Durata:
The project studies the uses of dialect on the web by younger generations. We focus our attention on an interactive web platform that has been scarcely investigated so far: TikTok, whose content is characterized by a high degree of multimodal density. After selecting videos in which the predominant semiotic resource used is spoken language, they will be analyzed according to the following parameters: a) sociodemographic characteristics of the content creator; b) topic addressed; c) semiotic resources used and their interaction; d) codes employed; e) absence/presence of code-switching phenomena; f) syntactic features of code-switching; g) presence/absence of flagging phenomena; h) functions of code-switching.
The analysis of the linguistic productions will be accompanied by an analysis of the online communities they express, shedding light on how they represent themselves, the rules of interaction that govern them, and the sociocultural profile that characterizes them.
Purpose:
The project aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the relationship between language and dialect in content created by young people on the TikTok platform. In particular, we intend to shed light on the functions and structural features that distinguish dialect in such content, in order to determine whether and to what extent we can speak of a “revival of dialect” in digital communication. To this end, a corpus of hypertexts will be created, the analysis of which will take into account not only spoken language but also other semiotic resources that contribute to the construction of meaning (gestures, music, images).
Risultati attesi:
- Update of the literature regarding the use of dialect by young people in digital contexts;
- Creation of a corpus of hypertexts taken from the TikTok platform;
- Description of code-switching phenomena present in the corpus and identification of any recurring patterns.
Risultati raggiunti:
The focus was placed on the Booktok community, composed of reading enthusiasts: videos were examined, totaling over six hours, made by twelve booktokers—with a large following (at least 10,000), aged between 16 and 32 and from Northern, Central, and Southern Italy—who give reading advice, review books, and document their reading experience in real time by describing emotions and reactions.
In the corpus, cases of regional Italian-dialect code switching are rare. Instead, phenomena of intralinguistic variation are frequent; more precisely, in the spoken data from Central Italian booktokers, the alternating use of diatopic varieties showing different degrees of regionality is observed: the shift from a less marked variety of regional Italian, both phonetically and syntactically, to a more marked one, that is, one more influenced by dialect, occurs in connection with i. quotations (to highlight reported speech); ii. reformulations (to emphasize a specific concept); iii. digressions—mostly consisting of comments—; iv. shifts in the tone of the conversation in a playful or humorous sense. Intralinguistic variation therefore assumes specific communicative functions, similar to those observed in the literature in relation to code switching.
Coordinatore:
Team:
Prof. Elena Pistolesi, Dr. Maria Laura Restivo