#Activism: Hashtivism or Slacktivism?

How powerful can a hashtag really be, anyway? (Source)

My project focuses on “hashtivist” engagement with #GenderEquality on Twitter. A hashtivist (blend of hashtag activist) is someone who blogs, tweets, or otherwise posts information and opinions about social, political, and other issues on social media, either using popular hashtags to reach their desired audience or creating new hashtags to enrich or undermine existing discourses surrounding other hashtags and activist campaigns. There is significant debate over whether this practice is significant, whether social media campaigns count as “real” activism or if they should just be dismissed as mere “slacktivism.” Although my analysis will be more descriptive than argumentative, I think it’s worthwhile to discuss the ongoing debate over hashtivism itself - after all, the relevance of my research hinges on whether or not hashtivism can be considered a meaningful social practice.

In an editorial on the subject written for the UK International Justice Mission, Holly Burkhalter asserts that, although “[s]ocial media can be shallow, vulgar and ridiculous - and often is[,] …  it can also joyfully rip through the shadows and fling the truth far and wide." She describes those opposed to hashtivism and hashtivists as “fashionable cynics,” a fitting term for the reactionaries who tend to consider any pop culture phenomenon automatically passe and useless. These cynics range from people who think hashtivism contributes little or nothing to debates and other types of discourses over social issues to those who consider it harmful, lulling people into thinking that issues can be and are being solved with a simple click of a button or post of a tweet. Burkhalter argues, though, that silence, ignorance, and indifference are actually the most harmful things in instances of social injustice and inequality. Hashtivism in social media is just one of the ways of counteracting these things: it is definitely a powerful method of “fling[ing] the truth far and wide” and, hopefully, of raising awareness not only of injustice, but the need for empathy and critical thinking, for learning how to care and for being able to distinguish truth from fiction in a society constantly bombarded with conflicting information.

It is by no means an original observation that social media breaks down barriers by facilitating mass communication among groups and individuals with varying levels of authority and from different socio-cultural backgrounds and geographical locations. According to this infographic (which, unfortunately, is a bit too large to include in this post), there are 100 million active users on Twitter every day, 80% of world leaders use Twitter, and 44% of Americans are exposed to tweets on other forms of media. Clearly, the power of social media and its facilitation of hashtivism cannot and should not be dismissed.

Academics, and linguists in particular, have recognized the social and semiotic power of the hashtag for years. In a recent example, Innocent Chiluwa and Presley Ifukor’s Systemic Functional Linguistic analysis of #BringBackOurGirls campaign discourse demonstrates the scholarly relevance of hashtivism and the ways in which such campaigns may help further our understanding of how significant social action can evolve out of a simple string of symbols on a computer screen. Chiluwa and Ifukor, like virtually everyone else in favor of hashtivism, conclude their study with the condition that social media campaigns can be useful and effective, but, unless they are accompanied by “practical offline actions,” they do run the risk of ending up as “mere slacktivism” (267).

A Very Brief Introduction to Systemic Functional Grammar/Linguistics

When you're approaching any analysis of language, it’s usually necessary and useful to have a theoretical framework in mind. There are myriad theories of language, but one of the most important to contemporary linguistics is M.A.K. Halliday and Christian Matthiessen’s theory of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), which has contributed to the development of the linguistic subfield Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Halliday and Matthiessen’s seminal work Introduction to Systemic Functional Grammar, first published in 1985 and now in its 4th edition, is notoriously dense and difficult to understand. This obscurity has prompted countless academics to attempt to explain SFG/L in their own (sometimes even more complex) words, in books, online college course resources, blog posts, and other formats. These sources are helpful and tend to reflect the subject accurately and concisely, but in this post I’m going to take a stab at illustrating (hopefully in less confusing terms) just a few aspects of it that are relevant to my project.

