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Eastern Michigan University

Getting /srs about tone tags

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>In digital modes of communication, speakers may struggle to convey their tone and emotions to their readers and interlocutors. This complication leads to questions surrounding the state of the conventions for conveying tone in digital utterances (e.g., tweets). This thesis explores one such way that speakers overcome this struggle, tone tags. Tone tags are linguistic items consisting of a forward slash and an alphabetic character or characters that serve to represent some word or phrase, generally used to indicate the intended spirit of the utterance. This thesis serves as an analysis of these items, including necessary context, an explanation of how tone tags relate to pre-existing features of English, and a linguistic analysis of tone tags collected from various social media platforms, specifically in regard to their syntactic distribution and semantic scope. The thesis ends with the conclusion that tone tags, while related to other lexical items (e.g.,adverbs), seem to project their own syntactic category with a range of unique properties.</p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Arts (MA)
Level thesis:degree_level
Open Access Thesis
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
English Language and Literature
Year dc:date.available
2024

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Morrissey, Sierra
Contributors dc:contributor
  • T. Daniel Seely, PhD
  • Eric Acton, PhD

Subjects

dc:subject × 3

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://commons.emich.edu/theses/1270
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:commons.emich.edu:theses-2620

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Eastern Michigan University
Base URL
commons.emich.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Morrissey, Sierra. Getting /srs about tone tags. Open Access Thesis thesis, 2024. https://commons.emich.edu/theses/1270