Background
This teaching unit examines the language used on Twitter, focussing on four words originally from African American English. It encourages students to look at the language used in these tweets, including African American English, internet short-hands and acronyms, and emoji. It introduces the concept of indexicality, discusses the impact of African American English on internet slang, and covers issues of linguistic appropriation. It uses freely available Twitter corpora from 2016, as well as tweets gathered in 2020, filtered by specific words. Using lists of example tweets, students can discuss how these linguistic features are used in order to create a certain style or persona on Twitter.
Resources
Discussion Points: Language use on Twitter
Research Digest: Sassy Queens