FacultaddeFilologa

ABriefExplorationon
Acronyms,Emojiand
Youth

AbelGordilloNavas

SociolingsticaeHistoriadelasVariedadesdelInglsActual
Prof.JuliaFernndezCuesta
GradoenEstudiosIngleses(20152016)

TableofContents

1.Introduction

2.AcronymsandInitialisms:Classicvs.ModernApproaches

2.1.Acronym:Definition

2.2.ABriefHistoryofAcronyms

2.3.ANewApproachToAcronyms

3.EmojiandAStepForwardinDigitalCommunications

3.1.Emoji:Definition

3.2.ABriefHistoryofEmoji

3.3.TheSentimentProblem

4.VariablesRegardingTheUseOfAcronymsandEmoji

10

4.1.Style

10

4.2.Identity

12

4.3.GenderandAge

14

5.AStepForward:ABriefStudyonAcronymsandEmoji

15

6.PossibleFutureLinesofInvestigation

22

7.References

23

7.1.WorksCited

23

7.2.OtherSourcesConsulted

26

APPENDIX1:GoogleFormsSurvey

30

APPENDIX2:SomeExamplesofResultsObtainedwithGoogleForms 42

ListofFigures

Figure1.ChartresultsforWTFinCOCA

16

Figure2.ChartresultsforLOLinCOCA

16

Figure3.WTFresultsinNOWCorpus(frequencybyyear)

17

Figure4.WTFresultsinNOWCorpus(frequencybycountry)

17

Figure5.ChartresultsforWTFintheSpanishcorpus

19

Figure6.DataobtainedfromEmojiLifefromausersTwitteraccount

20

Figure7.Acronymsandemojicharactersthatcouldbesimilarinmeaning21

The academic journal Atlantis has been used in this essay as the source of
reference with regard to factors of style, presentation and bibliographical
entries.Theguidelinescanbeconsultedin
http://www.atlantisjournal.org/old/AUTHORS/Guidelines.html

Since this essay contains many web links that are not easy accessible in the
printedversion,itcanbedigitallyconsultedbyscanningthefollowingQRcode:

1.Introduction

The purpose of this work is to establish thebasis forafuturestudythat

could analyze and explore the use of emoji and acronyms, especially on
youngerspeakers.

The project is divided into six main parts: an exploration of acronyms

(with a definition, a brief history of them and an explanation of the approach
taken in this work) a similar section but related to emoji (also containing a
definition and some history, and the last part bearing some interesting
observations of the sentiment problem and the actual premise forthe study.
Thevariablesthat couldbeusedareset,alongsidethebasisforthatstudy,and
some possible future lines of investigation, related to some extent with that
work. In the last part, the works cited and consulted are included, useful for
reasonsofreference.Twoappendicesareincludedattheendoftheproject.

2.AcronymsandInitialisms:Classicvs.ModernApproaches
2.1.Acronym:Definition

AccordingtotheOxfordEnglishDictionary,acronymisdefinedthus:

1. A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or

expression,each letter orpartbeingpronouncedseparatelyaninitialism
(suchasATM,TLS).
2. A word formed from the initial letters of otherwords or (occas.) from
the initial parts of syllables taken from other words, the whole being
pronouncedasasingleword(suchasNATO,RADA).

Forthepurposeofthiswork,bothdefinitionswillbetakenintoaccount.

2.2.ABriefHistoryofAcronyms

Before dealing with the special use of acronyms that Lundell (2012)
defends in her article,itmightbeusefultoexploretheextenttowhichacronyms
haveplayedanimportantroleinthehistoryoftheEnglishlanguage.AsCannon
Garland explains in Abbreviations and Acronyms in English WordFormation
(1989):

It is well known that [acronyms] go back several millennia, with

abbreviations even occurring in Sumerian. The desire to economize is
seen in numerous Hebrew examples like MILH 'Mi Iolh Lnv Hshmilh
(Who shall go up for us to heaven?)' and Roman ones like SPQR
'Senatus populusque Romanuis' and INRI 'Jesus Nazarenus Rex
Judaeorum.'(99)

Thebookcontinuesinvestigatingthehistoryofacronymsundertheseterms:

TherealexplosioninsystematicallycreatedinitialismsbeganwithWorld
War Two.Themanynewitems,includinginformalandobsceneoneslike
F.O. andS.O.S., prompted the U.S.(101). Taking this into account,the
author affirms that [o]ver the centuries, the purpose of creating
initialisms also has changed from the original medieval need for
economy and efficiency (scarce paper and time) (102), and also that
[t]he twentiethcentury popularity of initialisms is demonstrated by the
increasing numbers and size of dictionaries, some of which have gone
into profitable later editions, not to mention the expanding number of
specializeddictionaries(104).

