HIGH SCHOOL

STUDENTS IN
LUBAO: IDENTITY
AND BEYOND
Arcie C. Cabrera - MALED
 INTRODUCT
it makes the
language ION
indolent
The unending convenience and
(Bhamare,
2020) upgrading of Facebook have led to
the explosion of many new words
and changes the ways how ideas
It shortens English are structured and communicated.
the messages effects of social proficiency
improves, and Thus, this study was formulated
with poor media to the new terms are concerned with conducting
grammar… communication learned discourse analysis in the syntactic
(Hanke, 2018) (Faryadi, 2017)
level of the Facebook status posts
of the students. The syntactic
analysis was applied through word
native and non- … encounters
and sentence-level to the status
native English
ethical posts with identified unique terms,
speakers reveals
issues… and identification of the other
two beneficial
implications (Cervera, 2012) observable features of the entire
(Fahad, 2016) corpus beyond the scope of the
two levels.
Generally, this study aims to conduct a discourse
analysis on the status posts of the students on
Facebook at the syntactic level.
Specifically, this study sought answers to the
following questions:
1. What are the identified unique terms common
on the Facebook posts of the respondents?
2. How do the analyses of the Facebook posts with
the identified unique terms describe the online
language identity of respondents in terms of
2.1. Word Level; and
2.2. Sentence Level?
3. What other observable features do the
respondents’ Facebook language have?
4. What do the findings reveal about the language
identity of the students online?
STATEMENT OF THE
PROBLEM
The researcher believes that this study will
be beneficial to the students, parents,
teachers/language teachers, school
principals/administrators, and future
researchers.
SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE STUDY
Since the nature of this study was primarily
qualitative, assumptions were made on the
case of the respondents’ posts on Facebook
which shared common and/or distinct language
structures. It can be considered that
respondents composed their posts in such
structure intentionally for that is the language
existing in that online world.
ASSUMPTION OF
THE STUDY
RESEARCH PARADIGM
 THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

• Qualitative research deals with the • McCombes (2019) asserted that descriptive
investigation of meanings, interpretations, research aims to precisely and methodically
symbols, relations, and the processes of describe a phenomenon or a population.
social life (Crossman, 2020).

• It also aims to understand the social reality of
individuals, groups, and cultures as nearly as
possible as its participants feel or live it by
studying them in their natural setting (McLeod,
2019).
• Bhasin (2019) explained that descriptive research
provides an answer to what and not to how or why
questions. It is concerned with the trends of a
particular field and a good option when the researcher
does not have any information about the problem.

QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH

DESIGN
 SAMPLING POPULATION AND SAMPLE
PROCEDURE OF THE STUDY
Table 1
Distribution of Respondents
• It used homogenous purposive    
sampling in recruiting the participants Name of School Number of Participants 

as it aimed to investigate the Sta. Cruz High Integrated School 32

Facebook language identity of (SCHIS)
Prado Siongco High School (PSHS) 32
students who belong to a group with
Santiago National High School 30
similar Grade level in a certain locale. (SNHS)
San Roque Arbol National High 30
School (SRAHS)
Sta. Teresa 2nd High School 27
(ST2HS)
Baruya High School (BHS) 21
Total 172
RESEARCH The instrument used in this study was the corpus that contained 3,
422 Facebook text posts of respondents with 13, 572 words which
INSTRUME include only full texts and texts as captions of videos or photos shared
NT in February 2021.

As an initial step, the researcher sought approval from the Schools

Division Superintendent (SDS) of the Division of Pampanga.

Upon receiving the approval, the researcher coordinated with the

DATA concerned school heads and Grade 10 advisers by sending messages on
GATHERING their Gmail accounts and their Messengers including the consent form link.

PROCEDURE Two days after the communication with the advisers, the Google Form was
set to stop accepting responses for the final list of the participants.

Then, the Facebook posts for the February month of every participant
were collected and compiled with the participants’ names replaced by
codes.
 DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURE

The analysis followed the steps suggested by Luo (2019) which includes
selecting content, defining units and categories, developing coding rules, coding of
texts, and analyzing results.

1) The proponent selected the Facebook posts as the subject for this discourse
analysis.
2) Then, only those posts from the target participants shared within February 2021
were included as data.
3) Codes were pre-determined and assigned before the actual coding stage. For
word-level, the derivations, classifications, definitions, and inflections were
analyzed while the sentence level included patterns, structures, functions, and
constructions. Any recurring theme beyond was considered in the analysis of
other features.
4) Lastly, the results will be analyzed and discussed from which the significant
findings, conclusions, and recommendations were drawn.
 FINDINGS OF THE
STUDY
Table 2
The Identified Unique Terms of the Respondents

Number Unique Terms

of Terms
1 Rawr
2 Omsim
3 Lf
4 Omo
5 Peyn
6 Awit
7 Yarn
8 Awts
9 Amp/Ampt
10 Taena
11 Naol
12 Arat
13 Ror
14 Send
15 nmn
FINDINGS OF THE
STUDY
FINDINGS OF THE
STUDY
FINDINGS OF THE
STUDY
FINDINGS OF THE
STUDY
FINDINGS OF THE CONCLUSION
STUDY S
1. The Grade 10 students in Lubao, Pampanga had fifteen unique
words in Facebook as of February 2021.
2. The words in Facebook of the Grade 10 students in Lubao were
formed through creative spelling, used as interjections, defined
informally, and uninflected, while their ideas were commonly
constructed as fragments and run-on sentences.
3. Having wrong spacing between and among words, replacing
punctuations with emojis, shortened and elongated spellings,
applying humor and creativity were the other observable features of
the Facebook language of the Grade 10 students in Lubao together
with the long posts that served three certain uses and English posts
that were just lifted quotations and hugot posts.
4. The language identity in Facebook of the Grade 10 students in
Lubao was described as having words spelled creatively,
interjectional, related to other familiar words, and with one
grammatical attribute, ideas constructed as fragments and run-on
sentences in Tagalog and vernacular, and with other features of
replaced punctuations with emojis, wrong spaced and misspelled
words, with creativity and humor, and long and English posts with
specific purposes based on the summary analysis.
5. The online language identity of the Grade 10 students in Lubao,
Pampanga was described as commonly short and singly
composed, in Tagalog and vernacular, expressive, humorous,
creative, ungrammatical, emoji dependent, and serves specific
purposes.
 RECOMMEN
DATIONS
1. The identity of the Facebook or online language of the
students must be given attention and analyzed to
understand their behavior and performance in school or at
home. The characteristic of their language when speaking
and writing either in academic or random settings was
probably an effect of their social media dependence.
2. The teachers, particularly the teachers of language,
should consider and acknowledge with limits the language
of the students in online platforms to make their learners
more participative because that was the kind of language
that seemed engaging or relatable for them.
3. The government, particularly the Department of
Education, should consider in their future plannings and
reassessments the online language since it required the
teachers and schools to present conduct of
contextualization.
4. Future researchers may explore the other variables and
areas related to this study through modifications of the
respondents and research locale. Moreover, the use of
mixed methods research design was highly recommended.