1. The Pragmatics of Retweeting
A case study of academic uses of Twitter
Dr. Cornelius Puschmann
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Augsburg, 20.04.2012

2. This Talk
1. Citing and quoting across genres and media
• How is the discourse of others reproduced?
• What linguistic problems arise when discourse is reproduced?
• How do genre and medium influence quoting?
2. From retweeting to quoting? 3. Theoretical implications
• Quoting in asynchronous CMC for CMC research
• Form and function of retweets
• Corpus data
• Quoting vs. retweeting

3. How is the discourse of others reproduced?
• “The relationship to another‘s words was equally complex
and ambiguous in the Middle Ages... the boundary lines
between someone else‘s speech and one‘s own speech
were flexible, ambiguous, often deliberately distorted and
confusing.“ (Bakhtin 1981, p. 69, from Moore 2011)
• “[..] reported speech is a crucial linguistic and stylistic
problem.“ (Jakobson 1971, p. 130, from Moore 2011)
❖ reproducing the discourse of others is a linguistically and
technologically complex process

4. How is the discourse of others reproduced?
speech speech direct quote
source
target
result
reproduced in
analog analog
writing writing indirect quote
digital digital

5. How is the discourse of others reproduced?
speech speech direct quote
source
target
result
reproduced in
analog analog
writing writing indirect quote
digital digital

6. How is the discourse of others reproduced?
speech speech direct quote
source
target
result
reproduced in
analog analog
writing writing indirect quote
digital digital

7. How is the discourse of others reproduced?
speech speech direct quote
source
target
result
reproduced in
analog analog
writing writing indirect quote
digital digital

8. How is the discourse of others reproduced?
• Quotatives to mark direct quotation in English:
• spoken: reporting verbs, be like X, be all X
• written: quotation marks, italics, indention, color
• gesture: air quotes

9. How is the discourse of others reproduced?
direct quotation indirect quotation
Mary said “I love you“. Mary said [that] she loves[/loved]
me.
encoding of two different harmonization of origo leads to
origos requires an shift in
unambiguous marker • tense
(e.g. say + quotation marks) • person
• pronouns
• spatial/temporal expressions
addition of (optional)
• complementizer
often assumed to be exact assumed to be approximate
(+form +meaning) (-form +meaning)
❖ use of indirect quotation over direct quotation depends on
the available technological means

10. How do genre and medium influence quoting?
• Quoting in journalism:
• "Quotes should be faithful to the words and meaning of
the speaker." (Clark 1995, para 1)
• Quoting in academia:
• "Ethics, copyright laws, and courtesy to readers require
authors to identify the sources of direct quotations and of
any facts or opinions not generally known or easily
checked." (Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, p. 594)
• "Whenever you quote or base your ideas on another
person's work, you must document the source you
used." (Online Citation Guide, U of California, Berkeley)

11. Quoting in asynchronous CMC
• The advent of the computer has changed the practice of
quoting and citing considerably, introducing:
• “copy and paste“
• hyperlinking
• interface actions for sharing content such as liking on
Facebook, reblogging on Tumblr, retweeting on Twitter,
etc

12. Quoting in asynchronous CMC
janed@ABC.bigtel.com (Jane Doe) writes:
>I can't believe how horrible Natalie looks. Has
>she put on a lot of weight?
I agree, but she has always had a somewhat round face, so if
she did put on weight, I think that would be accentuated.
"For the receiver, quoting serves to situate the response in a
discourse context [..] and thus facilitates the perception of an
extended conversation as coherent. For the sender, it
facilitates composition by allowing direct response without
having to paraphrase the original message." (Eklundh 2010,
para 3)

13. Quoting in asynchronous CMC
janed@ABC.bigtel.com (Jane Doe) writes:
>I can't believe how horrible Natalie looks. Has
>she put on a lot of weight?
I agree, but she has always had a somewhat round face, so if
she did put on weight, I think that would be accentuated.
"Quoting creates the illusion of adjacency in that it
incorporates and juxtaposes (portions of) two turns [..] within a
single message. When portions of previous text are
repeatedly quoted and responded to, the resulting message
can have the appearance of an extended conversational
exchange" (Herring 1999, p. 8)

14. Quoting in asynchronous CMC
janed@ABC.bigtel.com (Jane Doe) writes:
>I can't believe how horrible Natalie looks. Has
>she put on a lot of weight?
I agree, but she has always had a somewhat round face, so if
she did put on weight, I think that would be accentuated.
"Quoting creates the illusion of adjacency in that it
incorporates and juxtaposes (portions of) two turns [..] within a
single message. When portions of previous text are
repeatedly quoted and responded to, the resulting message
can have the appearance of an extended conversational
exchange" (Herring 1999, p. 8)
❖ direct quoting in CMC creates the illusion of immediacy

