A syntactic and pragmatic study of nominal vocatives in the Twitter exchanges of rappers’ fans

A syntactic and pragmatic study of nominal vocatives in the Twitter exchanges of rappers’fans Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez * Department of English and German, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15.782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain article info Article history: Received 6 June 2022 Received in revised form 14 December 2022 Accepted 7 February 2023 Available online 1 March 2023 Keywords: Twitter Nominal vocatives Address terms Computer-mediated communication Digital genres abstract This study aims to examine nominal vocatives in Twitter through the analysis of 1500 posts extracted from the accounts of five well-known female and male rappers. From this total, a sample of 550 vocatives were analysed. Attention is paid to their frequency, class, position, type of clause and the polarity in which they occur, and the pragmatic functions they express. The factor of gender is also investigated. The analysis reveals that those posting to these Twitter accounts make use of a very large and varied repertoire of nominal vocatives. The group of familiarisers clearly prevails over other categories of vocatives and this high frequency of familiarisers contrasts to the situation in spontaneous conversations where first names tend to be the most common. Vocatives in final position clearly prevail over initial and medial position. Besides, Twitter posts containing nominal vocatives in final position tend to be short while those in initial position are far longer. Polarity does not seem to have a strong influence. Some differences, however, are also observed according to the use of nominal vocatives with respect to gender. As in spontaneous conversation, vocatives in Twitter generally serve to strengthen social relationships (creating solidarity, complimenting, expressing appreciation, reinforcing the group identity) while discourseoriented functions relating to topic and turn management are not so common. ©2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 1. Introduction Although general address terms 1 in offline communication have been explored extensively over recent decades (Brown and Gilman, 1960;Braun, 1988;Leech, 1999;McCarthy and O'Keefe, 2003;Rendle-Short, 2010;Heyd, 2014;Clancy, 2015; Adams, 2018;Kluge and Moyna, 2019), this is not the case with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) (Herring, 2003; Thurlow et al., 2004;Yus, 2011;Thurlow and Mroczek, 2011;Herring et al., 2013;Tagg, 2015;Hoffmann, 2017). Research here “is still in its infancy”(Oliveira, 2013: 292), and the number of studies remains far more limited (Asprey and Tagg, 2019: 5). This study examines nominal vocatives in Twitter discourse through the analysis of a sample of 1500 posts extracted from the accounts of five well-known female and male rappers from London between July 2018 and September 2021 since address terms are important in the language used by the members of the rapper community. The focus will be on their frequency, *Tel.: þ34607111072. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 Ton (2019:23) makes a useful distinction within the general category of terms of address between self-address terms, those used for the second person (address terms), and terms that are used to refer to non-interlocutors (terms of reference). In this study we deal with a special group of address terms: nominal vocatives. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.02.004 0378-2166/©2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 class, position, type of clause and the polarity in which they occur, as well as the pragmatic functions they express. The factor of gender will also be addressed, towards an understanding of the extent to which there may be differences in the use of vocatives according to the gender of those engaged in this digital genre. Where possible, comparisons will be made with the behaviour of nominal vocatives in spontaneous conversation. The conclusions will serve to provide a more detailed account of both Twitter discourse generally and nominal vocatives in particular, looking at whether differences exist in terms of the use of nominal vocatives in digital communication, in this case Twitter, and general conversation. 2. Literature review 2.1. Vocatives in spoken discourse Vocatives can be classified as general terms of address, and defined as nominal constituents loosely integrated into the rest of the utterance that serve to “designate collocutors or refer to them in some way”(Braun, 1988: 9). Through the use of these items the speaker typically addresses or refers to the interlocutor, and this is done for a variety of reasons. The term “vocative”, from the Latin voc at ıvus (Oxford English Dictionary), refers specifically to this sense of invocation, call or appeal, although, as we will see below, their use can also convey other meanings. Nominal vocatives can be classified into a number of categories (Quirk et al., 1985:773e775; Huddleston and Pullum et al., 2002: 522e523; Biber et al., 2021:1105e1108): familiarisers, which denote a close relationship between the speakers participating in the exchange (man,bro), offensive or derogatory, these often equivalent to insults (bitch,bastard), terms of endearment, which generally express feelings of affection and tenderness (baby,love), family or kinship terms (daddy), names and titles (Mr.Roberts), honorifics, which usually show an attitude of respect (sir,madam) and thus contrast with familiarisers, impersonal (someone open the window, please), and elaborate structures (those who did not accept the proposal). The position in the clause of these nominal vocatives is also relevant, in that it can vary a great deal and is directly related to the pragmatic function they perform (Leech, 1999;Clancy, 2015;Asprey and Tagg, 2019;Biber et al., 2021) (see Section 4.3). Nominal vocatives can be found in initial position. 