Jiajun Weng, Chris Lam, Christine Chang, Terri See Lok Ho, Wei Lin Have you ever wondered whether understanding what your classmates are saying and the seeing their cameras is essential to succeed in the course? You’re not alone. During this special period, education has primarily moved on to online. Many international students from UCLA taking […]
Turn on Your Camera, Foo : Slang and Visual Cues in the Classroom Read Post »
Pranav Singh, Melissa Yang, Yoosoo Jang, Ross Perry, and Nathan Midkiff Do you refer to Highway 101 as “101” or “the 101”? Perhaps many people have seen the case of putting ‘the’ in front of the highway. A determiner, like “the”, is an important element of grammar, and is usually used in front of a
Driving from 101 to The 101: An Analysis of Determiner Usage in Californian Speech Read Post »
Camille Lanese, Chang Liu, Heather Pritchard, Merton Ung, Tracy Zeng If you were to go on TikTok right now, one word might stand out to you: “periodt.” With a hashtag including more than 632 million views and endless videos with teenagers exclaiming “and that’s on periodt!”, you might wonder what is up with this word.
Periodt, Sis! Gender Identity and TikTok Term Usage Read Post »
Wenqian Guo, Sum Yi Li, Yichen Lyu, Sok Kwan Wong, Yingge Zhou Code-switching has become increasingly common as globalization allows international exchanges across cultures to take place more frequently. And as studying abroad becomes more accessible to students around the world, more speech communities with distinctive code-switching patterns are being formed. As we pondered the
Code-Switching Between Mandarin Chinese and English: Do You Use “lol” or “xswl”? Read Post »
Eric Chen, Abbey Mae Gozon, Khoi Nguyen, Paul Vu, Julia Wang Hedging is an aspect of language that is easy for non-linguists to overlook. These terms are used to apply uncertainty to a statement, to make it seem less assertive. The question we seek to answer is, do women make more use of hedging than
Hedging and Gender in the STEM Community Read Post »
Nick Ushiyama, Stella Oganesyan, Ava Boehm, Rachel Lee, Alesha Vaughn Love them or hate them, almost everyone active on social media has come into contact with memes at some point. Chances are, one or more of those memes used a variety of English called AAVE, or African American Vernacular English. This variety originated from working-class
Fun, Cool, Hip Title Here: AAVE Usage in Twitter Memes Read Post »
Alissa McNerney, Akina Nishi, Ryley Park, Nicolas Simone, Fontanna Yee As slang and social media usage has risen in popularity in recent years, we wanted to explore how different patterns of slang would change a speaker’s identity on different social media platforms. Although we initially thought that examining slang alone would give us a good
Speech Patterns as Identity Constructors Across Social Media Platforms Read Post »
Tiffany Dang, Brianna Lombardo, Carlos Salvador Vasquez, Denisa Tudorache, Yuyin Yang The present article focused on linguistic markers that are adopted by the Women Loving Women (WLW) population when identifying potential members of the WLW community. More specifically, this study focused on the strategies used by members of the WLW community for identifying fellow WLW
Does She Listen to ‘Girl in Red’? Linguistic Markers in WLW Flirting Read Post »
Julia Baylon, Rachel Rim, Carolina Guerrero, Hebbah Elokour, and Caelynn Hwang If you’re a college student reading this, you are a key individual in the composition of the Gen Z identity. Gen Z, today’s 18-23-year-olds, is defined by its fervent slang usage as well as its notorious association with and attachment to technology. Commonly used
Do you LOL out loud? Screen time influence on internet slang irl Read Post »
Sandra Fulop, David Huang, Yinling Li, Joyana Rosenthal An important part of college is finding a space to belong. For marginalized students such as LGBTQ women, this can also be the most difficult part. Although there are often groups such as Gay-Straight Alliances or LGBTQ resource centers, these revolve entirely around the LGBTQ identity. But