I was
lucky enough to be chosen as the PhD blogger for #NSMNSS, but before I start
posting more about the perks and pitfalls of using social media in my research,
I will give a little bit of an introduction to me, my research, and how it all
fits under the #NSMNSS umbrella.
To start
off, I think I should point out that I wouldn't really class myself as a social
media researcher. Rather, I am one of those researchers who has been swayed by
the possibilities of what the digital trails of social interaction that social
media users leave in their path can tell us about aspects of their daily lives.
My research interest could be described broadly
as the English language in Japan. I come to looking at this from the background
of applied linguistics, a wide-ranging field of research looking at understanding
language related issues in the real world, and I am influenced by work in world Englishes, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and discourse studies.
I am not so interested in the kind of English you
can find in Japan (i.e., the grammar people use, their pronunciation, or the
effectiveness of their communication), rather I look at the discourses of the
English language. In other words, the way that English is talked about and
conceptualized.
So, where does social media fit in? Well, I am
using Twitter as my source of data. I collect tweets in Japanese that include
the word 英語, which means ‘English
(language)’. I then use techniques from corpus linguistics to find patterns in how people
talk about the language.
I am conducting my research within the Open
University’s Faculty
of Education and Language Studies under the
supervision of Ann
Hewings and Philip
Seargeant. The various
aspects of my study are well supported: Ann brings a knowledge of English
language studies and corpus linguistics, and Philip has written extensively on
English in Japan and has an interest in language and social media (he is part
of the SocialMedia
Language research group,
which looks at language and communication in social media). However, the lack
of precedent in using social media for socially oriented research (especially
within applied linguistics) and the ever-changing nature of the field, means
that there are a number of theoretical, methodological, and ethical bridges
that need to be crossed.
In my time
as PhD Blogger I want to illuminate issues that have arisen but also the steps
I have taken (or more likely am in the process of taking) to navigate those
murky waters. Hopefully, this will give an insight into how the issues
associated with research using social media pan out, at least in this my
context.
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