2 (1) Bro big respect (Dappy, 2021) They can also occur in medial position, that is, in the middle of the turn or, in this case, the post: (2) Loving it mate currently serving a 14 day isolation with wife n kids (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) However, they are very often found in final position, in this case at the end of a post. (3) Thanks, babes. (Wiley, 2018) Very occasionally they may even stand alone, thus constituting a whole turn or post. In such cases, the posters in our data will generally be expressing a compliment to or their recognition of the artist in question, as in (4), or seeking the attention of the artist in question (5). Notice how in both cases the vocatives may be accompanied by an exclamation mark, an emoji, or indeed both; these added elements serve to intensify the expressive function of the form (Dainas and Herring, 2021). (4) Queen! (Little Simz, 2021) (5) Wiley!(Wiley, 2018) As noted above, the bulk of the literature on address terms in spoken English, and more specifically on nominal vocatives, is very broad (Ervin-Trip, 1971;Zwicky, 1974,2016;Braun,1988;Leech, 1999;Sonnenhauser and Aziz Hanna, 2013;Kluge and Moyna, 2019, to mention just a few). For the purpose of the review, this could be organised in three main groups: (i) Those focussed on particulars varieties or dialects of English, (ii) studies dealing with vocatives according to type of discourse and genre, and (iii) a third group analysing one specific familiariser. There follows a brief review of the main studies. Within the first group, we find Brown and Ford's (1961),Leech (1999),Murphy and Farr (2012),Luckman de L opez (2013) and Urichuk and Loureiro-Rodríguez (2019). Thus, Brown and Ford's seminal paper considered address terms in American English, drawing on spoken data from four contexts while Leech (1999) introduced a contrastive perspective by comparing the use of address terms in British and American English, concluding that in the latter there is a stronger tendency for the use of familiarisers in final position, a tendency that was also identified by Biber et al. (2021: 1105). Murphy and Farr (2012) took a similar approach to Irish English and they observed that in adult discourse, first names, plus five specific familiarisers lads,girl,man,dude and guys, are the most frequent vocatives, while pet,love and sweetheart are notably frequent within the group of terms of endearments. Luckmann de Lopez (2013) considered familiarisers in Tyneside English, in which man clearly stands out, in terms of both its 2 All examples have been transcribed as found in the original post, with no alterations or changes. The information in brackets indicates the Twitter account from which each example was taken, plus the corresponding year. I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 94 high frequency and its characteristic intonation pattern. Finally, Urichuk and Loureiro-Rodríguez (2019) described the selfreported use of masculine vocatives (man,bro,dude and brah/broh) in Canadian English, based on data gathered by means of a questionnaire adapted from Kiesling (2004). Their findings showed that dude and man are the most common, while the more recent forms brah and bruh are closely associated with young speakers. As mentioned above, other studies have looked at how vocatives vary according to type of discourse and genre (Wilson and Zeitlyn, 1995;Jaworsky and Galasinsli, 2000;McCarthy and O'Keefe, 2003;Quaglio, 2009;Formentelli, 2014;Clancy, 2015;Pauletto and Aronsson, 2017;Adams, 2018;Landmann, 2021;Palacios Martinez, 2021 a). Thus, Wilson and Zeitlyn (1995),Clancy (2015), and Pauletto and Aronsson (2017) explored the presence and functions of these items in family discourse. Jaworsky and Galasinsli (2000) considered the role of vocatives in the political arena showing that address terms are consciously used by participants in political discourse to gain legitimacy for their own ideas and to help political leaders create positive images of themselves. McCarthy and O'Keefe (2003) focused on vocatives in casual conversations and radio phone-in shows. Vocative use here was much higher in the radio data, while in casual conversation these forms served to create and foster social relationships between speaker and addressee. Two studies looking at TV and film focused on the use and frequency of vocatives by comparing the use of familiarises and terms of endearment in TV series and films with spontaneous conversations. Quaglio (2009) showed