Vol. 60 No. 4 (2012)
Research Article

Sociophonetic Variation in an Internet Place Name

PDF
  • Kim Witten
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/0027773812Z.00000000033

Published 2012-12-01

Keywords

  • domain name,
  • Chinese domain name,
  • English domain name,
  • e-branding,
  • dot-com,
  • writing system,
  • logography
    • ...More
    Less

Copyright (c) 2012 American Name Society 2012

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Abstract

This study provides one of the first published accounts of sociophonetic variation in which the speech community under investigation exists online and text-based communication is the dominant mode of interaction. The abbreviated name of the Internet community weblog — MeFi, from MetaFilter.com — has at least eight recognized pronunciation variants. Quantitative analysis of surveys from over 2000 MetaFilter members reveals statistically significant variation in the distribution of members’ preferred pronunciations for MeFi across four English-speaking countries. These results reflect dialectal and socio-cultural differences in naming preferences in spite of the fact that the speech channel is limited or non-primary.

PDF

References

  1. Ali-Hasan Noor. 2005. ‘MetaFilter: An Analysis of a Community Weblog’ (Term Paper, University of Michigan School of Information). Available at: <http://www.nooratwork.com/pdf/ali-hasan_metafilter.pdf> [Accessed February 15, 2012].
  2. Bergs Alexander. 2006. ‘Analyzing Online Communication from a Social Network Point of View: Questions, Problems, Perspectives.’ Language@Internet 3(3). Available at: [Accessed February 15 2012].
  3. Boberg Charles. 2000. ‘Geolinguistic Diffusion and the U.S.-Canada Border.’ Language Variation and Change 12(1): 1–24.
  4. Boberg Charles. 1997. ‘Variation and Change in the Nativization of Foreign (a) in English’ (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania).
  5. Greiffenstern Sandra. 2010. The Influence of Computers, the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication on Everyday English. Berlin: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH.
  6. Hall-Lew Lauren, Coppock Elizabeth, Starr Rebecca. 2010. ‘Indexing Political Persuasion: Variation in the Iraq Vowels.’ American Speech 85(1): 91–102.
  7. Ladefoged Peter. 2006. A Course in Phonetics. Southbank, Victoria, Australia: Thomson, Wadsworth.
  8. MetaFilter: Community Weblog. 1999. Available at: <http://www.metafilter.com> [Accessed November 12 2011].
  9. Millard Josh. 2010. MetaFilter Corpus — Frequency Tables. MetaFilter. Available at: <http://stuff.metafilter.com/corpus/freq/> [Accessed March 3 2012].
  10. Preacher KristopherJ. 2001. Calculation for the chi-square test: An interactive calculation tool for chi-square tests of goodness of fit and independence [Computer software]. Available at: <http://quantpsy.org> [Accessed March 3 2012].
  11. Read Allen Walker. 1933. ‘Pronunciation of the Word ‘Missouri’.’ American Speech 8(4): 22–36.
  12. Rheingold Howard. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison–Wesley.
  13. Shapiro Michael. 1997. ‘Broad and Flat a in Marked Words.’ American Speech 72: 437–439.
  14. Silva Leiser, Goel Lakshmi, Mousavidin Elham. 2008. ‘Exploring the Dynamics of Blog Communities: The Case of MetaFilter.’ Information Systems Journal 19(1): 55–81.
  15. Stommel Wyke. 2008. ‘Conversation Analysis and Community of Practice as Approaches to Studying Online Community.’ Language@ Internet 5(5). Available at: <http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2008/1537>.
  16. Trudgill Peter, Hannah Jean. 2008. International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English. London: Hodder Education.
  17. Warnick Quinn. 2010. ‘What We Talk about when We Talk about Talking: Ethos at Work in an Online Community’ (PhD diss., Iowa State University).
  18. Wenger Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.