Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery : A corpus study of emoticons and abbreviations in English blogs written by Swedes

Sammanfattning: This study investigates the use of emoticons and abbreviations in a mode of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), blogs written by Swedish individuals in English. The aim of the study is to find out whether the emoticons and abbreviations used in these blogs are tailor-made by Swedish users or if they are the same as those found on the rest of the Internet. Another question asked by the study concerns if the use of emoticons and abbreviations differs depending on the gender and age group of the blogger. The method used is mainly concordance searches in a corpus, using the concordance program AntConc to find particular features of CMC. The data used for the study is a corpus of one hundred thousand words from blogs all over the Internet on a wide range of topics written by males and females of different age groups. The results of the investigation indicate that no local variations of abbreviations and emoticons exist within Swedish blogs written in English. While emoticons were used more frequently by males than their female counterparts, abbreviations were used mostly by female bloggers. It also appeared that bloggers aged thirty or younger use emoticons and abbreviations most frequently, suggesting that their use was influenced quite significantly by the age of the blogger. The conclusion drawn from this is that if any eventual local Swedish variations of emoticons and abbreviations, they exist in Swedish blogs and not English ones, as those discovered in this study do not deviate from what already exist in blogs written by native speakers of English.