The influence of teenagers' social background on their writing style on social media
What is it about?
The article studies the impact of teenagers' social background on their writing style on social media. Several aspects of teenagers' social profile are taken into account (e.g. their educational track in high school, the profession of their parents and the language they speak at home). For three linguistic features typical of online writing (e.g. emoji), we verify whether distinct preference patterns can be found for teenagers with different social profiles.
Why is it important?
The linguistic influence of people's social class is not often examined with respect to social media writing. Therefore, the present article fills a gap, by revealing an important effect of this social variable and by emphasizing the importance of including it in the research design of future studies on online writing practices.