2.3.ANewApproachToAcronyms

In her paper 'LOL', 'OMG' and Other Acronyms and Abbreviations: A

Study in the Creation of Initialisms (2012), Ida Lundell examines a new
approachto acronyms,usefulforthisinvestigation. Sheexplainsthisconceptin
theabstract,thus:

Marchand(1969)claimsthatabbreviationsandacronyms,whicharealso
known as initialisms, are used to create names of new scientific
discoveries, tradenames, names of organizations, new foundations or
offices, but occasionally, and chiefly in American English, personaland
geographicalnamesarealso coined inthisway(Marchand,1969:452).
However, initialisms that originate from netspeak, such as LOL, are
different from the initialisms Marchand (1969) describes. These
initialisms arenotnamesoforganizationsorscientificdiscoveriesrather,
they describeeverydaythings orphases.Thiskind ofinitialismis a new
phenomenonthatseeminglydidnotexistbeforetheInternet,andtheaim
of this essay isthusto examinewhetherInternethasgivenusincreased
opportunitiesforthistypeofwordformation.(2)

For the purpose of herstudy, Lundellcreated acorpusofinformalEnglish,with

someinterestingresults,onceanalyzed:

Ten initialisms were extracted from the corpus. These initialisms were
then examined in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The
data from the COCA showed that people do form and use this kind of
initialism,albeit they doitveryinfrequently.Furthermore,thecorpusdata
showed thatthese items are used in all different genres thatexistin the
COCA, except for academic writing. The data found in this study
indicates that people seem create a new kind of initialism, and that
people therefore have new opportunities to use this kind of word

formation. However, the data is too sparse to draw any definite

conclusionsfromit.(2)

Itis this newtype of initialismwhichwould be explored in afuturestudybased

on this present project, being examples of it items such as LOL, OMG or
BRB,amongothers.

3.EmojiandAStepForwardinDigitalCommunications
3.1.Emoji:Definition

Since the wordemojiisfairlynew,thereisonlyonemeaningincludedin

the Oxford English Dictionary, and it is [a] small digitalimage oricon usedto
express anidea, emotion,etc.,inelectroniccommunications.Amoreextensive
definition can be foundin the paper Sentimentof emojis, written by Novak et
al.(2015):

An emoticon, such as ), is shorthand for a facial expression. Itallows

the author to express her/his feelings, moods and emotions, and
augments a written message withnonverbal elements.Ithelpsto draw
the readers attention,andenhances andimprovestheunderstandingof
the message. An emoji is a step further, developed with modern
communication technologies that facilitate more expressive messages.
An emoji is a graphic symbol, ideogram, that represents not onlyfacial
expressions,but also concepts and ideas,suchascelebration, weather,
vehicles and buildings, food and drink, animals andplants, or emotions,
feelings, and activities. Emojis on smartphones, in chat, and email
applicationshavebecomeextremelypopularworldwide.(1)

3.2.ABriefHistoryofEmoji

The history of emoji is fairly recent, since the uprising of these icons
startedinthelate20thcentury:

Theuse ofemoticonscan be tracedbacktothe19thcentury,whenthey

wereused incasual andhumorouswriting.The first useof emoticonsin
the digital era isattributed toprofessor Scott Fahlman,in a messageon
the computerscience message board ofCarnegieMellonUniversity, on
September 19, 1982. In his message,Fahlman proposedto use:)and
:( to distinguish jokes frommoreseriousposts.Withinafewmonths,the
use of emoticons had spread, and the set of emoticons was extended
with hugs andkisses,byusingcharactersfoundonatypicalkeyboard.A
decade later, emoticons had found their way into everyday digital
communicationsand have now become a paralanguage oftheweb.The
word emoji literally means picture character in Japanese. Emojis
emerged in Japan at the end of the 20th century to facilitate digital
communication. A number of Japanese carriers (Softbank, KDDI,
DoCoMo) provided their own implementations, with incompatible
encoding schemes. Emojis were firststandardized in Unicode6.0the
core emoji setconsisted of722characters.However,Applessupportfor
emojis on the iPhone,in 2010, led toglobal popularity. Anadditionalset
of about 250 emojis was included inUnicode7.0in 2014. As of August
2015,Unicode8.0definesalistof1281singleordoublecharacteremoji
symbols.(Milleretal.2015,12)

3.3.TheSentimentProblem

Aproblem found whendealing withemoji isthat thereis no consistency

among systems for all the ideograms. Nevertheless, emojis have not been
exploited so far, and no resource with emoji sentiment information has been
provided(Novak etal.2015,1). It isMilleretal.(2015)thatprovideathorough
and useful study regarding that topic, where they explain the varying
interpretation of some emoji, being
Microsoft,

inSamsung,

(also rendered

in Twitter or

in Apple,

in

in Facebook)1 oneoftheemoji

thatvariesthemost:2

Overall, 44of110renderings(40%)haveasentimentmisconstrualscore
largerthan or equal to2, meaning that the averageamountofsentiment
disagreement between two people for these emoji (even within a single
platform) is 2 or more. On the other hand, only five renderings (4.5%)
have a misconstrual score of 1 or less. . . . Apple has the highest
average withinplatform sentiment misconstrual (1.96) Google has the
lowest (1.79). Overall, we see that even when the emoji rendering
selected by the sender is exactly the same as what the recipient sees
(because both sender and recipient are using the same smartphone
platform), there is still plenty of sentiment misconstrual. Indeed, if we
selecttwoparticipants whohaveratedtheexact samerendering,in25%
of those cases, they did not agree on whether the sentiment was
positive, neutral, or negative. This reflects the most straightforwardform
of withinplatform communication, and our results suggest that, even in
thiscase, thereareclear opportunities formisconstruedcommunication.
(Milleretal.2015,5).
1

This emoji is known as Grinning Face WithSmiling Eyes. Given the varying interpretationof
this emoji,it isalsoknownasColdEmoji,CringeEmoji, FreezingEmoji,GrimacingEmojior
WinceEmoji(Emojipedia).
2
For more information regarding this issue, the articles by Novak et al.(2015) and Miller et al.
(2015)canbeconsultedindepth.

10

The upper tables contain information about the mostandleast different

emoji interpretation across platforms, focusing on sentiment (Table 1) and
semantics (Table 3). Table 2 shows
Eyes) and

(Smiling Face With HeartShaped

(Unamused Face), the former being the one that is most

consistent in its interpretation, and the latter fluctuating in meaning between

unimpressed, disappointed, depressing or dismayed (Miller et al. 2015,
57).

4.VariablesRegardingTheUseOfAcronymsandEmoji
4.1.Style

Identity and style are key elements when dealing with a sociolinguistic
piece ofwork.Penelope Eckert,3 ProfessorofLinguisticsatStanfordUniversity,
includes in the prefaceto Styleand SociolinguisticVariation(2002) a clarifying
statement:

For more information about the author and the issue of identity,Jocks and Burnouts. Social
CategoriesandIdentityintheHighSchool(PenelopeEckert,1989)canbeconsulted.

11

The study of sociolinguistic variation examines the relation between

social identity and ways of speaking. The analysis of style inspeech is
central to this field because it varies not only between speakers, but in
individual speakers as they move from one style to another. Studying
these variations in language not only reveals a great deal about
speakers strategies with respect to variables such as social class,
gender, ethnicity and age, it also affords us the opportunity to observe
linguistic change in progress. The volume brings together a team of
leadingexperts from a rangeof disciplines tocreateabroadperspective
on the study ofstyleand variation. Beginning withanintroduction tothe
broadtheoreticalissues,thebook goes on todiscusskeyapproachesto
stylistic variation in spoken language, includingsuch issuesasattention
paid to speech, audiencedesign, identityconstruction,thecorpusstudy
of register, genre, distinctivenessand the anthropological study ofstyle.
Rigorous and engaging, this book will become the standard work on
stylistic variation. It will be welcomed by students and academics in
sociolinguistics,Englishlanguage,anthropologyandsociology.(i)

Inthissamebook,theauthordefendstheplaceofstyleinthestudyofvariation:

Style is a pivotal construct in the study of sociolinguistic variation.