how the nominal vocatives guys,man,dude and buddy are more frequent in the series Friends than in standard conversation. In a similar vein, Formentelli (2014) studied the use of vocatives in a corpus of 24 American and British films. Results here also showed a higher proportion of these address terms in film dialogues than in normal conversations. Adams (2018) is a particularly interesting study for our purposes here, in that she analysed address terms in Grime music, seeking thus to understand how Grime MCs address and refer to other people in their lyrics. A total of 106 nominal address terms were identified. The familiarisers man,fam,blud, guys and brudda were the most common, followed by mum, manden, don and dawg.Landmann (2021) assessed terms of endearment from a diachronic perspective, using data from the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. She looked at a wide variety of lexical items here, from those used by lovers to refer to each other, to expressions of endearment for children and elderly people. Whereas endearment vocatives were the object of attention in Landmann (2021),Palacios Martínez, 2021a focused on taboo or offensive terms of address in the language of London teenagers in an analysis of data drawn from COLT (The Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language) and LEC (London English Corpus). These taboo vocatives were used frequently by young speakers in their interactions, although it was observed that such tokens often lost their offensive meaning, serving rather to reinforce the bonds between young speakers, sometimes even carrying affectionate connotations. Finally, several studies have taken one or two specific familiarisers as the focus of their analysis (Kiesling, 2004;Alba Juez, 2009;Rendle-Short, 2010;Cheshire, 2013;Stenstr€ om, 2014;Heyd, 2014). Thus, Kiesling (2004), for example, explored the functions and pragmatic meanings of dude in the exchanges of young American speakers. Similarly, Rendle-Short (2010) considered the use of mate in Australian English, finding that the term was present not only in the speech of young men but also in the interactions of young women (18e29 years). Cheshire (2013) has also looked at the use of man in Multicultural London English. She showed how this nominal vocative had its origins in the corresponding noun, which then evolved into an address term and later became a pronoun. From a contrastive perspective, Alba-Juez's (2009) study compared the English vocative man with the Spanish tío/macho. Similarly, Stenstr€ om (2014) devoted a few pages to general and taboo vocatives within her general contrastive work on the use of pragmatic markers in the language of English and Spanish teenagers. She observed notable differences in the frequency of use of these terms with Spanish teenagers, who use 9.3 vocatives per 1000 words, compared to just 1.1 for their English counterparts. Finally, in another contrastive study, Heyd (2014) considered the American English dude and the German alter, looking at morphosyntactic, semantic, phonological and socio-pragmatic features of both these terms of address. 2.2. Vocatives in computer mediated communication As noted above, the number of studies on general address terms (Kluge and Moyna, 2019) in CMC is scarce, and even more so on nominal vocatives. Oliveira (2013) provides a comprehensive state of the art on studies of address in CMC up to that year. She organises these into three main groups or strands: the role of address in greeting and leave-taking behaviour in interactions, the analysis of conversational forms, and address in collaborative learning tasks and in educational settings. In what follows, this structure will be retained in a broader review of studies in these areas. Within the first group we find the study by Hastrlov a (2009), who considered address terms in English-language Internet Relay Chat (IRC). She found that over half of the exchanges were initiated with no greeting or form of address, while 86% of participants ended their sessions without any kind of closure. Anglemark (2009), by turn, looked at address forms in various digital genres (emails, online chats and weblogs), analysing data from self-compiled corpora. Results showed that CMC users employ different types of address terms in different CMC genres. Forenames and nicknames were found in email and chat material, while weblogs contained a high number of common nouns as headwords in expressions of address. Other CMC studies have explored the extent to which the use of address terms follows usual conversational patterns. Thus, Postmes et al. (2000) assessed the use of second person pronouns in a Dutch email program, and Oliveira (2013) showed how address forms played a key role in a university user network. A further group of studies focussed on address terms in the educational domain. Nguyen and Kellogg (2005), in a study of the posts of international students in an academic forum in Hawaii, revealed that students, in on-line forums, addressed their peers using their names when expressing agreement, the authors concluding that this type of CMC favoured the establishment and I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 95 strengthening of bonds between participants and also