Premium
The weirding of English, trans‐scripting, and humour in digital communication
Author(s) -
Spilioti Tereza
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/weng.12450
Subject(s) - indexicality , scripting language , ideology , point (geometry) , linguistics , sociology , the internet , media studies , computer science , world wide web , political science , politics , law , philosophy , mathematics , geometry , operating system
This article examines local appropriations of English‐related forms in digital communication, especially (re)appropriations that play with and modify significantly what we conventionally recognize as English (‘weird English’; Ch'ien, 2005). It investigates a case of trans‐scripting where English‐related forms are respelled with Greek characters in a series of memes and YouTube comments shared among primarily Greek‐speaking Internet users. Drawing on the notions of indexicality and enregisterment, it analyses the global and/or local orientations of such humorous acts of respelling, their indexical values in online participatory formats and their potential to function as register alerts that point to particular voices and ideological positions.