WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES USED ON TWITTER

Aurelia Puti Imani

19320172

Background

Social media is the platform used for doing communication or sharing information and
data through smartphones and computers. These days, social media has become a crucial part of
our life, especially for young adults. It is used for many contexts, such as academic, medic,
technology, entertainment, and daily life. According to Sari (2018), recently, checking social
media tools in smartphone has become daily activity that cannot be separated from our life.
People can oversee what their friends, family, or stranger status, post and statement in their
social media. Most of them often state in informal writing style and use slang words. It will be a
good thing if we do a field research which takes place around us that, the place that sometimes
we do not aware. Surely, social media has many impacts to young adults in the world, one of
which is in the term of word-formation in a language. We do not aware about the word-
formation processes happened in our daily life, which can create some new forms and make new
words from them.

If we look at our social media, there must be some new words that we have not heard or
known before. One thing that we can do is to know the word-formation process in those words or
how those words are made. According to Yule (2006), the word-formation processes consist of
coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, acronyms,
and derivation (prefixes, suffixes, infixes). The new words that are commonly used on social
media can be analysed by those processes in order to know how they are created.

One of social media that interests the writer is Twitter. On twitter, we can share our
thoughts, communicate and respond to other persons in the world. Not only for communication,
twitter also has many advantages for optimizing engagement for marketing needs. It also
provides some opportunities to its ussers to know what is happening in the world by looking at
the trending topic. However, the language used on this application is mainly spoken language.
Therefore, many people do not realise if they complete the rules of writing, they just write it as
long as the readers or the recipients understand what they want to say. In Indonesia, language
used on Twitter often be said as Bahasa Anak Twitter. Even, some of this material analysis paper
are gotten from Kamus Anak Twitter. That is why, words-formation used on Twitter is interesting
to be discussed.

People often abbreviate or combine the words into some new words to make them more
comfortable to be written. They also often make some acronyms to simplify the words.
Acccording to Astuti (2014), the factors of using acronym are because it looks cooler and up to
date, also they want to simplify the words by violating the basic rules. No wonder, we can easily
find many new words on Twitter, since people all over the world uses it for their daily
communication. Some examples of the new words used on Twitter are RN (Acronym),
Throwback (Compounding) Retweet (Derivation), Menfess (Blending), Rep (Clipping), and so
on, that will be discussed in analysis and discussion in this paper.

In this study, there are some questions raised, which are (1) what word formation
processes are found on Twitter? and (2) which word formation process is mostly used by the
Twitter users? The purposes of this study paper are to describe the process of word formation
found on Twitter and to find out the kind of word formation commonly used on there.

Analysis and Discussion

Derivation

According to Lieber (2009: 33), derivation is a process of how new lexemes are formed by
providing suffixes or prefixes on their base. Together, prefixes and suffixes can be grouped as
affixes. The examples of derivation words used on Twitter are described below.

1. Follower
Follower is a lexeme which is formed by adding suffix er to its base follow. Follower
means someone who follow the user’s social media.
2. Following
Following is a lexeme that is formed by adding suffix ing to its base follow. In this case,
it is not an inflexion, because it has diferrent meaning and it changes the word form (verb
to noun). As following (n) here means someone who is followed by the users.
 3. Retweet

Retweet is a new lexeme which is formed by adding prefix re to the base tweet (In twitter
it means to make an upload or status), so that retweet can be meant as to make an upload
again.

4. Mutualan
Mutualan is a new lexeme used by Indonesian users on Twitter to say that one user and
another user follows each other. It is formed by adding suffix an to its base mutual.
5. Sender
Sender is a lexeme which is formed by adding suffix er to its base send (v). Sender (n) on
Twitter means someone who sends the information or the status to other users.
6. Disaltyin
Disaltyin is a new lexeme used by Indonesian users by adding prefix di and suffix in to
its base salty (adj). It is used to show that someone has improperly treated by the others.
7. Header
Header is a new lexeme which is formed by adding suffix er to its base head. Header on
Twitter is a picture whose position is on the back of the user’s profile picture.

Borrowing

The most frequently used borrowing word these days by Indonesian Twitter users is
Hyung. These days, Hyung is a very common word used on Twitter, especially by Indonesian
users. It is borrowed from South Korea which means brother. However, Indonesian Twitter users
takes that word as a greeting to fellow K-Pop or K-Drama fans.

Compounding

According to Lieber (2009: 43), compounding is a process of combining two or more bases,
roots, or stems. Compounding words found on Twitter are mentioned below.