reinforced their feelings of belonging to a community. Belz and Kinginger (2002) also focused on the use of formal and informal second person pronouns (the so-called T/V distinction) with a group of American students of French and German. These students exchanged emails and chats with a group of counterparts who were learning EnglishinFrance and Germany, and the results indicated that they showed more dynamism over timeand became more aware of the T forms of solidarity thanks to the collaborative nature of the work in which they were engaged. Some research, Aarsand (2008), for example, has even looked at the use of address terms in offline (face-to-face) and online communication (MSN Messenger) by the same group of participants, and here the use of address terms was indeed found to be very scarce, restricted to an instance of name-calling and a comment about a girl's name by another user. More recently, Hultgren (2017) focused on the linguistic expression of politeness in telephone communication, drawing on data from an onshore call centre in Scotland, and including not only authentic service interactions but also interviews, observations, and institutional documents. Here, vocatives were seen to prevail over other types of informality markers, and were used by the operatives at this call centre as rationalised forms of politeness to build rapport with callers and to provide a more personalised kind of customer care. Finally, Aspreyand Tagg (2019)looked at the pragmatic roles played by vocatives in a corpus of private mobile text messages. The analysis showed that vocatives are used here to express a number of interpersonal functions such as greetings, thanking and badinage. The authors also identified an unexpected function of vocatives in text messaging, that of providing focus that serves to draw attention to the message and to mitigate the demand for a quick reply. Vocatives are also used by the participants in these exchanges to position themselves and to create a shared identity. Some differences were also identified invocative use according to gender; while young men opted for familiarises such as bro or buddy, their feminine counterparts preferred terms of endearment such as hon and babe. The authors concluded by questioning the traditional distinction between familiarisers and endearments as proposed by Biber et al. (2021), and suggested that this difference may have more to do with the gender of the users than with formal meaning or any difference in function. Studies on nominal vocatives in Twitter discourse are, as we have noted, quite limited, and this is the gap that this paper aims to fill, looking specifically at the exchanges of rappers with their fans and also at communication between rappers’ followers. The microblogging platform Twitter is characterised as being highly conversational (Java et al., 2007;Honeycutt and Herring, 2009;Zappavigna, 2012: 30), providing recent, real data that allow us to study features such as nominal vocatives in spontaneous exchanges and interactions. Compared with other methods of language data collection (Palacios Martínez, I. 2020), such as corpora or sociolinguistic interviews, Twitter presents limitations in terms of how variables such as gender, age, social background, ethnicity, degree of formality and language variety can be controlled, although the large amount of data it provides, together with its immediacy and genuine nature, may compensate here to some extent. Indeed, Twitter discourse has been analysed widely “across most major fields in linguistics, ranging from pragmatics, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics to computational linguistics, and systemic functional linguistics”(Zappavigna, 2012: 203), in that it offers complementary information on new linguistic trends and innovations in this digital genre and more broadly in language. We might also highlight the fact that whereas rap, Grime and hip-hop have been studied from a variety of sociological, anthropological, cultural and ethnographic perspectives (Alim, 2006;Alim et al., 2008;Barron, 2013;White, 2016,2017; Bramwell and Brutterworth, 2019) in relation to British English, and more particularly in some London muti-ethnic varieties, little attention has thus far been paid to the question of address and reference terms, an exception being Adams (2018), reviewed above. In the communities of these musical genres, group and member relationships are extremely important. Nominal familiarisers, and also very often taboo vocatives, serve to form and reinforce human relationships by reinforcing bonds and solidarity. This may explain why these terms of address play such an important role in the expression of the practitioners of these musical genres. Also, as Adams (2018: 13) has observed, Grime artists frequently allude to their address and reference systems in their lyrics, so it can be said that they tend to be consciously aware of the existence and function of these systems. 