There are a diverse amount of regional accents in the US. There’s the “standard” accent, “valley girl” accent, southern accent, New England accent, New Yorker accent, and many more. All fall under the language of English, but each accent consists of lexicon and sound features unique to each region. They help define an individual’s personal identity.
But what about your Tweets? According to a recent study, you may be telling us a lot about who you are just through the words or ways you decide to tweet.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University analyzed over 380,000 tweets from the social media network, Twitter, and discovered that a number of tweets are correlated with region. Researchers examined over 4.5 million words attached with geotags sent from mobile phones.
Here are some regional examples:
Where “y’all” going? – Southern
I’m looking for “suttin” special. – New York
That’s pretty “coo.” – Southern California
That’s pretty “koo.” – Northern California
The 140 character limit imposed on Tweets also results in some interesting variations of words. While some might shorten “you” with “u” New Yorkers tend to write “youu” and “I” with an extra I – “II”
The study reveals that people still find ways to demonstrate their cultural and social identity through social media. They’re finding ways to distinguish themselves through a “static” medium that is text oriented. What the study now hopes to do is examine if these variation of tweet accents diffuses amongst the population. It will be interesting to see if these “accents” actually remain within their geographic locations or find their way into the social media lexicon of others.
What about the rest of the world?
Related to this is a recent study done by the Nielson Group on how youth around the world use mobile internet and messaging. It would be interesting to examine if the rest of the world also follows this tweet accent phenomenon and if it finds a way to seep into our every day real world conversations.
Written By: Daniel T