Stylistic variability in speech affords us the possibility of observing
linguistic change in progress (Labov 1966).4 Moreover, since all
individuals and social groups have stylistic repertoires, the styles in
which they are recorded must be taken into account when comparing
them(Rickfordand McNairKnox1994:265).5 Finally,styleisthelocusof
the individuals internalization of broader social distributions of variation
(Eckert2000).6

Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification ofEnglish inNew YorkCity. Washington,DC:
CenterforAppliedLinguistics.
5
Rickford,John R.and Faye McNairKnox.1994. Addressee andTopicinfluenced Style Shift:A
QuantitativeSociolinguisticStudy.InBiberandFinegan,pp.23576.
6
Eckert,Penelope.2000.LinguisticVariationasSocialPractice.Oxford:Blackwell.
4

12

4.2.Identity

Not only style is a defining factor in sociolinguistics. Other variables

includeage,levelof education, gender, mobility and social network orthelevel
offormality,amongothers.Identityisoneofthemostimportantvariables:7

Indeed, while interacting with people,we look for signs ofproximityand

those of distance. Such signs include symbols, gender and ethnic
appearance, apparent age, patterns of action, logos on Tshirts and,
most importantly, words that are said. No doubt language gives us a
mostpowerful tool forconveyingsocialidentities,fortelling(andmaking)
friends and foes. The construction and the management of social
identities are done through discourse and by means of various
linguisticmechanismsandstrategies.(Duszak2002,1)

Following that idea, in the abstract of his essay, Noman (2015) defends the
distinction of a dichotomy in social identity, distinguishing a real and a cyber
identity:

Cultural symbols such as arts, music, literature, movies, novels,

history when sharedbythemembersofaparticularculture,remainas
dormant in them until and unless they get in contact with a different
culture. The exposure to a different culture gives a scopeto distinguish
between ones own culture and another. Similarly the technological
advancement (basically in the field of communication) has gradually
Benwell and Stokoe (2006) define identity as an intersubjective productofthesocial.In the
second half of the twentieth century, sociologists, social psychologists and linguistics
commentators began to be interested in the notion of group or collective identities,with which
people identify andclaim or resist membership, and define who theyareinrelation toothers.
We point out that although these group accounts emphasise the social aspects of identity, they
retainaninternalisedunderstandingofaprediscursiveself.(8)

13

created twotypes ofculturewithinaparticularcommunity/nation/group:a

real culture which is the embodied experience of a particular group of
people or a community and the cyber culture which is the result (or
experience) of extensive consumption of computer mediated
communication (CMC). This exposure in the computermediated area
(basically known as cyberspace) creates a different level of behavioural
patterninhuman.(66)

He alsoaffirmsthat [c]omputermediatedcommunicationsystemsarebelieved
to have powerful implications on social life. This system of communication
transgresses what is collective and what is individual. Hence, a tension is
created with identity: an offline identity and an online identity. (Noman 2015,
66).

This creation of an online andan offline identityhasalso beenexplored

by other authors. Navarrete Sirvent (2013) affirms that globalization plays a
crucialroleinthat:

Laglobalizacin mundial,fuente de opulenciayautoridad,serainviable

sin elprogreso y evolucinde lasfuerzasproductivasquelacienciayla
tecnologa han hecho posible. Por esta causa, en el ltimo tercio del
siglo XX, la indagacintecnolgica ha centradotodossusdenuedosen
fomentar tal avanceyel acrecentamiento de dicho sector, creando para
ellodispositivosqueposibilitenelcontactoylacomunicacinmsallde
las fronterasespaciales,dado que la conexin facilitalaactividaddelas
sociedades humanas debido al intercambio de mensajes entre
individuos.(112)