3. Method 3.1. Data A sample of 1500 Twitter posts were analysed, these dating from between July 2018 and September 2021, with some minor variations in time frame due to the availability of data. 3 The posts were from the Twitter accounts of five well-known London rappers, three male (Dappy, Dizzee Rascal and Wiley) and two female (Ray Blk and Little Simz), all of these being stage names. Table 1 below provides some general information about the different names (real, stage, Twitter), origin, background, age, gender and period considered for the selection of posts by each rapper. The analysis focussed on the posts of these five artists plus all responses by their fans and followers. Messages that rappers and others retweeted were not considered, since it was sometimes difficult to verify the authorship of these, and hence the data might have skewed the findings. In addition, retweets sometimes involve alterations of the original tweet, and this might have brought about changes in their meaning and interpretation. 3 The Twitter posts of the five rappers were not fully available in all cases for the whole time frame, specifically in the case of Wiley, Ray BLK and Little Simz. I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 96 3.2. Coding of the data All the nominal vocatives identified in the selected tweets, 570 in total, were entered in an Access database and coded according to the following fields: token, spelling variant (since this varied in some cases, e.g. baby,babe,bae,bbe, see appendix), date of the posting of the tweet, position of the nominal vocative in the post (initial, middle, final, on its own), type of clause where it was found (declarative, exclamative, imperative, question), polarity (positive, negative), pragmatic function (relational, focusing, attention-getter, humour/badinage, mitigating, compliment, etc.), poster's gender, and post length. An additional field in the database was reserved for any further remarks. 3.3. Criteria used for the selection of the material The accounts of these five artists were chosen because: (i) they all come from London and can all be considered to be users of Multicultural London English (Cheshire et al., 2011;Torgersen et al., 2011;Cheshire, 2013;Fox, 2015;Palacios Martínez, 2021b), a multiethnolect that presents innovative language features due to its high proportion of young speakers, forms such as new quotatives (this is þpronoun), non-standard use of past BE forms and definite and indefinite article forms, man as a new pronoun, invariant tags such as innit and you get me, etc.), and because Multicultural London English itself emerged in a context of language contact where individuals of different language and cultural backgrounds (Indian, North-African, Caribbean, local) interact and coexist in the large metropolitan area of London; (ii) they all play prominent roles in the current music scene in the UK, have large numbers of fans and followers, having all received various awards and other forms of public recognition; (iii) they themselves manage their own accounts, that is, they do not have community or media managers in that role, and hence their posts reflect their own spontaneous forms of expression; (iv) these artists can be regarded as belonging to a closed community of practice online (Tagg, 2015: 230), in that many of them are clearly very familiar with the topics discussed, they share a common interest in the type of music involved, and seem to know about one another, since many of them have been posting on the same site and using the same accounts for quite some time; (v) the interactions are very lively, are expressed in natural and spontaneous language, and are interesting from a linguistic perspective, with posters showing high levels of creativity and innovation in their use of language; (vi) apart from the artists who maintain these accounts, other participants in the exchanges include their followers or fans, the vast majority being quite young. We might bear in mind here that young speakers are considered to be language innovators and introducers of linguistic change (Eckert, 1988;Stenstr€ om et al., 2002;Palacios Martínez, I. 2011;Tagliamonte 2016), although we must also recall that, as noted above, the age variable cannot be fully accounted for in all cases on Twitter accounts. 3.4. Topics discussed in the Twitter exchanges The topics discussed in these posts include the releases of new songs and records, merchandising and advertising, fans' reactions to and comments on songs, concerts, shows and interviews, projects that these rappers are involved in, disputes Table 1 General background and biographical information on the rappers considered. Artist's name Stage name Twitter name Age Gender Origin &background Followers & achievements Period covered Costadinos Contostavlos Dappy a The Dappy 34 male Born in London of Greek-Cypriot origin 720,000 followers 2018e2020 Richard Kylea Cowie Wiley (Kat) Godfather/King (of Grime) Wiley/Eskimo 39 male Born in London of Trinidadian and Antiguan descent His page was suspended in 2021 after anti-Semitic posts. Member of the Order of the British Empire (2018) 2018e2019 Dylan Kwabena Mills Dizzee Rascal Dizzee Rascal/ Raskitt/Dizz 37 male Born in London of Nigerian and Ghanaian descent 374,300 followers. Awarded the Mercury Prize in 2003. Member of the Order of the British Empire (2018) 2018e2021 Rita Ekwere Ray BLK (Building Living Knowing) Ray Blk/Raydum 27 female Born in Nigeria but grew up in London since the age of 4 20,800 followers. She won the BBC's Sound of 2017. 