15. Twitter
• Twitter is a microblogging service launched in 2006
• short messages of up to 140 characters (tweets) are posted
through the Twitter website and various clients via a
computer or mobile phone
• 140 million users
• 340 million tweets produced each day
• widespread use in news, entertainment, political discourse,
activism

16. User timeline
single timeline

17. “All friends“ view
aggregation of the timelines of
other users

18. Native retweeting
retweet counter and button

19. Form and function of retweets
form function
• old form:
manual addition of RT
@USERNAME or via
• pass on information
@USERNAME to a copied • comment/respond
tweet
• present own interests
• new form:
native retweeting by • build social capital
clicking a button

20. The Scientwists Corpus
• assembled between January 7th, 2010 and August 31st, 2010
• 589 unique users (scientists, science journalists)
• 410,609 tweets (~2.3 mio. tokens)
• 55% contain a URL
• 22% are retweets, of those
• 72% unmodified
• 28% modified
‣ academics use Twitter to disseminate information and comment on
the tweets of others

21. Retweets at the Free Culture Research Conference (#fcrc)

22. Examples of unmodified and modified retweets
(1) RT @WSJHealth: The Hidden Benefits of Exercise http://bit.ly/
8R6uG7
(2) RT @timmytink I was saving my virginity for Jesus, but I can't resist
your intelligent design. #teapartypickuplines
(3) I want to know how students use them to improve mine. RT @drisis:
RT @palmd Faculty websites suck. Help improve them http://bit.ly/
8jfdLp
(4) interesting reading RT @JohnSharp: Googling Ourselves — What
Physicians Can Learn from Online Rating Sites http://tinyurl.com/
yh9lc3r
(5) Thanks Ruth! RT @shortyvotes: @DrStuClark, you were nominated
by @ruthseeley for a Shorty Award in #astronomy http://bit.ly/5eZcTm

24. Common pragmatic features of retweet comments
• interjections (Wow!, Ha!, Yay, LOL!)
• evaluative expressions (Nice!, Awesome!, Excellent)
• speech acts of thanking and congratulating (Thanks!, Thank You,
Congrats!)
• expressions signalling agreement (Agreed, Indeed, Yes, Ditto, So
true)
• use of 1 PP sing (I, me)
• use of 2 PP (you)

25. Common pragmatic features of retweet comments
• emoticons ( :-) :D ;) )
• exclamation marks ( !!! )
• questions ( ? )
• quotes ( “ )
• stars ( * )
• reduplication ( aaa|eee|ooo|www|rrr|sss|yyy )

28. Common evaluative expressions in retweet
comments
• Nice! (67x)
• Cool! (66x)
• Awesome (65x)
• Interesting (52x)
• Brilliant! (28x)

29. Use of quotation in retweet comments
• 'Micropig' or 'Piglet'? RT @rachel0808 Oh. My. God. Want one: http://bit.ly/
9cR5B2
• ". looking into history of science, one thing really stands out is its glorious
unpredictability." http://cot.ag/bhJz7h RT @SETIInstitute
• "Climate change scientists in bed with Terrorists" RT @NatureNews Bin Laden
says ‘climate change is real’ http://ff.im/-f3Px2
• "I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education." -Wilson Mizner (RT
@ChrisPirillo)
• "larynx" RT @RichNeville: @ozdj "ctenoid" #WordsThatLookKindOfStupid
• Hee hee! RT @enniscath: "Would", not "will", surely :) RT @NatNetNews LD
Manifesto details how it will affect http://bit.ly/cYJOZp #NatNet
• "worst in history" RT @thejives RT @Revkin: Oil Flow Is Stemmed, but Could
Resume, Official Says - http://nyti.ms/bdEgyH #oilspill

30. Quoting vs. retweeting
“traditional“ citing and quoting retweeting
long short
planned spontaneous
argumentative emotive
aimed at reader aimed at reader and quotee
quoting (conceptually written) orchestrated dialog (conceptually oral)

31. Theoretical implications for CMC research
• form and function of quotation are extended by technology
• quotation in newer forms of CMC
• tends to be direct because verbatin reproduction comes
at no cost to the quoter
• tends to be short because long verbatin reproduction
comes at a high cost for the reader
• blurs the line between quotation and (pseudo-) dialog
• is frequently emotive and phatic
• is increasingly a form of social grooming, rather than
argumentation

32. Thank you for your attention!

33. References
• Blyth, C., Recktenwald, S., & Wang, J. (1990). I'm like, "Say
What?!": A New Quotative in American Oral Narrative.
American Speech, 65 (3), pp. 215-227.
• Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1990). Quotations as
demonstrations. Language, 66 (4), pp. 764-805.
• Coulmas, F. (1986). Direct and Indirect Speech. The Hague:
Mouton de Gruyter, 1986.
• Herring, S.C. (1999). Interactional Coherence in CMC.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4 (4).
• Severinson Eklundh, K. (2010). To Quote or Not to Quote:
Setting the Context for Computer-Mediated Dialogues.
Language@Internet, 7, article 5.