Ke Dise, Mi Arma? Dialectal Varieties in WhatsApp Digital Norm of Andalusian Adolescent Speakers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General assessment:

 

- The paper analyzes the written production of teenagers with Andalusian as their L1 communicating with each other by means of the social medium WhatsApp. The explicit aim of this study is to investigate the relationship (and in particular the overlapping) between the (more or less) spontaneous production instantiated by this type of communication and the dialectal features of the variety spoken by the speakers, i.e. whether and, if so, how the latter is reproduced in these messages. An additional objective stated at the beginning of the article is the examination of the influence that the writing norm in WhatsApp messaging has / might have on the standard orthography of Spanish. The main results are that the dialectal features of the speakers’ native diatopic variety are primarily represented by suprasegmental characteristics such as prosody and rhythm, and that the textisms detected in the corpus do not seem to be related to the standard orthography of Spanish or to be responsible for orthographic peculiarities.

 

 

- The topic is interesting and the methods scientifically sound. The results are in line with the current discussion in the literature and defends a certain position with respect to some thorny aspects of the question (e.g. the relevance of gender in the production of textisms, which is quite variously represented in the literature), and this is of course very good news. The author has consulted and cites a great amount of relevant literature (but see my comments below). The language per se is fine, and the text does not contain many typos, but some are there and need to be corrected (see below [Formal aspects] for details). The general problem I have with the paper is that it does not have a good structure: the author has invested a lot of space in repeating the same content for half of the paper and does not show what is being discussed.

 

 

- What, in my eyes, imperatively needs to be improved is:

     --    the current lack of genuine examples in the paper, which is somewhat “replaced” by a(n informative) discussion about them, but without ever really showing the material that is talked about. Excluding the single examples in the tables, there does not seem to be anything for the reader to appreciate. When looking at Table 5, for instance, one will only have the examples xdio and Qsi he estudiado in mind with respect to the relevant value “words merging”. It would be nice to see at least a bit of variation in that domain. Moreover, even if the author should decide to limit themselves to exemplarily illustrating the examples in the tables, a translation (or at least glosses) is/are needed. Otherwise, the paper will be of little or no interest to readers who do not speak Spanish, making its scope extremely small. Please improve this aspect, which severely reduces the impact of the article. I don’t have issues myself understanding the content of the examples/textisms, but I really hope I will see this necessary change in the version of the paper to be re-submitted.

     --    the presence of many redundancies in the first parts of the paper, which seriously compromise the quality of the reading. The “juicy” part, however, pivoting around the empirical study is quite short. I think this is also related to the first point: the lack of examples. I would invest more space and time in adding examples. I also suggest the author should reduce the a/m repetitions (s. below for details).

 

For this reason, even if I find the paper very interesting, my overall recommendation is:

RECONSIDER AFTER MAJOR REVISION

 

This is due to the fact that I believe a general restructuring of the text in order to make the paper less redundant and more useful even for scholars who work on other languages (but on the same topic) requires a lot of work. I will be happy to re-consider the paper after it has been revised.

 

 

Content:

 

- Although it is certainly good to demonstrate a good reception of the existing studies on the topic, the introduction on p. 1 looks a bit like citation dropping, since some of the claims that are related to a source seem to be quite unspecific. E.g. on l. 36-37: “Due to the widespread use of instant messaging applications (Dixon 2022)” --- why is this very general statement, which has also already been made explicit in the text above, referred to a paper? Also, this part contains too many direct citations. In my eyes, it would be better if the author expressed these very general points in their own words, thereby citing the relevant works referring to more or less the same content in brackets.

 

- l. 42-44: “The central thesis of this paper is that young text-messagers manipulate conventional discursive practices with linguistic creativity and communicative competence in their pursuit of intimacy and social intercourse” > This should be motivated. Why does the author assume this? What is said here, which is referred to Thurlow & Brown (2003) is not really self-evident.

 

- l. 44-46: “This manipulation of the writing norm not only imitates in writing features of orality, but that these features are identified with the dialectal varieties of the speakers.” > I do not understand this point. Is something wrong with the English here or is the content presented in too a convoluted way?

 

- l. 65-68: “The Andalusian dialect is part of a wider dialectal variety called Southern or Atlantic Spanish. This variety is characterized by being, essentially, oral, since the most identifying features of Andalusian speech are phonetic-phonological and, to a lesser extent, morphological phenomena, which are difficult to translate into the written variety of the language” > This is not entirely clear to me. How does the particular saliency of phonetic-phonological features relate to this variety being primarily oral? I would rather say that all dialectal varieties are primarily spoken, which does not directly result from their phonological characteristics of from whether these characteristics are more salient or recognizable than other features. And why are morphosyntactic features difficult to “translate into” the written variety? If a dialectal variety has specific peculiarities in its grammar, these are typically reproduced in its written form (if there is one used by speakers e.g. in the contexts investigated here). Please explain this.