2021 Simbiaulu Abigola Abiola Ajijawo Little Simz Little Simz/Simz/ Simbi 27 female British-Nigerian 100,006 followers. Nominated for the Mercury Prize, she won Best Album at both the Ivor Morello and the NME Awards. 2020e2021 a The term dappy, also dippy, is a slang term for insane, crazy or disorganised (OED, Green's slang dictionary). I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 97 between artists, discussions on issues such as religion (the Bible, the nature of good and evil, prayers), society (life in prison), politics (Black Lives Matter campaigns and protests), sport (football and boxing) and music, the achievements of rappers’close friends and relatives, and comments on what is happening in TV reality shows such as Love Island. Since the period studied falls within the period of the pandemic, personal experiences of the COVID 19 lockdown are also shared, although the number of posts devoted to this is much lower than expected considering the impact of COVID 19 on our lives and society. There are also a large number of tweets which can be regarded as secondary in terms of content or which provide information which is not essential for the purpose of this study; these are basically exclamations, repetitions, etc. In fact, this is an inherent feature of microblogging technology (Java et al., 2007;Yus, 2011: 138; Zappavigna, 2012). 4. Main findings 4.1. General frequency of nominal vocatives A total of 570 tokens were initially entered into a database, and then analysed according to a variety of parameters. Table 2 shows how the distribution of these items varied according to the Twitter accounts in question and in direct relation to the number of posts from each of these. Given that a total of 1500 post were initially assessed, about a third included a nominal vocative, which is quite a high proportion if we compare this to what is typically the case in offline communication (Leech, 1999;Biber et al., 2021). The fact that the participants often constituted a closed group or community may account for the high frequency of these forms, particularly familiarisers. Of the 570 examples first identified, we finally worked with a total of 550 tokens, after 20 items were discarded because they could not be categorically classified as vocatives, but rather as regular nouns (6), or even pronouns in some cases. This was the case with (7), in which man functions as a personal pronoun of the first-person, equivalent to I 4,5 (6) The Dappy is too Cold , can’t lie a session with bro would be spiritual vibes (Dappy, 2020) (7) From man heard you on heat fm back when it it was in Tottenham i knew we were having greatness. (Dizzee Rascal, 2019) Six instances were also recorded in which two vocatives occurred in the same post, one in front position and the other final. These were counted independently, that is, as two different tokens. Two examples of this follow. (8) Steve, just slap on 'Go' on the turntable will ya mate? (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) (9) Hey old freind you forgot me deptford studios, homelands and your place? We always had a way of bucking up on each other.. hope you are doing well my fren. (Dizzee Rascal, 2021) In (8) we find a first name vocative at the beginning of the post and a familiariser at the end. This combination is also frequent in spontaneous conversation (Palacios Martínez, 2018). In (9) the same vocative occurs with different spellings, friend/fren, found here in medial position after a greeting and in final position preceded by the possessive my. Emojis are very commonly placed right after the nominal vocative, as if to strengthen or intensify the meaning expressed (Dainas and Herring, 2021). (10) It’s a banger Chippy my bro big up (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) (11) Too cold bro (Dappy, 2021) Table 2 General distribution of the vocatives analysed in each of the Twitter accounts considered. Artist's name Number of nominal vocatives analysed % Costadinos Contostavlos/Dappy 138 24.2% Richard Kylea Cowie/Wiley 39 6.8% Dylan Kwabena Mills/Dizzee Rascal 173 30.4% Rita Ekwere/Ray Blk 116 20.4% Simbiaulu Abigola Abiola Ajijawo/Little Simz 104 18.2% Total 570 100 4 For further information on man as a pronoun, see Cheshire (2013),Adams (2018),Palacios Martínez, 2018,2021b), and Hall (2019). In the material analysed, this form functions mainly as a third person personal pronoun: “Dappy can kill a sound with different flows and pattern make him a genius. Man makes music look easy”. Some other examples are also recorded, in which the forms man and mandem are used as a plural instead of men:“Gassed not many man can rap and sing now”. One example was found in which man as a pronoun and man as a nominal vocative co-occurred in the same post: “I need to see this man live man”(Dizzee Rascal, 2021). 