ELF, language change and social networks : Evidence from real-time social media data

This article extends ELF studies towards variationist and computational sociolinguistics. It uses social network theory to explore how ELF is embedded in the social structures in which it is used and explores the size and nature of social networks in ELF. The empirical part investigates if multilingual and often mobile ELF users have larger networks and more weak ties than others, and if they therefore could be more likely to act as innovators or early adopters of change than the other speaker groups. Our empirical material consists of real-time social media data from Twitter. The results show that, statistically speaking, social embedding of ELF creates conditions that favor change. ELF users have larger networks and more weak ties than the other groups examined here. With regard to methods, social embedding needs to be taken into account in future studies, and we illustrate that variationist and computational sociolinguistics offers a useful theoretical and methodological toolbox for this task