Social media such as microblogging services and social networking sites are changing the way people interact online and search for information and opinions. This book investigates linguistic patterns in electronic discourse,looking at online evaluative language, Internet slang, memes and ambient affiliation using a large Twitter corpus (over 100 million tweets) alongside specialized case studies. The author argues that we are currently witnessing a cultural movement from online conversation to what can be termed 'searchable talk' - online talk where people affiliate by making their discourse findable (for example, via metadata such as Twitter hashtags) by others holding similar interests. This cutting edge text will be of interest to all scholars and students dealing with electronically mediated discourse.

Michele Zappavigna is Associate Professor in the
School of the Arts & Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Preface (by Professor Jim Martin)
1. Introduction: Social Media and the Cultural Movement Toward 'Searchable Talk'
2. Social Media as Corpora
3. Evaluative Language Online
4. Internet Slang
5. Internet Memes
6. Internet Humour and Fail: "The world is full of #fail tonight"
7. Online Political Discourse
8. Ambient Affiliation
9. Conclusion: Social Media and Internet Linguistics
References
Appendices
Index