the influence of CMC on communicator role and identity. Dell Hymes' SPEAKING model is used to explore the reasons behind the features of Facebook discourse. Marshall MacLuhan's theory of Media ecology is also referred to in the analysis of the internal relationship between media ecology and mode of language communication and the explanation of the new language phenomena in Facebook discourse. The sixth part is a conclusion of the whole paper. The last part points out limitations of the paper and space for further studies.Major findings of the paper are as follows: Internet neologism is closely related to the enhancement of communicator's linguistic and communicative competence. Modern technologies such as the computer technology, virtual reality and multi-modality lay solid foundations for the enhancement of communicator's communicative competence. Language form and language content result from communicator's characteristics and the unique context in which the discourse is born. Students are the biggest communicator community of Facebook, so the discourse content is mainly concerned with topics such as study, courses and vacation, etc. The advent of digital era makes information sharing go "virtual". However, the conflict between students' limited time and the boundless information on the Internet not only makes Facebook communication simultaneous and instant but also makes its discourse less accurate and less credible. Thus, ungrammaticalizations occur frequently and become obstacles in the way of smooth and efficient communication. Media ecology makes multi-modal communication possible. Images, videos and flashes enrich plain language and visualize language communication. Communicators are no longer subject to geographical limitations. Therefore, their space orientation is broadened to a large extent. Now that it is no longer face-to-face communication, communicators have more freedom to express themselves. This results in lots of Internet neologism and abusage. Compared with face-to-face communication, virtual interaction needs more hardware support like keyboard and computer screen. More time is also needed to type down the information. To conduct virtual communication at a faster speed with less effort, communicators change the format of Facebook discourse. Eventually, written-speech, a unique language genre comes into being.Besides the mode of communication and format of language, CMC has been influencing the role and identity of communicators. The interactivity of the Internet makes communicator roles multiple. For a single piece of information, the deliverer can also be either the author or the reader. The communicator's multiple roles disturb the forming of personal identity. What is more, communicators are confronted with the dilemma of the benefit of boundless information sharing and the chaotic or even twisted line of the sense of authorship. Despite the possible negative consequences, CMC is providing communicators with more opportunities to communicate on a bigger platform. The new media and new mode of communication are shaping new genres of language as well as new modes of language communication.