5 Fm: frequency modulation. I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 98 4.2. Vocative types A total of 78 different nominal vocatives were recorded, excluding from the token count spelling variants of many of these (see list in appendix 1 for the wide variety recorded). Well over half of the vocatives, some 327 (59.5%), were familiarisers, whereas a total of 83 tokens (15.1%) were terms of endearment. Following these in order of frequency were a group of 69 first name vocatives (12.5%), and 28 nicknames (5.1%). The next largest group was of honorifics, with 18 (3.3%) tokens. Contrary to what had been expected (Palacios Martínez, 2021a), only 14 (2.5%) tokens of offensive or taboo vocatives were found. We also found 7 examples in which the personal pronoun of the second person you collocated with two,all and lot (you two,you all, you lot), 2 examples of first name plus family name (Dizzee Rascal), and 2 family vocatives (uncle and auntie). All these latter categories, taken together, amounted to just 2% of the total. (see Fig. 1) These findings contrast with the figures provided in Biber et al.’s study (2021: 1106) based on the analysis of a sample of c.100,000 words selected from both American and British English conversations, in which first names were the most common of all the categories, at about 65% (in our study they are just 12.5%), followed by familiarisers (15%) (59.5% in our data), kinship terms (10%) (here 0%) and endearments (5%) (here 15.1%). In general conversations, speakers frequently know each other, and thus addressing one's interlocutors by first names or nicknames is common; this is not always the case on Twitter, where many posts are addressed to a general audience and only a few are directed to a particular individual, in which case the symbol @ can be placed directly in front of the person's name (that is, their username). Thus, we can see how, regarding the use of vocatives, there might be significant differences between spontaneous conversations and Twitter discourse, at least in light of the data from the accounts of the five artists here. However, this will have to be confirmed with additional data and analysis. From the group of familiarisers, the most common, in order of frequency, are brother and its multiple spelling variants (bro, brolo, brudda(h), bruh(h), bruv, blad, broski, bredda, b), together with man, again with its variants (mann, mandem, mans), plus mate,sis(ter),guy(s),girl/gal,fam(ily) and pal. The feeling of a close relationship between members of the rap community may account for the high use of the familiarisers brother, sister and family (Barron, 2013;White, 2016;Adams, 2018). Here we can also include boss,boy(bwoy), bud(dy), chile,daps (a shortened form of Dappy), dude,fella(s),friend,G,geezer,kid,lad,peeps, people (ppl) and playa (player), although the latter do not occur in large numbers. (see Table 3) Fig. 1. Main vocative types. I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 99 Some of these familiarisers, such as bro,guy,friend, are at times preceded by the possessive my (12e14) or by the adjective little,lil (15). (12) They are not ready my guy. (Dappy, 2020) (13) 100% agree my bro. (Dappy, 2021) (14) Hope you are doing well my friend. (Dizzee Rascal, 2021) (15) Lil bro be out there telling me’. This trapping shit be like a disease. (Dappy, 2021) Of the 24 tokens of guy, all except two instances are found in the plural, and one third of them occur together with you, that is, you guys, an address term which seems to be spreading very quickly, not only in conversations (Heyd, 2010) but also in online communication such as Twitter. (16) Mh, you guys are different. (Little Simz, 2021) As regards the terms of endearment, queen(ie) with 24 tokens, baby and its variants (bab, bae, ba, babygirl, bbe, bby, bay) with 21 examples, bestie with 7, king with 6 and love(ly) with 5, are by far the most frequent. Other terms found that can be classified within this group are angel,beauts,boo, 6 champ,darling,doll,goddess, hun(ny), legend and sweetheart. Whereas in general conversation terms of endearment can be used ironically or disparagingly (Landmann, 2021: 2), we did not find any such examples in our sample, although this does not necessarily mean that they cannot convey such a value in this digital genre.(see Table 4) Table 3 Most common familiarisers. Familiariser Example N% (my)bro and its variants Keep being u bruv cuz you're amazing as u are. (Dappy, 2018) 87 26.6 man and its variants Shut up man. (Dizzee Rascal, 2018) 58 17.7 mate Hi mate! I downloaded your new album at the beginning of this week and just heard it once. (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) 42 12.8 guy/guys/you guys Sorrry I couldn't be in Southampton tonight also guys (Dappy, 2018) 24 7.3 sis/sister You have a very lonely life. Sort your circle out Sis! (Ray BLK, 2021) 23 7 lad(s) Cheer up lad look like hes jus put a knife thru your footy. (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) 10 3.1 fam/family Fam, I think about the shrimp A LOT. (Ray BLK, 2021) 8 2.5 pal You were amazing pal. (Dizzee Rascal, 2021) 5 1.5 bud/ddy Ta buddy. (Dizzee Rascal, 2021) 3 0.9 boss Cheers boss. (Dizzee Rascal, 2019) 3 0.9 boy Yes boy. (Dizzee Rascal, 2018) 3 0.9 dude People still listening to you dude? (Dappy, 2018) 3 0.9 people/ppl/p Loved every single drop of them drops! people if you ain't already I beg you get on her SoundCloud and take them in (Little Simz, 2020) 3 0.9 Other (boss, boy, girl, friend, bud(dy), etc.) Girl, some are just wolves in sheep's clothing. (Ray BLK, 2021) 55 17 Total 327 100 Table 4 Most common terms of endearment. Endearment