Benwell and Stokoe (2006) also explore that same idea of a different identity
whencommunicatingontheInternet:

14

In cyberspace,space,timeandidentityitwouldseemarenoimpediment
to doing whatever we want to do,or being whomever we wish to be.
Identityon theInternetis playful,creative,impressiveandlimitless,and.
. . an entirely different proposition from identity in the real world. . . .
After exploring virtuality as a concept, and summarising work that has
explored identity and community online, we look atthegenrespecific
realisations of the language of computermediated communication
(CMC).(243244)

4.3.GenderandAge

Another crucial variable for thisprojectis gender,closelyrelatedtoage.

Young girls are the leaders of linguistic change. Rodrguez Gonzlez (2000)
affirmsthefollowing:

La misma atingencia se observa al comprobar las variaciones

experimentadasenrelacinconelgnero....Ahora,conladevaluacin
deformasculturalesyusoslingsticosaquehemossidoconducidosen
las tresltimasdcadas,yconunamayorcomunicacin entrelossexos,
sehacreadoelclimaadecuadopara unamayorcomunalidaddecdigo
entre los y las jvenes, especialmente en aquellas reas o situaciones
proclives a unamayor expresividad. Lingistas, socilogosyperiodistas
a menudo han mostrado la sorpresa que les produca or una jerga
acompaada de las expresiones ms procaces y malsonantesenboca
delosjvenes.(2122)

Gender and agemightthenseemtobeinterconnected.PenelopeEckert

(2014) claimsthat life stage andgenderareintertwiningconstructions,andthe
examination of one calls for the examination of the other.8 (530). But these

She continueswiththat idea affirming that[a]dolescence isaparticularlyrichlife stage for the

study oftheinterplay between the construction of languageand the constructionofsocialidentity

15

variables are not isolatedauthorssuchasAnetaPavlenko(2002)alsorelate

themtootherfactors,suchasbilingualism:

Recently, several researchers. .. pointedtothe needto bridgethegap

between thestudy of bilingualismandthestudyoflanguageandgender.
An excellent new series at Mouton de Gruyter, Language, Power, and
Social Process, edited by Monica Heller and Richard Watts,responded
to this call by publishing two new texts that significantlycontributetothe
body of knowledge in this area: Joan Pujolars (2001) monograph
Gender, Heteroglossia, and Power, and avolume edited byPavlenko,
Blackledge, Piller, and TeutschDwyer (2001) Multilingualism, second
language learning, andgender. . . .As a result, thisworkis a welcome
addition to the growing body of ethnographic studiesof youth culture in
multilingualcontexts.(99)

This connection between gender and age and multilingualism is interesting for
this project, since it might be observed how the usage of acronyms vary
between native speakers of English and speakers of other languages, both
usingEnglishacronymsandinitialismsintheirownlanguage.

5.AStepForward:ABriefStudyonAcronymsandEmoji

There is no an extensive work regarding acronyms used by young

people onthe internet,andeven lessaboutemoji, eventhoughtherehasbeen
some research inthe last years.Therefore, this presentprojectcanbeusedas
a basis for a more detailed study, where the use of both acronyms and emoji
are used, when and why. The crucial variables to take into account would be
age, gender, style and identity, but also nationality (since there might be an
important difference in the use of acronyms by English native speakers and

because while it is eminently transitional, it is also highly reified and experienced as static (by
manyaspainfullyso).(Eckert2014,530)

16

other speakers that use them in English, but also intheir own language,even
betweenspeakersofAmericanversusBritishEnglish).

To start, it would be useful to analyze a corpus. Following Ida Lundell

(2012), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) can be an
usefulresourcetofindacronymssuchasLOLorOMG.

Figure1.ChartresultsforWTFinCOCA.

Figure2.ChartresultsforLOLinCOCA.

In http://corpus.byu.edu/, some free corpora can be accessed. Apart from the

aforementioned Corpus of Contemporary American English, the NOW Corpus
(withmore than 2.8billionresultssince2010)ortheGlobalWebBasedEnglish
(GloWbE)mightbeused.

