Change in E-mail Style: A Multi-Dimensional Approach

John C. Paolillo

SCAN Research Group Meeting

October 4, 2002

Electronic Mail

• As written communication– Typed via keyboard – Composed/edited like other writing

• As spoken communication– Rapid turn-around (interactive)– Typos are common– Informality is favored

E-mail: Where does it fit?

• A new register– Crystal (2001) Netspeak– Ferarra, Brunner and Whitmore (1991)

• Intermediate in most characteristics – Collot and Belmore (1996)– Yates (1996)

• A (new) force in language change– Baron (1984, 2001)

Medium and Language Change

• Written media:– Standardization/homogenization– Complexity and formality

• Spoken media:– Simplification– Diversification

Investigating Change in E-mail

• Sufficient time depth now exists – First e-mail discussion lists in 1970’s

• Archives are widely available– E-mail discussion lists– Usenet newsgroups, etc.

• Tracking individual usage is possible

The Present Study

• 11-year corpus of MsgGroup– Arpanet discussion group from 1975-1986– 2580 messages (872 in sub-sample)– Many important Internet developers

participated

• Track individuals and group usage– Formal and informal language features– Compare individuals’ trends with overall trends

Our Previous Work

• Herring, Labarre and Paolillo (2001)– Nine features: 1st, 2nd, 3rd person pronouns,

demonstratives, syntactic subordination, contractions, contraction sites, latinate nouns in -ion and -ment

– Overall, all features decreased over time (!)– Large individual variance– Some individuals appear to buck main trends

The Multi-Dimensional Model

• More Features: Biber (1988, 1995)

• Comprehensive classification of English genres/registers

• Historical trends observed (Biber and Finegan 1989)– English writing becomes more spoken-like over

time

Adverbial Features

Amplifiers

Emphatics

Hedges

Because

Time Adverbials

Discourse Particles

Prepositions

Pied Piping

Verb Features

Private VerbsPublic VerbsSuasive VerbsDoBeNecessity ModalsPredictive ModalsInfinitivesThe Perfect

Other Features

Analytic Negation

Synthetic Negation

Indefinite Pronouns

IT

Factor Comparison

Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

Factor 1It, Be, DoBecausePrepositions (-)Indefinite PronounsDiscourse ParticlesAnalytic NegationPrivate Verbs(hedges)

Demonstratives

AmplifiersEmphatics1st and 2nd Person

Factor 2Public Verbs

(perfect)

3rd Person(Synthetic Neg)

Factor 3Time Adv.

(Pied Pipe)

N-ion,(N-ment)

Factor 4InfinitivePred. Mod.Necess. M.Suasive

Biber’s Factors

• Information vs. involved production

• Narrative vs. non-narrative concerns

• Explicit vs. situation-dependent reference

• Overt expression of persuasion

Interpretation

• Factor 1: – Elaborated vs. unelaborated

• Factor 2: – Syntactic and conceptual complexity

• Factor 3: – Person-reference and certainty

Response and Fi tted Values vs numdate

numdate

Response&Fitted Values

-1.00e+3 0.00e+0 1.00e+3 2.00e+3 3.00e+3 4.00e+3 5.00e+3-4.00

-2.00

0.00

2.00

4.00

Factor 1 by date

Response and Fi tted Values vs numdate

numdate

Response&Fitted Values

-1.00e+3 0.00e+0 1.00e+3 2.00e+3 3.00e+3 4.00e+3 5.00e+3-4.00

-2.00

0.00

2.00

4.00

Factor 2 by date

Response and Fi tted Values vs numdate

numdate

Response&Fitted Values

-1.00e+3 0.00e+0 1.00e+3 2.00e+3 3.00e+3 4.00e+3 5.00e+3-3.00

-2.00

-1.00

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

Factor 3 by date

Changes over time

• Factor 2, syntactic/conceptual complexity – Shows slight overall increase over time

– Decreases with the number of messages and length of time one has been on the list

• Factors 1 (elaborated) and 3 (person ref/certainty) – Decrease with increasing number of messages on the

the list

– Increase slightly with one’s length of time on the list

Conclusions

• The factors of co-varying features identified do not seem to match Biber’s factors well

• There do appear to be correlations between the factors and time (date and experience)– Complexity/formality plays an important role

• It is still unclear if any of these changes are related to the medium