1. Giveaway
Giveaway is a lexeme that actually has similar meaning like a gift or a present. It is
formed by combining give (v) and away (adj).
2. Throwback
 Throwback is a lexeme which is formed by combining throw (v) and back (adv). On
Twitter, it is commonly used to show a nostalgic moments of the users.
3. Workshop
Workshop is a lexeme that is formed by combining two words, work (v) and shop (n).

Acronyms or Initializations

According to Lieber (2009: 53), acronyms or initializations are words that are pronounced
letter by letter. It is used as an alternative way to simplify the words. Acronyms are formed by
taking the first letter of each words. Common acronyms found on Twitter are:

1. A.K.A
A.K.A stands for Also Known As. It is commonly used for a subject who has other
nickname which is renowned by many people.
2. ASAP
ASAP stands for As Soon As Possible.
3. BRB
BRB stands for Be Right Back.
4. RN
RN stands for Right Now.
5. JB
JB is used by Indonesian users that stands for Join and Bareng (Together). It is used if the
users want to join to a group conversation or community.
6. IMO
It stands for In My Opinion.
7. ISTG
It stands for I Swear To God.
8. SMH
It stands for Shaking My Head. It is commonly used if an unbelievable moment happened
on some informations.
9. OOT
It stands for Out Of Topic.
 10. OOMF
It stands for One Of My Followers.
11. RNB
It stands for Report and Block. It is used when the user wants to report some tweets or
some persons and block them.
12. ICYMI
It stands for In Case You Miss It.
13. ATM
It is commonly used on twitter that stands for At The Moment.
14. TBH
It stands for To Be Honest
15. CMIIW
It stands for Correct Me If I’m Wrong
16. TBA
It stands for To Be Announced
17. OTP
It stands for One True Pairing. It also can stand for On The Phone.
18. OA
OA stands for Official Account
19. IDGI
It stands for I Don’t Get It.
20. SJW
It stands for Social Justice Warrior. It is commonly used on Twitter when the users make
a status about justice or equity.

Clipping

Based on Lieber (2009: 53), clipping is the process of shortening an already existing word to
create a new word. According to Nisa (in Agus, 2016) a simple way to form a new word in
clipping process is by cutting off at least one syllable of a word. There are five common clipping
words found on Twitter.

1. Rep
 Rep stands for reply
2. Nder
Nder is used by Indonesian users that refers to Sender.
3. Dom
Dom is commonly used by Indonesian users that refers to Domisili or Domicile, where
the users live.
4. Acc
Acc stands for Account, it also can stand for Accept.
5. Ava
Ava stands for Avatar. Avatar on Twitter means the user’s profile picture.
6. Bro
Bro stands for brother
7. Colab
Colab is commonly used by Indonesian users that refers to Collaboration.

Blending

According to Lieber (2009: 52) blending is a word formation’s process in which a part of
lexeme is combined to a part of another lexeme to form a new lexeme. Some blending words are
found on Twitter as be mentioned below.

1. Menfess
Menfess stands for Mention and Confess. It is used for sending a letter by not giving the
sender’s name or identity.
2. Follback
Follback stands for Follow and Back. It is used if the users want to ask the person whom
they follows to follow them back.
3. Opfoll
Opfoll stands for Open and Follow. It is commonly used by a big twitter account who
wants to follow its follower freely.

Conclusion
 These days, social media has become a crucial part of our life, especially for
young adults. Surely, social media has many impacts to young adults in the world, one of which
is in the term of word-formation in a language. We do not aware about the word-formation
processes happened in our daily life, which can create some new forms and make new words
from them. If we look at our social media, there must be some new words that we have not heard
or known before. One thing that we can do is to know the word-formation process in those words
or how those words are made. One of social media who knownly as having their own language
or lexemes is Twitter. The language used on this application is mainly spoken language.
Therefore, many people do not realise if they complete the rules of writing, they just write it as
long as the readers or the recipients understand what they want to say. The most common word-
formation used on Twitter is Acronyms or Initializations whose number of words found is 20 out
of 41 words which can be said that it is 48% out of all word-formations found on Twitter. The
second common word-formations are Derivation and Clipping which is 7 out of 41 or 17%. The
third ones are Compounding and Blending whose number of words found are 3 out of 41 or
0.7%. Because of this study paper analysis, I am able to know deeply more about word-
formation and its types, not only that, I also found many interesting words on Twitter that even I
did not expect them.

References

Lieber, R. 2009. Introducing Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nisa, R.F., and Agus Subianto. 2016. Word Formation Process of Non-Standard Vocabulary
in Twitter Statuses of Indonesian Dangdut Singers. Semarang: Diponegoro University.

Sari, M.Y.K. 2018. An Analysis of Word-Formation Process Used in Social Media. Medan:
University of Sumatera Utara.

Yule, George. 2006. The Study of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.