A Morpho-Pragmatic Study of Roman Alphabetic Initialisms (RAI s) on Chinese and Japanese Social Media

Abstract

Abstract The use of Roman alphabetic initialisms (RAIs) is common on both Chinese and Japanese social media. However, to date, few studies have examined the phenomenon at the morpho-pragmatic interface in adequate detail or depth; nor has any researcher addressed their formational and motivational similarities and differences between Chinese and Japanese RAIs. To fill these gaps, this study conducts a comparative analysis of the RAIs collected from Weibo (for Chinese data) and Instagram and Twitter (for Japanese data). The results show that while the RAIs on the Chinese and Japanese social media share some ways of formation and converge on some motivations, differences in both formation and motivations also exist between Chinese and Japanese RAIs. It is argued that the formational differences stem from language characteristics and the functional divergences may be attributed to the different societal-cultural backgrounds of Chinese and Japanese netizens. The study may not only expand the scope of initialism research in general, but also enrich our understanding of the effect of societal-cultural differences on their formation and function of use in Computer- Mediated Communication (CMC) in particular.