I’ll start with the name, which can seem a bit intimidating at first. The “systemic” part of SFG/L refers to the perspective that language is “a network of systems.” As the word “network” suggests, these systems are interconnected, and they each represent a set of choices for meaning making. Choice is probably the word that best captures the overall approach to language in SFG/L because, instead of treating actual instances of language use as variations on the rules of an a priori structure, SFG/L considers them as realizations of a system’s semiotic potential. This is where the “functional” part of the theory’s name comes in: describing a speaker/writer’s linguistic choices necessitates a view of language as a phenomenon performing a social function, rather than the traditional perspective that linguistic structures can be described in a vacuum, without considering context.

As Moses Ayoola explains, SFG “takes the resource perspective rather than the rule perspective,” merging structural linguistics with sociolinguistics and providing a useful framework for describing symbolic/linguistic interactions in society. SFG/L divides the semantic function of language into three distinct but simultaneous metafunctions (Ideational/Experiential, Interpersonal, Textual), each of which corresponds to a grammatical system (Process Type, Mood, Theme, respectively).

 

System Categories Organized by SFG Metafunction (Source)

Although the three metafunctions can be considered together - they are, after all, simultaneous and descriptive of language’s role in society - the Interpersonal metafunction is commonly used in isolation as an analytical framework in contemporary sociolinguistics because of its primary focus on describing certain highly relevant aspects of the ways in which information is exchanged among people and groups. Therefore, I have chosen to approach my own research on informal gender discourse using an Interpersonal metafunctional lens. Doing this allows me to describe the types of speech functions being utilized by the Twitter community, as well as the mood and modal commitment (certainty, enthusiasm, etc.) being reflected in their discussions on issues related to gender. In other words, this theoretical framework gives me the tools to understand and describe how the linguistic choices writers are making function within a certain context.

Hierarchy of Mood in SFG (Source)

Beyond Wooden Tile Letters and Dusty Pages: Meanings in the OED Online

In attempting to pursue more research into exploring the linguistic understandings of Scrabble and its official dictionary, I only came across rare allusions to the board game and the occasional reference to Margaret Atwood’s use of the game in her The Handmaid’s Tale.  Even within this current academic dearth, however, Scrabble remains a key point in my new topical direction towards understanding electronic lexicography as a response to the arguable limitations the point system, square gridding and obscure arbitrary linguistic choices Scrabble competition, both at the domestic and international level, can lead people into.  The consideration of how the most recent generation of lexicographers have all been transferring and building online dictionaries, lexicons and linguistic resources shows how language choice is expanding and responding to any limitation that could be placed on understanding English or any human language. 

Courtesy of global.oxforduniversitypress.com 

            Considering my paper’s research and topics don’t include a focus on the shifting of the Oxford English Dictionary from an exclusively print medium towards an online version, it is therefore worth analyzing this central topic within the current generations growing push towards accessible online lexicography.  The scholarship of Charlotte Brewer in her academic work “Only Words” speaks to the shift of the OED from a century of two editions exclusively in print to the possibility of a purely pixelated version.  She discusses the ability to “skip blithely from one end of the alphabet to the other in the blink of an eye”; however, she also accounts for the anxiety and “hand-wringing about the loss of this unwieldy behemoth” (Brewer 17).  She locates the difficulty of it ever having become physically tangible as one reason as to why an online conversion of this once Victorian age project of the 19^th century resulted in disturbances throughout the English speaking worlds.  Brewer also recognizes various forms of critique and response from users of how “even OED Online enthusiasts concede that any things immediately evident in the printed book are obscured or not apparent: the length of an entry…its relationship to its neighbors” (18).  Ken Winter also offers a scholarly voice in this shift through his article “From Wood Pulp to the Web: The Online Evolution”.  He locates the initial updating issues for print versions of the OED in 1884, 1928 and 1989 which is no longer an issue with the online version’s ability for quarterly additions.  From an academic perspective as well, Winter asserts through the OED’s chief editor that this resource is “more of a ‘database for humanities research’ than a dictionary” in the words of Warburton (Winter 71).  Brewer’s scholarship acquiesces that the online transference of this central dictionary aids in rapid maintenance and addition of new terminology.

