Background
This unit explores the uses and motivations of non-standard spellings in digital interactions on the mobile messaging application, WhatsApp. Students are encouraged to think about how spelling conventions of digital interactions have changed over time and what technological advancements may have bought these changes about. Exploring a series of WhatsApp conversations collected from a group of young adults residing in London, students will have the opportunity to identify non-standard spellings in the messages. Based on their observations, they can develop hypotheses about why specific spellings occur at different moments through the course of the conversations.
Resources
Discussion points
Research Digest: AAVE and Twitter
Research Digest: Lexical innovation and Twitter