The Code-Switching on Facebook Profiles of Different Genders: The Case of Šalčininkai District

This study investigates functions of code-switching based on the model proposed by René Appel and Pieter Muysken. Code-switching is an interesting sociolinguistic phenomenon characteristic to bilingual and multilingual communities. It involves the use of different languages within the boundaries of a single sentence or between sentences in one specific domain or discourse. It is an individual language choice determined by such factors as the topic, the situation, the participants of a conversation, their interrelationship, emotions, and demonstration of one or more identities. On this basis, Appel and Muysken (2005) identified six functions of code-switching: referential, directive, expressive (related to identity), phatic (metaphorical), metalinguistic and poetic. This paper sets out to achieve several goals: (a) to find out which of these functions appear in the Facebook discourse of young people originated from Šalčininkai district, (b) to identify the main types of functions in girls’ and boys’ profiles, and (c) to study the frequency of the functions with regard to the variable of gender. The research material consists of 1 048 posts and comments published in 2017–2018 and obtained from 30 Facebook profiles. The dataset represents young people aged between 20 and 30 years, with Polish as their school language. Facebook posts and comments are investigated from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. The research results show that functionally code-switching is similar in both girls’ and boys’ Facebook discourse. On the profiles of both genders, the number of functions is identical, but the frequency of these functions varies. In the datasets of both genders, the most predominant function is directive, which appears when languages change depending on the language chosen by the interlocutor. This research could be informative for sociolinguists who investigate electronic discourse of young people from South East Lithuania and for those who focus on how environment influences the emergence of different linguistic codes on Facebook. The research could also stimulate greater interest of sociolinguists in the conversational features of residents in Šalčininkai district.

Predicting the Writer's Gender Based on Electronic Discourse

The present study compared three methods aimed at predicting the writer's gender based on writing features manifested in electronic discourse. The compared methods included qualitative content analysis, statistical analysis, and machine learning. These methods were further combined to create a mixed methods model. The findings showed that the machine learning model combined with qualitative content analysis produced the best prediction accuracy. Including qualitative content analysis was able to improve accuracy rates even when the training set for machine learning was relatively small. Thus, this study presented a concise model that can be fairly reliable in predicting gender based on electronic discourse with high accuracy rates and such accuracy was consistently found when the model was tested by two separate samples.

Gender Representation In E-Discourse Of Banks In Pakistan: A Corpus-Based Study

Electronic discourse emerged, as a new genre, in the last few decades. Like other fields of life, the internet also shifted business from traditional to virtual domains i.e. electronic commerce. Similarly, the banks in Pakistan launched their websites and online services for the purpose of running more effective business. Like other linguistic aspects, the choice of pronouns plays a significant role in making corporate communication more effective. In this regard, inclusion of certain pronouns and exclusion of other pronouns influence the effectiveness of the financial message. This newly emerged discourse needs to be gender balanced in order to be more effective for corporate communication. The current study examined the representation of gender in the e-discourse from feminist perspective. It looked at the occurrences of third person singular pronouns used for representation of men and women on web pages of banks in Pakistan. Corpus analysis tool AntConc (Anthony, 2014) was used to find out the occurrences of pronouns used for female gender and male gender in ‘About us’ section of the banks in Pakistan. Texts were copied from the websites of banks. In order to make these texts machine-readable, they were converted into plain texts. Both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis were used for better understanding of the research study. Quantitative representation of gender focusingon occurrences of pronouns was complemented with the in-depth presentation of the data. The study revealed gender-based disparities in the banking discourse. Female gender is underrepresented (12.74%) and male gender is overrepresented (87.26%). This low depiction of female gender in the discourse of banks indicates gender biasness; putting female gender in periphery and highlighting male gender by assigning greater number of occurrences.

Educating About and For the Future

Education for citizenship is more important than ever. The author describes a technology-supported curriculum that engages young teens in electronic discourse with peers on significant personal and societal issues and assists them in decision making on topics ranging from their personal futures to the futures of their communities, nation, and world. A further purpose is to use discourse as a bridge in developing the individual argumentive writing that students of all ages find so challenging.

Humor, ideologia e discurso: a circulação dos estereótipos do caipira em piadas na internet

RESUMO:Inscrito na Análise do Discurso (AD) de linha francesa, este artigo tem por objetivo discutir o funcionamento do discurso do humor relacionado à circulação dos estereótipos do caipira na internet. O corpus é constituído de um conjunto de piadas publicadas no portal Humortardela e no site AnimaTunes, a partir do qual analisamos, com base nos estudos de Possenti (1998, 2010), as condições de produção do discurso do humor. Para análise desse objeto de estudo no espaço digital, leva-se em conta a noção de discurso eletrônico, a partir de Orlandi (2013), além dos estudos de Bergson (2007), Raskin (1985) e Skinner (2002) sobre o riso e o humor. Mobiliza-se, ainda, os conceitos de cenas de enunciação, desenvolvidos por Maingueneau (2008), e de estereótipos, a partir de Amossy & Hershberg Pierrot (1997), a fim de compreender como as representações do caipira emergem nos processos de enunciação humorística. A partir dos resultados das análises, pretende-se verificar como as representações do caipira são interpeladas no interdiscurso e de que forma a internet contribui para a circulação dos estereótipos do caipira na rede em sua relação com o humor.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: estereótipo; caipira; internet;discurso; humor. ABSTRACT: Based on the Discourse Analysis (AD) of French orientation, this article aims at discussing the functioning of the humor discourse associated with the circulation of the stereotypes of the Brazilian caipira on the internet. Thecorpus comprises a set of jokes published on the portal Humortardela and on the website AnimaTunes, from which we analyze, based on studies of Possenti (1998, 2010), the production conditions of the humor discourse. For the analysis of this object of study on the digital environment, we take into account the notion of electronic discourse, from Orlandi (2013), as well as the studies of Bergson (2007), Raskin (1985), Skinner (2002) about laughter and humor. We also put together the concepts of scenes of enunciation, developed by Maingueneau (2008), and stereotypes, of Amossy & Hershberg Pierrot (1997), in order to understand how the representations of the caipira emerge in the processes of humor enunciation. From the analysis results, we intend to verify the way the representations of the caipira are challenged in interdiscourse and how the internet contributes for the circulation of the caipira stereotypes on the web in its relation with humor. KEYWORDS: stereotype; caipira; internet; discourse; humor.