Making "fetch" happen: The influence of social and linguistic context on nonstandard word growth and decline

TL;DR

This study analyzes how social and linguistic factors influence the growth and decline of nonstandard words in Reddit, revealing that linguistic diversity supports word longevity while social dissemination is less influential than previously thought.

Contribution

It provides a large-scale analysis linking linguistic context diversity to word growth and challenges the assumed importance of social dissemination in language change.

Findings

Linguistic context diversity correlates with faster growth and longer survival of words.

Social dissemination has a lesser impact on word growth and decline than previously believed.

Words appearing in more linguistic contexts tend to be more resilient over time.

Abstract

In an online community, new words come and go: today's "haha" may be replaced by tomorrow's "lol." Changes in online writing are usually studied as a social process, with innovations diffusing through a network of individuals in a speech community. But unlike other types of innovation, language change is shaped and constrained by the system in which it takes part. To investigate the links between social and structural factors in language change, we undertake a large-scale analysis of nonstandard word growth in the online community Reddit. We find that dissemination across many linguistic contexts is a sign of growth: words that appear in more linguistic contexts grow faster and survive longer. We also find that social dissemination likely plays a less important role in explaining word growth and decline than previously hypothesized.