Searchable talk: the linguistic functions of hashtags

TLDR

Social media discourse is increasingly searchable, and hashtags serve as social tags that embed metadata, enabling not only topic marking but also a range of complex meanings. This study applies linguistic metafunction theory to examine how hashtags simultaneously mark experiential topics, enact interpersonal relationships, and organize text. Using corpus‑based discourse analysis of 100 million Twitter words, the authors investigate these functions and their relation to social search.

Abstract

An important dimension of social media discourse is its searchability. A key semiotic resource supporting this function is the hashtag, a form of social tagging that allows microbloggers to embed metadata in social media posts. While popularly thought of as topic-markers, hashtags are able to construe a range of complex meanings in social media texts. This paper uses the concept of linguistic metafunctions, to explore how hashtags enact three simultaneous communicative functions: marking experiential topics, enacting interpersonal relationships, and organizing text. Corpus-based discourse analysis of linguistic patterns in a 100 million word Twitter corpus is used to investigate these functions and how they relate to the notion of social search.