17

Figure3.WTFresultsinNOWCorpus(frequencybyyear)

Figure4.WTFresultsinNOWCorpus(frequencybycountry)

It would be interesting to observe how these new acronyms used by

young peoplediffer from traditionalinitialisms. InEnglish forResearch:Usage,
Style, and Grammar (2013), Adrian Wallwork establishes the main usage of
acronyms,definedinsixmainpoints:

18

1. Thefirsttimeyouuse an acronym, writethe wordout in full, followed

bytheacronyminbrackets.Afterwards,justusetheacronym.
2.Eachletterofanacronymisusuallycapitalized.
3. The written full form of an acronym may or may not require initial
capitalletters.
4. Exceptions to Rule 3 are frequent when one of the letters in the
acronymisapreposition(typicallyof).
5. Acronyms that includeanumber canbefoundeitherinupperorlower
case(e.g.B2Borb2b=businesstobusiness).
6. Do not repeat the fi nal abbreviated word in the text following the
abbreviation.(191)

Therefore, an analysis of LOL, WTF and acronyms of that type could yield
interesting results and may not follow some or any of these indications,since
theyareoftenusedinaninformalstyle.

Corporain otherlanguagescanalsobe consultedinthesamewebpage,

http://corpus.byu.edu/. As anexample,IwilltaketheSpanishcorpus,thatcould
becomparedwiththeEnglishonesabove.

19

Figure5. Chart results for WTFin the Spanish corpus that canbeconsultedin
http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/.

Since emoji are not common words, to find corpora containing them is
not as straightforward as with acronyms. Therefore, some resources exist for
that, andsome authors have usedsocialnetworkssuch as Twitter asacorpus
(Milleretal.2015,Novaketal.2015orPakandParoubek2010).

Anuseful resource forthatishttp://emoji.life/.CreatedbyJeff(@jsneedles)and

designed byDavid(@david_diam),itservesasatooltoexploreEmojilyticsfor
Twitter.Emojitrackercan alsobeused,where realtimeemojiuseonTwitteris
presented(http://emojitracker.com).

20

Figure6.Dataobtainedfromhttp://emoji.life/fromausersTwitteraccount.

21

As a conclusion, the most interesting study that could be carried out

mightbetocomparedirectlyacronymswithsomeemoji.

LOL(LaughingOutLoud)

FaceWithTearsofJoy

LMAO(LaughingMyA**Out)

SmilingFaceWithOpenMouthand
TightlyClosedEyes

SmilingFaceWithOpenMouthand
SmilingEyes

UpsideDownFace

WTF(WhatTheF**k)

NeutralFace

OMG(OhMyGod)

FaceWithRollingEyes

FaceWithOpenMouth

AstonishedFace

AnguishedFace

FaceScreaminginFear

JK(JustKidding)

WinkingFace

FaceWithStuckOutTongue

FaceWithStuckOutTongueand
WinkingEye

FaceWithStuckOutTongueand
TightlyClosedEyes

Figure7.Acronymsandemojicharactersthatcouldbesimilarinmeaning.9

Allimagesandnameshavebeenextractedfromhttp://emojipedia.org/.

22

I have also developed a form that could be used to obtain data from
some users and analyze them for a future study. The form consists of six
sections, detailed in the first APPENDIX. The dataobtained through a Google
Form isvisually displayed in thesamepage,and includedwithinaspreadsheet
(some random results are exemplified by me in APPENDIX 2). It is entitled
Estudio de Redes Sociales, as the useful questions for the study arehidden
alongsidesomeothers,inordertoavoidtheobserversparadoxtosomeextent.

TheformcanbeconsultedandcompletedinGoogleFormsfollowingthis
link:https://goo.gl/forms/qRAxeiYHeaMANWGU2

6.PossibleFutureLinesofInvestigation

In TheLinguist List, an international Linguistics community online,some

useful resources regarding Sociolinguistics can be consulted. One of them is
Language in Society, published by Cambridge University Press, an
international journal of sociolinguistics concerned with all branchesof speech
andlanguageasaspectsofsociallife.

Given the fact that the branch of investigation of this present project is
relatively new, some more work could be based oninvestigatingtheimpact of
emoji inthe mode of communicationof people andhowitischangingnow(ina
synchronic perspective)and,perhapsmore interestingly,howithaschangedin
adiachronicperspective,forafuturework.

