Language in Digital Spaces: From Connection to Polarization

Hate Speech and Polarization as a Threat to Academic Freedom

Hate speech and increasing societal polarization pose growing challenges to academic freedom. This presentation examines how online harassment and attacks against researchers affect academic work, public engagement, and the communication of research findings. Drawing on recent research, the talk explores the consequences of these developments for scholars, universities, and democratic public debate.

OMG! Why Discourse Markers Thrive in Interactive Social Media Writing

We examined the use of omg (‘oh my god’) in online teenage talk. Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that omg has ‘bleached’ and grammaticalized/pragmaticalized from an interjection expressing strong surprise or shock into a discourse marker with a primarily metatextual function, serving both the interpersonal connection between the interlocutors and the organization of the conversation. It is argued that interactive social media writing provides a fertile ground for the transformation of interjections into discourse markers that perform functions highly comparable to those of emoticons/emoji and are therefore well-suited to the demands of this type of communication.