الفهرس 
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Abstract
Language has a communicative function and people use different forms of language to express themselves either written or verbally. Through the past decade, people have created new ways of communication such as texting, sending emails and posting on social media applications and websites. In other words, a new era in socializing has started with the advancement of telecommunication and technology. As a result, the language used mostly by the new generations has dramatically changed due to the new methods of communication that force people to economize while using language. For instance, Twitter is one of the most popular and mostly used social media applications that allows users to write 140 letters as a tweet. The fact that most users of social networks are young is reflected in the way they use the language. Indeed, new words and vocabulary have appeared in their dictionary. Moreover, they may misspell or abbreviate words in order to write within the letters limit that they are allowed to use. This research tackles the phenomenon of how social media affects the diction and orthography of users from both a morphological and semantic perspectives.
This study focuses on the common words and terms that are commonly used and become widely-spread due to social media applications. Polysemy and neologisms of social media reflect how language can develop through time, especially because of technology. According to Mworia (2015), “language evolves in technology based on the use of this language and the neologisms formed in social networking online. Growth in SNSs has transformed the way in which people create and share or exchange information and ideas which has been accelerated through virtual networking sites” (p.1). As a matter of fact, social media has become a prominent medium of
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interaction for different purposes. For example, some sellers or companies market their product or services on social media platforms. New mothers form and join Facebook groups to support each other and post their inquiries for quick answers and support. Hence, socializing through social media is fast, interactive and detailed. This makes users heavily depend on it to take the essence of what it offers.
Finally, the topic of neologisms and social media language is dealt in regard to morphological, semantic scopes/ domains.
1.1 Objectives of the thesis
The thesis has these objectives:
1. To explore the extent to which language users are semantically influenced by social media usage.
2. To investigate the reasons for new words and spelling errors that are found in users’ daily production on social media and real life.
3. to figure out the characteristics of netspeak neologisms and their patterns of formation.
4. To describe the lexical features and neologisms that can be found in the linguistic productions of language users who post on social media on a daily basis.
5. To examine the factors that influence the production and usage of neologisms and netspeak.
1.2 Significance of the thesis
The motivation for this thesis lies in the observation that, despite the growing significance of social media as a subject of academic interest, only few linguists have investigated how
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language is used and involved in social media in morphosemantic terms. Moreover, the influence of social media upon lexical competence and performance has not been tackled yet. The social function of language and the way technology manipulates the human brain encourage the researcher to study more about how the vocabulary and spelling of users from different age groups and backgrounds are influenced by social media usage.
1.3 Thesis hypotheses
- Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Instgram and Tumbl1 influence both forms and meanings of words.
- Social media neologisms deviate from the use of Standard English.
- Users of social media are semantically rich due to the rapidly growing online communicative activities.
1.4 Key research questions
1. How does social media change the diction and orthography of today’s language?
2. Does social media introduce new words to users?
3. Do words imply different meanings in different social media contexts?
4. Does social media enhance the use of polysemy?
5. What are Neologisms?
6. What factors influence the production and usage of neologism in social media?
7. What are the most productive morphological processes in today’s social media neologisms?
1 Tumbl: a microblogging platform that is owned by Yahoo and allows users to post multimedia and content to a short-form blog.
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1.5 Limitations
The research is not concerned with methods of learning English or how social media improve language performance in classroom. In other words, it does not study the linguistic performance of students who use social networks in classroom. However, it focuses on the general impact of social media on the orthography and diction of all users from different backgrounds and ages.
1.6 Data collection
Different data collection techniques are employed in this thesis in order to confirm or refuse the research hypotheses. The data are collected by the following methods:
I. Personal Observation: The first instrument used in this research work is observation. As a social media user, I have been able to observe a large amount of vivid data through taking notes from natural interaction or posts on social networks. The objective of such method is to understand the social environment in which users produce and deal with content in different ways. However, the challenge of this method is analyzing the results, and that is why other data collection methods are needed to be combined with observation.
II. Questionnaires: The method of written a questionnaire in collecting data for linguistic research is essential, since it covers a wide variety of samples and results. In other words, using social media to give questionnaires will allow the researcher to get real examples of how users of social networks use language in terms of choice of words and spelling. The questionnaires are given anonymously because the respondents are not asked to provide their names, thus they give them a certain freedom in answering naturally. Therefore, questionnaires data are more reliable for analysis. They also evaluate the relationship
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between the amount of time users spend socializing online and their morpho-semantic performance. Through Survey Monkey, which is a website that helps design questionnaires and surveys to be either printed or shared online, the following survey is created https://www.surveymonkey.com/create/survey/preview?sm=M_2BPQrv6DmeYSCR2B0oVP_2BY_2Bxh78yaGrop4fDgZv8auA_3D
III. Creating Mini- Dictionary of neologisms: The researcher will encourage participants from her own acquaintances and students to submit ten of their social media production such as tweets or Facebook status and posts in a certain webpage in order to recruit at least one hundred posts. The sampling technique is going to be snowballing whereby participants are encouraged to urge friends to contribute in order to create a dictionary which consists of about 50,000 words which will be manually analyzed. This dictionary is relatively small, yet it is significantly large for the purpose of the study.
IV. Hashtags Tracking: Keeping tracking of Hashtags on Twitter from December, 2015 to January 2016 will allow the researcher gather sample of Hashtags that trend recently. Those samples are going to be real and current data that can be studied in order to fully understand the nature of hashtags, their use and the way they are usually created and become widely spread and used.
V. Published materials on social media language such as The Ultimate Glossary: Social Media Terms Explained by Kipp Bodnar (2015)
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1.7. Chapterization
The thesis is divided into five chapters in addition to two appendices:
Chapter One provides an an introduction to the research paper. It sheds light on the objectives of the study and the data that has been chosen as the focus of the study. It identifies the language of social media that the researcher wants to explore. In addition, the limitations of the study are also explained with justification. This chapter also includes the significance as well as the hypotheses of the thesis and provides justification for the researcher’s choice and interest in this area in particular.
Chapter Two focuses on the review of literature. It starts with the definition of key terms such as social media, neologisms and polysemy. It examines the effect of social media on words and meanings with reference to related studies. Moreover, it explains the relationship between Semantics and Morphology. It also provides an investigation of the theoretical background of morphology and semantics.
Chapter Three is the first part of the analysis which includes morphological analysis using the morphological productivity approach. It traces the word formation processes of social media neologisms and how those neologisms are formed. Furthermore, this chapter describes the impact of social media on orthography.
Chapter Four is the second part of the analysis which covers the semantic analysis of social media neologisms and polysemy based on the Meillet Model for Semantic Change. The semantic analysis is divided into lexical, compositional and content based semantics.
Chapter Five is the discussion of the findings that the researcher reaches from the morphosemantic analysis of social media language. The researcher also answers the research questions stated in the introduction. Finally, the researcher provides some recommendations for further research in relation to the study in hand.