Some useful resources for a possible future lineof investigation related

tothatprojectareincludedinsection7.2.

23

7.References
7.1.WorksCited
"acronym,n.".OEDOnline.June2016.OxfordUniversityPress.
http://0www.oed.com.fama.us.es/view/Entry/1844?rskey=VvqARD&result=1&is
Advanced=false

Benwell, Bethan, and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2006. Discourse and Identity.

Edinburgh,GB:EdinburghUP
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/unisev/docDetail.action?docID=10435300

Cannon,

Garland. 1989. Abbreviations and Acronyms in English

WordFormation.AmericanSpeech64(2):99127.
doi:10.1126/science.ns13.327.362a.
http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/~sproatr/Courses/TextNorm/Papers/cannon.pdf

Corpus.byu.edu.Corpora,size,queries=betterresources,moreinsight.
http://corpus.byu.edu/

Duszak, Anna. 2002. Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages,

Discourses and Cultures. Philadelphia, NL: John Benjamins Publishing
Company.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/unisev/docDetail.action?docID=10022354

Eckert, Penelope, and John R. Rickford. 2002. Style and Sociolinguistic

Variation.CambridgeUniversityPress.
http://0site.ebrary.com.fama.us.es/lib/unisev/reader.action?docID=10073580

Eckert, Penelope. 1989.Jocksand Burnouts. SocialCategoriesandIdentity in

the High School. New York and London: Teachers College, Columbia
University.

24

. 2014. Language and Gender in Adolescence. In The Handbook of

Language, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by Susan Ehrlich,MiriamMeyerhoff,
andJanetHolmes,52945.BlackwellPublishingLtd.

"emoji,n.".OEDOnline.June2016.OxfordUniversityPress.
http://0www.oed.com.fama.us.es/view/Entry/389343?redirectedFrom=emoji

EmojiLife.EmojilyticsforTwitter.
http://emoji.life/

Emojipedia.GrinningFaceWithSmilingEyes.EmojipediaPtyLtd.
http://emojipedia.org/grinningfacewithsmilingeyes/

Emojitracker.RealtimeemojiuseonTwitter.
http://emojitracker.com/

GoogleForms.EstudioRedesSociales.
https://goo.gl/forms/qRAxeiYHeaMANWGU2

LanguageinSociety.CambridgeUP.
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displaySpecialArticle?jid=LSY&bespokeId=
11608

Lundell, Ida. 2012. LOL, OMG and Other Acronyms and Abbreviations: A
Study in the Creation of Initialisms. Bachelor Degree Project, English
Linguistics.Supervisor:AlanMcMillion.
http://www.divaportal.se/smash/get/diva2:601211/FULLTEXT01.pdf

25

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30

APPENDIX1:GoogleFormsSurvey

1. Collecting data about the users gender, age, level of education and
nationality:

31

32

2. Questionsabout the useofsocial networksandinstantmessaging(IM)

apps, in order to obtain data that is not relevant for the study, but that
couldbeusedtoavoidtheobserversparadox:

33

34

3. This section includes a video in Spanish, that could be used to see

whether the survey respondent prefers using emojioracronyms suchas
LOLorxD:

35

36

4. The fourth section contains a video inEnglish, similar totheprevious

one,and some briefquestions regarding the relationshipof the userwith
theEnglishlanguage:

37

38

5. Now, having analyzed each video separately, a connection between

both is established (that could yield tangible results in the difference
treatment of acronyms and emoji between both languages being
English a second language of an e.g. Spanish speaker, or a native
languageofanuservs.adifferentnativelanguageofanotheruser):

39

40

6. The last section of the survey includes some questions regarding the
use of social networks, the impact of them in the users life and, more
interestingly for our study, the useof emojitheuse of themin ascale
from1to5andsomequestionsconcerningthewaytoexpresslaughterin
anerapriortotheappearanceoftheseemoticons:

41

42

APPENDIX2:SomeExamplesofResultsObtainedwithGoogleForms

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

And the same results included in the spreadsheet, so that the data is more
accessibleandcanbemoreeasilyconsultedinordertocreatethestudy: