Registers in the Virtual Linguistic Landscape of #Philippines on Twitter

ABSTRACT

This research analyzes the registers of the virtual linguistic landscape of #philippines
on Twitter. The advent of the web and social media sites have extended speech
communities from tangible spaces into the vast and open field of the virtual world. This
study is guided by Halliday’s register theory, specifically, systemic functional analysis;
which accounts for the importance of syntactic structures and their relationship to
language functions in social settings. Thus, the field, tenor and mode of select 30 top
tweets with #philippines from January to March 2020 are identified and presented. It
was proven that certain fields are reflected in the 30 select tweets and falls into the
following categories: crime, economics, education, environment, health and medicine,
history, international relations, politics, religion, safety and security and tourism.
Subsequently, the tenor of the texts were classified to be informal, with varying degrees
according to the textual formality criteria adapted from Eggins and Martin. The modes of
the 30 tweets are also identified as follows: description, exposition, persuasion,
narration and argumentation. As virtual linguistic landscape studies aim to expose
multilingual phenomena, it was further revealed that #philippines presents various
socio-cultural interactions among the Twitter users. The exhange were dominantly in
English language with very few code-switching instances. The output of this study,
which is a primer on virtual linguistic landscape of #philippines on Twitter, may
supplement the development of language programs in schools and universities and aid
various organizations and agencies in implementing language policies that are
appropriate in today’s virtual arena. Further, it is recommended that the use of digital
and social media platforms be maximized in response to the “new normal” academic
and communicative practices.

Key words: #philippines, twitter, field, tenor, mode, virtual linguistic landscape