“Facebook Style”: The Use of Emoticons and Graphic Signs by Users in the Cape Flats

Over the last few years Facebook has become a widespread and continuously expanding medium of communication in Africa and worldwide. Being a new medium of social interaction, Facebook produces its own communication style. It is a style conditioned by the medium and the community of users. My focus of analysis is how Facebook users from the city of Cape Town create this style by means of emoticons and other graphic signs in order to reflect the reality of living in Cape Town’s underprivileged areas. This study is based on a theoretical framework which combines sociolinguistics with Computer-Mediated-Communication to study the emergence of a style peculiar of the online social networks. In a corpus of Coloured Facebook users from the Cape Flats, I have analysed the emergence of emoticons and other graphic signs related to Capetonian gang culture and then tracked the spread of these features to the extensive use by users not related to gangs. It can be deduced that in this process the analysed features amplify their meaning and are employed in a much broader context as their original use. Due to the development and spread of these features we can consider the peculiar electronic communication of Facebook as a style constrained by the electronic medium and its users. It is a style which serves the users to create social meaning and to express their linguistic identities.

Facebook style: The use of non-standard features in virtual speech conditioned by the medium Facebook

Over the last few years Facebook has become a widespread and continuously expanding medium of communication. Being a new medium of social interaction, Facebook produces its own communication style. My focus of analysis is how Facebook users from the city of Malaga create this style by means of phonic features typical of the Andalusian variety and how the users reflect on the use of these phonic features. This project is based on a theoretical framework which combines variationist sociolinguistics with CMC to study the emergence of a style peculiar of the online social networks. In a corpus of Facebook users from three zones of Malaga, I have analysed the use of non-standard phonic features and then compared them with the same features in a reference corpus collected on three beaches of Malaga. From this comparison it can be deduced that the analysed social and linguistic factors work differently in real and virtual speech. Due to these different uses we can consider the peculiar electronic communication of Facebook as a style constrained by the electronic medium. It is a style which serves the users to create social meaning and to express their linguistic identities.

Cultural Legacies and Political Preferences: The Failure of Separatism in the Swiss Jura

The study of secession generally stresses the causal influence of cultural identities, political preferences, or ecological factors. Whereas these different views are often considered to be mutually exclusive, this paper proposes a two-stage model in which they are complementary. We posit that cultural identities matter for explaining secessionism, but not because of primordial attachments. Rather, religious and linguistic groups matter because their members are imbued with cultural legacies that lead to distinct political preferences – in this case preferences over welfare statism. Further, ecological constraints such as geography and topography affect social interaction with like-minded individuals. On the basis of both these political preferences and ecological constraints, individuals then make rational choices about the desirability of secession. Instrumental considerations are therefore crucial in explaining the decision to secede, but not in a conventional pocketbook manner. To examine this theory, we analyze the 2013 referendum on the secession of the Jura Bernois region from the Canton of Berne in Switzerland, using municipal level census and referendum data. The results lend support to the theory and suggest one way in which the politics of identity, based on factors like language and religion, can be fused with the politics of interest (preferences for more or less state intervention into the polity and economy) to better understand group behavior.

Internet-mediated Phonetics

Facebook is a medium of social interaction producing its own style. The present study analyses how users from Malaga create this style through phonetic features of the local Spanish variety and how they reflect on the use of these features. Moreover, the use of non-standard variants by users from Malaga is examined and compared to an oral corpus. Results demonstrate that social factors work differently in real and virtual speech. Thus, the electronic medium constrains the phonetics of the local variety employed on Facebook. Facebook communication is seen as a style serving to create social meaning and to express linguistic identity.

The influence of parent's body mass index on peer selection: An experimental approach using virtual reality

Relatively little is known about the influence of psychosocial factors, such as familial role modeling and social network on the development and maintenance of childhood obesity. We investigated peer se- lection using an immersive virtual reality environment. In a virtual schoolyard, children were confronted with normal weight and overweight avatars either eating or playing. Fifty-seven children aged 7–13 participated. Interpersonal distance to the avatars, child's BMI, self-perception, eating behavior and parental BMI were assessed. Parental BMI was the strongest predictor for the children's minimal distance to the avatars. Specifically, a higher mothers' BMI was associated with greater interpersonal distance and children approached closer to overweight eating avatars. A higher father's BMI was associated with a lower interpersonal distance to the avatars. These children approached normal weight playing and overweight eating avatar peers closest. The importance of parental BMI for the child's social approach/ avoidance behavior can be explained through social modeling mechanisms. Differential effects of pa- ternal and maternal BMI might be due to gender specific beauty ideals. Interventions to promote social interaction with peer groups could foster weight stabilization or weight loss in children.

Impact of traumatic dental injuries and malocclusions on quality of life of young children

BACKGROUND The presence of traumatic dental injuries and malocclusions can have a negative impact on quality of life of young children and their parents, affecting their oral health and well-being. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of traumatic dental injuries and anterior malocclusion traits on the Oral Health-Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) of children between 2 and 5 years-old. METHODS Parents of 260 children answered the six domains of the Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) on their perception of the OHRQoL (outcome). Two calibrated dentists assessed the types of traumatic dental injuries (Kappa = 0.9) and the presence of anterior malocclusion traits (Kappa = 1.0). OHRQoL was measured using the ECOHIS. Poisson regression was used to associate the type of traumatic dental injury and the presence of anterior malocclusion traits to the outcome. RESULTS The presence of anterior malocclusion traits did not show a negative impact on the overall OHRQoL mean or in each domain. Only complicated traumatic dental injuries showed a negative impact on the symptoms (p = 0.005), psychological (p = 0.029), self image/social interaction (p = 0.004) and family function (p = 0.018) domains and on the overall OHRQoL mean score (p = 0.002). The presence of complicated traumatic dental injuries showed an increased negative impact on the children's quality of life (RR = 1.89; 95% CI = 1.36, 2.63; p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Complicated traumatic dental injuries have a negative impact on the OHRQoL of preschool children and their parents, but anterior malocclusion traits do not.