            John Ezard of the Guardian provides a less academic voice in the societal and intellectual implications of this lexicographical shifting the OED to the internet.  The context of this embracing the digitization of the nearly one hundred and fifty year old OED in the year 2000 saw the largest reference book addition to the online community.  Ezard stated that the OED Online presents something “less venerable, monstrously larger, and far quicker at reflecting shifts in the language”.  He goes on to specify that every three months one thousand words will be added to the online version, representing the constant flux of language in the original dictionary authority which for most of its existence it was not held accountable for even as a constant reality of linguistic change.  This merging of the past world of compiling, codifying and producing various volumes of seminal dictionary with the abstract albeit more expansive and growing electronic lexicography shows that language analysis and understanding is moving farther and quickly beyond the exclusive stagnation of print as well as numerical point values on wooden tiles in family’s game room cupboards.  

Prosody and the dysfluent dyslexic

A working definition for dyslexia is the characterization of difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition by poor spelling and decoding abilities. When studying dyslexia, a plethora of dysfluent traits becomes apparent; such as, reading, writing and speech inabilities. I also fund that fluency and prosody in speech is one area affected by the dysfluent dyslexic reader. My intention is to alert people that there is an ethnographic challenge when students are diagnosed with dyslexia.

Prosody is an area of speech that dyslexics find challenging. When discussing prosody, you must also address fluency, and vice versa. Many American schools neglect to teach the skill fluency, which affects students’ reading comprehension. Fluency is the necessary bridge students need to recognize words and comprehend what they are reading. Automaticity and fluency are considered when analyzing the readers pace, and effortless word recognition. In other words, how fast a student can effortlessly – or fluently - read single words, lists of words, or any other printed material for their age and grade level. A dyslexic reader will struggle in the area of fluency. 

Fluency is derived from the Latin word ‘fluens’ which means “to flow.” We understand a fluent reader has the ability to read and the words "flow" together for the reader.  We can think of fluency in reading with the following equation – speed + accuracy + prosody = fluency. Fluency is freedom from word identification problems, incudes smooth and effortless reading, and when decoding and comprehension, it is simultaneous resulting in expressive reading.

Prosody will also include the definition of intonation. This is defined as patterns in speech or melodic pitch changes heard to connect the speech patterns, especially the pitch pattern occurring in a sentence. This change in speech patterns are unique to the kinds of sentences and phrases related to phrase boundaries. A child reading, often uses punctuation to define these specific speech boundaries. Yet, a dysfluent dyslexic student will suffer in the areas of prosody and intonation.  

Dysfluent readers, who haven’t mastered fluency, automaticity, speed, accuracy, prosody or intonation when they read do not know how to use expression. They read word by word, almost robotically, instead of fluid phrases; and the dysfluent reader fails to use intonation or they do not pause their speech to indicate punctuation. Maximizing comprehension for readers, is the ability to fluently read with intonation. Furthermore, the dysfluent reader does not gain the ability to rapidly, effortlessly or smoothly read textual material and automatically comprehend the mechanics of what they are reading, such as decoding. The slow dysfluent reader is dedicating their time to decoding each word, rather than extracting meaning from the passage.

Readers who would be considered “good” readers for their age group, read fluently with adequate speed, and they also have the acquired ability to use the appropriate phrasing, intonation, and their oral reading mirrors their spoken language. Their spoken language is their effectiveness to speak in their ethnological class of communication. Dysfluent readers who have broken reading patterns also have broken ethnology communicative patterns.

Students who have slow text recognition skills, difficulty with semantic connections between words, meanings and ideas, who lack sensitivity to prosodic cues and who have poor comprehension skills need fluency practice. The dysfluent dyslexic student can master these reading, writing and speech challenges by listening to various models of fluent reading, practicing read alouds with a fluent reader and listening to books on audio so comprehension is not lost through decoding.