 

- l. 189-191: “Furthermore, we intend to explore the relationship between dialectal varieties in the digital norm used by Andalusian adolescent speakers on WhatsApp and spelling errors in their school texts.” > I do not quite understand what “spelling errors in their school texts” is supposed to mean here. Is the author referring to spelling mistakes STIGMATIZED in school texts?

 

- l. 107 and Table 2: How is a feature like the repetition of one or more letters based on the discrepancy between phonemes and graphemes exactly? Don’t these forms replicate what is supposed to be the pronounced version of the sentence/phrase?

 

- l. 112 (and elsewhere): Please provide at least glosses for the examples in Table 2. If you want your

 

- l. 113: “From this point of view” > From which point of view? Maybe the author means something like “As a result of this” / “In consideration of this” here.

 

- l. 119-120: “Wentker (2018) remarks that digitalk presents an extraordinary similarity to natural conversation” > I believe this should be commented on more critically. In fact, some of the features illustrated above do not seem to relate directly to a “slavish” rendering of the features of spoken language itself. For instance, abbreviations are not or not necessarily connected to orality, but constitute a characteristic of written communication. Similarly, some emojis or similar illustrations do not necessarily correspond to the very same physical reaction of the person writing the message. Often, indeed, the “crying laugh” emoji does not correspond to someone finding the content of the message so funny that he/she is dying from laughing. In this sense, some of these graphic means are kind of “abused” in the strict sense.

 

- l. 152-160: This is sort of a repetition of what has been said at the beginning of the chapter. I would suggest you compress this information (and the corresponding citations) into the initial part of the section and do not repeat it. In its current form, this sounds very redundant.

 

- l. 183-191: This part comes a little late. You may repeat this above the Methods part, but it would be nice for the reader to have this in the very first part so that they know what to expect and in particular how to interpret the information you give in the first chapter.

 

- from l. 192-195: The beginning of Chapter 2 repeats (again) what has been said before. Please delete this part and go straight to the point (the methodology).

 

- l. 336-340: “our opinion, the participants in the study reproduce in non-normative digital writing those oral dialectal features with which they identify and refuse other textisms strange to their linguistic identity. This finding of our study confirms that the digital (textese) norm (Drouin and Driver, 2014) in Spanish not only reproduces in writing features of orality (Calero, 2014), but also it is part of the representation of adolescents in text messages (Tagg et al., 2014, p. 221).” > With respect to what is being said here, these four lines repeat the same content twice. Please delete this redundancy.

 

- l. 362-363: “In our opinion, the digitalk of dialect-speaking Andalusian adolescent is a sample of their digital identity…” > AGAIN?! Please delete this!!

 

 

Formal aspects:

 

- abstract, l. 15-17: “Textisms related to the loss of the intervocalic -d- stand out, as well as textisms that reproduce the different realizations of the phonemes /s/ and /ʝ/, are textisms that characterize the norm used by adolescent Andalusian speakers …” > Please reformulate to avoid the infelicitous repetition of “textisms”. In general, I am not necessarily an opposer of redundancies if these are related to technical terms or the like, but I find this repetition disturbs the reading flow in this case.

 

- l. 41-42: “through the WhatsApp instant messaging app WhatsApp” > Please reformulate.

 

- l. 51: “In the specific case of Spanish variety spoken in Andalusia” > of THE Spanish variety

 

- l. 59-61: “Although young Andalusians consider other varieties of Spanish to be more prestigious, such as the Castilian variety, …” > “Although young Andalusians consider other varieties of Spanish, such as the Castilian variety, to be more prestigious, …”

 

- l. 88: Please correct the notation of the affricate in order to make the ligature join the two components graphically. This is also the case in other parts of the paper.

 

- In Table 1, the quotation marks containing some of the words (e.g. 'tijeras’) look different from the others. Please correct this.

- Table 2, “'Estas preparada para mañana? '” > Please delete the blank space between the question mark and the quotation mark.

 

- Table 2, last line(s): Why is the closing quotation mark to the right of “ahora” so distant? Is this done on purpose? Are the emojis supposed to be part of the same sentence?  

 

- l. 118: “Because of this CLOSELY to spoken language” > closeness?

 

- l. 178: “although not in all cases these features are exclusive…” > “although not in all cases are these features exclusive…” (inversion resulting from the presence of a negated phrase in first clause position)

 

- l. 189: “Furthermore, we intend to explore…” > Please avoid the repetition of “explore” here. Maybe “investigate”?

 

- l. 213-215: “personal messages from different conversations and addressed to different interlocutors, which they considered characteristic of their form of expression and discourse on this app.” > no comma to the left of the relative clause, which is a restrictive one here.

 

- l. 230: “The results of the descriptive analyzes” > “analysis” (Sg.) or “analyses” (Pl.), but not “analyzes”, which can only be a verb.

 

- l. 235: “"Word shortening "” > Please delete the blank space to the right of “shortening”.

 

- l. 246: Spearman or Spearman’s Correlation Coefficient? Please use the term consistently throughout the paper.

