Discourse of Twitter and Social Media How We Use Language to Create Affiliation on the Web

The Discourse of Twitter and Social Media is the first, large-scale linguistic analysis of the popular micro-blogging site, Twitter. Written in a lively and accessible style, this landmark study brings together cutting edge methods from corpus linguistics with the latest work in Systemic Functional Linguistics to bring to light the ways in which our talk is being reworked in Twitter. New concepts of 'searchable talk' and 'ambient affiliation' are important for understanding not only Twitter discourse, but are also relevant to the communicative practices found in social media more widely. Exploring a wide range of topics from internet memes to online humour, The Discourse of Twitter and Social Media is useful for linguists and scholars interested in new media texts. -- Dr Ruth Page, University of Leicester, UK The book is an interesting account of commonalities of online language. It clearly shows that users are adopting a language style that is specific to online use and that uses different signs in order to convey emotions to account for the lack of actually seeing or hearing the person that you are communicating with. The book is interesting and entertaining and some of the online inside jokes such as the "memes" are very amusing. Overall, the book is a great tool for a person interested in social networks, media and language. -- Elin Weiss has a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and a Master's Degree in Women's Studies from University College Dublin, Ireland. -- Metapsychology Online Review