Mam or mum? Sociolinguistic awareness and language-ideological debates online

Abstract

The technological advances associated with Web 2.0 allow people to interact in online ‘communities’ built around shared interests and concerns. So far, research in language attitudes and folk linguistics has made only limited use of naturally-occurring discourse in these environments. This article examines an online messageboard virtually located in North East England, and explores the ways in which participants’ beliefs about and attitudes towards sociolinguistic variation emerge through discourse. I focus on a single ‘conversation’, revealing the language ideologies which inform the sociolinguistic awareness of participants, and conclude by using the concept of ‘late modernity’ as an ‘interpretive frame’ (Harris 2011) to help understand what is happening as people appropriate a global technology for local social action.