Example N% queen(ie) You deserve this and even more queenie. (Ray BLK, 2021) 24 29 baby Thank u babe. (Ray BLK, 2021) 21 25.3 bestie I'm here bestie. (Ray BLK, 2021) 7 8.4 king Thank you so much king. (Dizzee Rascal, 2018) 6 7.2 love(ly) Do your thang love!! (Wiley, 2018) 5 6 darling How was your day darling? (Ray BLK, 2021) 3 3.6 hun(ny) Congratulations hunny. (Ray BLK, 2021) 3 3.6 legend LETS GO LEGEND. (Little Simz, 2021) 2 2.4 champ And we love you champ. (Little Simz, 2021) 2 2.4 Other (goddess, boo, doll, angel, etc.) Have a good day goddess. (Little Simz, 2021) 10 12.1 Congrats angel. (Dizzee Rascal, 2018) What people think of you is none of your business. just keep doing you boo. (Ray BLK, 2021) Total 83 100 6 Boo is defined as a term of endearment referring to a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a lover. According to the OED, it is of uncertain origin and may be a variant or alteration of another lexical item. It may also derive from baby (Green's Dictionary of Slang) or beau (Stein, 2001). I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 100 The group of first names is next in order of frequency with a total of 69 tokens, these being used mainly by participants in the exchanges to greet, thank, compliment or express full agreement with the artist in question. Here are some examples. (17) morning Dizzee. (Dizzee Rascal, 2021) (18) Go Simz!! (Little Simz, 2021) (19) dizzee well done to you x. (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) Nicknames occur in similar contexts to those of the previous group, although they are not so frequent, a total of 28 tokens, including forms such as Raskit(t), Diz,Dy,Raydum,Simbi and Simzy. (20) Cheers Raskit. (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) (21) good stuff, Simbi. the self doubt is a struggle of mine that I’m also trying to overcome thanks. (Little Simz, 2020) The category of honorific vocatives includes ma'am/madam,sir,Mr. Miss,lady,master, don 7 and lord, although their frequency is quite limited (3.3%). They generally show respect towards the addressee, as in (22), although they may also be used as banter or ironically, as in (23). (22) Good morning ma’am (Little Simz, 2021) (23) it’s versality for me ma’am,he’s evolving everyday and it’s beautiful!!! (Dappy, 2021) From the category of offensive address terms, bitch (bia, BIA) is the most common (6 examples), together with cunt(s), dosser,hack(er),pagan,hater,bastard and wanker, although their overall presence in the posts is in fact very limited, a total of 14 tokens. These are very often accompanied by other swear and taboo expressions, as in the following. (24) Wiley didn't invent the Genre you thick cunts you are pissing me off. (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) Compared to their use in general conversation (Palacios Martínez, 2021a), the frequency of vocatives from this category is far lower in our data. This may have to do with one of the rules imposed by Twitter, that hate speech, abuse and violent threats should be avoided. 8 As is the case with offline spoken English, these taboo vocatives may also lose their insulting nature and serve to express affection among equals or close friends, as in (25), or may even be used sarcastically (26). (25) Meet me for a pint when you’re down you sexy bastard I<adore you. (Dizzee Rascal, 2020) (26) Bitch I’m outside (Ray BLK, 2021) 4.3. Position in the clause As noted above, it is important to consider the position of vocatives in the sentence, since this may be closely related to their pragmatic function (Leech,1999;McCarthy and O'Keefe, 2003;Clancy, 2015;Biber et al., 2021). Final position is by far the most common, accounting for 76.3% of all occurrences, some 420 examples. This is followed in frequency by initial position, with 78 tokens (14.2%) (see (26) above), while nominal vocatives in medial position occur in only 40 cases (7.3%). Vocatives in medial position sometimes posed difficulties in terms of classification, and here the criteria established by Biber et al. (2021:1107) were followed. 9 (27) Big up bro for repping our brand. (Dizzee Rascal, 2019) Only 12 address terms of this kind stand on their own as a turn, representing 2.2% of the whole sample (see (4) and (5) above). 7 Don is a Spanish title generally prefixed to a man's forename (OED). Here it is used on its own: “Big up Wiley you don”(Dappy, 2018). 8 For more information, see <https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter>. 9 The nominal vocative was classified as being in medial position when it occurred in the middle of a clause or between C-units and where there was no indication that it might have been more closely associated with one or the other. I.M. 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At present he is the principal investigator of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education concerned with the language of social media and the digital genres. He was also Head of the University's Modern Language Centre between 2007 and 2010 and Secretary of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN) from 2004 to 2009. Further information at: https://www.spertus.es/ignacio.html I.M. Palacios Martínez Journal of Pragmatics 207 (2023) 93e110 110