Oxford Language Researchers All A-Twitter
sinemad: i like twitter because life is too short to write long things. hayamiz: At the airport. Flight doesnt leave for another 3 hours. I CANT WAIT TO GO BACK TO MY DORM OMG BulldogReporter: What is President Obama using the Obamaberry for? Secrets leaked in LA Times. http://ping.fm/fBaTz
Awesome! Here’s something to get the twitterati tweeting: dictionary experts at Oxford University Press (OUP) have been monitoring 1.5 million tweets this year to explore the impact of the Twitter phenomenon on the English language. Applying the cutting-edge technology used for gathering data in OUP’s two-billionword Oxford English Corpus, lexicographers are able to track changes in the language across a wide variety of media including newspapers, magazines, blogs and now Twitter. "We've been adding public tweets to our Corpus research since January this year, reflecting the development of Twitter as a popular and dynamic form of communication," says Judy Pearsall, Senior Publishing Manager for English Dictionaries at OUP. “To get a full picture of the English language, compilers of current dictionaries need to incorporate all forms of communication into their research." So, what does Twitter show us about how people are using the language? "It’s interesting. A tweet is a message to the world, but it’s a short one: with just 140 characters to play with, we're seeing different and sometimes very creative uses of language,” says Pearsall. Here are just some of the findings to date: Celebrating the new We really want some frozen obamalade but we can’t find any, or barack obama churro. Or a barack oburrito. Welcome to the world of the ‘Obamalogisms’ – terms associated with Barack Obama. If you don’t find obamalade obamalicious, then check out the obamaberry, or go obamananiacrazy over any of these other terms: obamacracy, obamanomics, obamification. These are just a flavour of the many new words and phrases being coined by creative twitterers out there. • OMG: I’m stuck for space MeaganPhoto: OMG, I just bought an i-phone...WOW, I am so excited, i can't wait to try to Tweet from the phone:))) Unsurprisingly, as people try to cram their thoughts into a limited space, abbreviations feature highly in our Top 500 list of frequent words in Twitter. People readily use symbols such as “+” (for “and”) and letter substitutes such as
“u” (you) and “r” (are) as well as newly formed abbreviations such as “RT” (retweet). Incredibly, “RT” is the third most common choice for the opening word in a tweet, beaten only by “I” and “is”. In addition, twitterers make lighter use of connector words such as “the”, “and” and “to”, and will either use abbreviated forms instead or just not bother with them at all. It’s all about now generaldecay: Flirting with the lunch lady = Great success! Waiting… watching… working…Participles ending in “-ing” are popular, showing just how often people use Twitter to share the minutiae of their lives and report on whatever they are experiencing or consuming at the time. Twitterers are interested in what’s happening to them now most of all, but they also prefer talking about the future than the past : “yesterday” occurs 3 times less often than “tomorrow” for instance, and “ago” is even less frequent than that.
Totally awesome rootingtooting: @dream2300 dude, ive had to like reinforce shirts from there on occasion with my totally awesome sewing skiills. Another fact that comes out of the research into the top 500 words used by twitterers is how often adjectives such as “cool’ and “awesome” and intensives such as “totally” appear. People are also using exclamations, e.g. “wow” (number 228 in the Top 500 words in Twitter messages), and “yay” (number 360), considerably more than in other forms of communication. Twitterdom: A world unto itself fliscorno: Twitter is so great for venting and either having your flames stoked or being calmed by your tweet buddies. Aaaawwwww gee thanks Twitter. “Twitter” and “tweet” themselves also feature in the Top 500 words in Twitter messages, at numbers 52 and 283 respectively. “We’ll be continuing to monitor Twitter, as well as any other significant forms of new communication methods, alongside our established programme of data-collecting into the future.” says Pearsall. “The ability to track language and reflect real language use – by real speakers - ensures that Oxford dictionaries remain at the forefront of dictionary publishing.” Finally, will all this activity mean we're likely to see tweets appearing in Oxford’s range of current dictionaries any time soon? Yay! = cool idea, working on it
For more information please contact Juliet Evans at Oxford University Press on 01865 353911, email juliet.evans@oup.com or via Twitter at: www.twitter.com/jueEjue
Notes to editors: Powered by Oxford Corpus Our dictionary entries are powered by the Oxford English Corpus, part of the largest language research project in the world. Containing more than two billion words, collected daily from sources ranging from novels to newspapers to chat rooms and blogs, the Oxford English Corpus means that Oxford dictionaries empower you with the most authoritative and up-todate information on the English language. For more information, please visit www.askoxford.com/oec