 

- l. 263: “are the only one” > ones

 

- l. 286: “dialectal varieties” > variety or variation(s). This paper is not all about different varieties.

 

- l. 309: “(p.101)” > Please add a blank space.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Many thanks for reviewing the manuscript.

We have found your comments and suggestions very useful.  We think you will find that the quality and coherence of the manuscript have been improved following the implementation of your suggestions.

These are the changes and modifications that have been included in response to the points you raised.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Ke dise, mi arma? Dialectal varieties in WhatsApp digital norm of Andalusian adolescent speakers

Submitted to Languages (languages-2087995)

Comments and suggestions for the authors: (I will refer to the authors in the plural, even though I realize there may be only one author, so as to use gender-neutral pronouns.)

This study proposes to document the representation of phonological features of Andalusian Spanish in the text messages of adolescents from various parts of Andalusia. It also proposes to determine whether these is a correlation between the spellings present in text messages and “spelling errors” or non-standard orthography in academic writing by these same speakers and whether male and female users differs in their use of textese. The authors have provided data on these important questions and have situated them within the literature.

I recommend the following changes that will make the study more readable while at the same time strengthening its claims.

1.       Organization of Tables 1, 2, and 3

I propose that the authors reorganize the Tables 1, 2 and 3 for clarity in order to highlight the features tested in the study. This new table can be entitled something like “Textisms analyzed in the text messages of Andalusian adolescents”. These will be organized into:

non-normative graphemes. The authors can indicate whether each grapheme represents phonological features exclusive to Andalusian Spanish or present also in other varieties of Spanish.

word merging

word shortening

For each textisms, the author will provide an example or examples from the corpus.

 

If the author wishes, the textisms not analyzed in this study but present in the current Table 2 can then be presented and illustrated with examples from the corpus for the present study. The same can be done as well for phonological features of Andalusian Spanish and/or Southern Spanish varieties not represented in the textisms found in the corpus or not analyzed by the authors.

 

If the authors choose to mention phonological features not represented in the participants’ texts and textisms not analyzed in this study, then the authors should state whether these textisms do not occur in the corpus or whether the authors chose not to analyze them. If the latter, then the authors should provide a justification for the selection of the textisms analyzed.

 

2.       Presentation of results

In general, I am requesting further information and explanation.

In Table 4 (which may end up being renumbered as Table 2) it would be helpful to add the number of words or characters produced by each student and the total number of words or characters analyzed in this study. Students selected a set number of texts to submit to the authors, but these text messages could vary in the number of words they contain.

 

In Table 5 I would find it useful to see a list of all the textisms produced by the participants in each of the categories. The space saved by combining Tables 1-3 would allow space for these lists. The only category with a high number of examples is word shortening, but it may be the case that the same words are repeatedly shortened. If so, the authors can list a word followed by the number of tokens in parentheses. It is also imperative that the authors give examples of the non-standard spellings (“spelling mistakes”) in the academic texts. In its current form the manuscript does not contain a single example of these. If there really are only 44 of these, then a complete list of these could be given as well, organized according to the spelling, such as s for z, in the same way textisms are divided into X-textisms, S-textisms, etc.

 

In Table 5 do Minimum and Maximum refer to the minimum and maximum number of tokens by a single student? If not, then what does minimum refer to? If so, then what does the total number of textisms refer to?

 

Table 6: The authors should explain how these figures were determined and how this is relevant to their hypotheses. It is not clear how the correlations among textisms supports or refutes one of the authors’ hypotheses.

 

Table 7: The authors need to explain the correlational analysis between textisms and non-standard spellings in academic work. This is one of the most interesting findings of the study and so it should be documented carefully. What we would like to see, of course, is whether the same participants who produce non-standard textisms produce similar non-standard spellings. Is this what the statistical analysis shows? If so, how? If not, what does it show and would it be possible to show the non-standard spellings in academic writing alongside the textisms used by individual participants? This is the surest way to show the correlation and it will provide interesting information for the readers.

 

Table 8: Explain these numbers too.

 

3.       Discussion and conclusions

The authors deduce that the participants are reflecting Andalusian intonation and rhythm in their texts, yet there is no evidence of this at all. The evidence is limited to the written characters they choose to produce in their texts from which it is impossible to determine the intonation and rhythm of speech. The conclusions should be limited to a restatement of the hypotheses and whether the results supported them. The authors can also include ideas for further research, if they like.

I have indicated minor revisions on an attached draft of the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Many thanks for reviewing the manuscript.

We have found your comments and suggestions very useful.  We think you will find that the quality and coherence of the manuscript have been improved following the implementation of your suggestions.

These are the changes and modifications that have been included in response to the points you raised.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I see that the author has made the required changes and has meticulously addressed every single point made in the review. It is also good to see that examples (which were missing in the first version) have been added - this makes the paper a better, more informative contribution to scholarship. I believe the paper can be published in this form.