“Grammar Nazis never sleep”: Facebook humor and the management of standard written language

“I see your garbage”: Participatory practices and literacy privilege on “Grammar Nazi” Facebook pages in different sociolinguistic contexts

“…Based on our previous observations (Sherman and Švelch, 2015) and a pilot study, we found that there was little variation in the output of GN pages throughout the year, so we chose to study a continuous period of 4 months from 1 August until 30 November 2014. We collected the material in HTML format using the Scrapbook extension for Mozilla Firefox, as well as in the form of formatted data using the Netvizz application for Facebook (Rieder, 2013).…”

“…On one hand, this can be considered a bottom-up participatory practice (Carpentier, 2011; Jenkins, 2006), aimed at the appreciation and treasuring of language as a cultural asset. However, as previous work has shown, this kind of humor also exploits social inequalities and may serve as a tool of social differentiation (Sherman and Švelch, 2015).…”

“…Those engaging in complaints have typically not been linguists, but rather self-appointed language experts from all walks of life, including professional language users (Cameron, 2012; Curzan, 2016; Milroy and Milroy, 2012; Schaffer, 2010). This tradition can be viewed as a manifestation of language management , which we understand through the lens of Language Management Theory (LMT; Jernudd and Neustupný, 1987; Nekvapil, 2016; Sherman and Švelch, 2015; Švelch, 2015) as activity directed toward language, from correcting slips of the tongue to complex national language policies. 1 Such activity is typically observable as a process beginning with the negative evaluation of noted deviations from standard (or other) linguistic norms and, in some cases, the design and implementation of adjustments, as done institutionally by teachers or editors.…”

“…Thus, they perform what we view as a type of language management described as “language policing,” or behavior toward language aimed at producing societal order in a similar way that law enforcement does (Blommaert et al, 2009: 203, inspired by Foucault (2009) and explored in online contexts most recently by Phyak (2015) and De Bres and Belling (2015). In our previous work, we have further specified language policing in terms of LMT as “negative evaluation of noted deviations from language norms from a position of power, and the design and potential implementation of adjustments in the form of sanctions” (Sherman and Švelch, 2015: 319).…”

Multilingualism and Technology: A Review of Developments in Digital Communication from Monolingualism to Idiolingualism

“…For many, particularly speakers of minoritized languages, they are committed to reviving and revitalizing as well as documenting and developing that language (see, e.g., Budzise-Weaver, Chen, & Mitchell, 2012; McMonagle, Cunliffe, Jongbloed-Faber, & Jarvis, 2018; Nichols, Witten, Keegan, Bainbridge, & Dewsnip, 2005; Sperlich, 2005). For others, there is a reward in terms of displaying linguistic knowledge, and the many language ideological debates (Blommaert, 2010) that take place in online contexts are evidence of this (see, e.g., De Bres & Belling, 2015; Lenihan, 2011; Sherman, & Švelch, 2015; Yazan, 2015).…”