The Influencers’ Language on Instagram and Twitter Captions
Main Article Content
The major objective of this study is to analyze grammatical errors found on Instagram and Twitter captions. It is intended to recognize the most common grammatical errors so that we can be aware of the language that we use. The present study applies the theory of Dulay et al (1982) which divides errors into four types: omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. Since all of the data are in the form of text, a method of textual analysis was applied to analyze the data. The data under analysis are taken from the captions by influencers using English on Instagram and Twitter. The result of the study showed there were 152 errors found from 100 captions and they were classified into misinformation (46%), misordering (3%), addition (16%), and omission (35%). The errors were also classified into grammatical units. Those errors in grammatical units are subject-verb agreement with a total of 16 errors, singular-plural with 15 errors, tense/verb form with 31 errors, word form with 23 errors, capitalization with 28 errors, apostrophe error with 25 errors, missing comma with six errors, article usage error with three errors, wrong/missing preposition with four errors, and word use error with two errors. The most grammatical error that frequently occurs in the Instagram caption is tense/verb with 23 (22%) occurrences and a total of 17 (30%) occurrences of apostrophe errors on Twitter.
Al-Shujairi, Y. B. J., & Tan, H. (2017). Grammar errors in the writing of Iraqi English language learners. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 5(4), 122-130.
Barman, U., Das, A., Wagner, J., & Foster, J. (2014, October). Code mixing: A challenge for language identification in the language of social media. In Proceedings of the first workshop on computational approaches to code-switching (pp. 13-23).
Cambridge Dictionary. (2021). Dictionary-cambridge.org. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/caption
Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learners’ errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 5, 161-170.
Corder, S. P. (1974). Error Analysis, In Allen, J.L.P. and Corder, S.P. (1974). Techniques in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dhanya, G. (2016). Influence of social media on English language learning. Journal of English Language and Literature (JOELL), 3(1), 105-110.
Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. New York: Oxford University Press.
Forsey, C. (2019, January 29). What is Twitter and how does it work? Hubspot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-twitter
Forsey, C. (2020, October 1). How to use Instagram: A beginner’s guide. Hubspot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-use-instagram
Hamzah. (2012). An analysis of the written grammatical errors produced by freshmen students in English writing. Padang: Universitas Negeri Padang.
Hudson, M. (2020, June 23). What is social media? The balance of small business. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301
Lawson, P. (2019) Differences between error and mistakes in error analysis, https://librarygurus.com/1208/assignments/
Macdonald, S. & Headlam, N. (1986). Research Methods handbook introductory guide to research methods for social research. Centre for Local Economic Strategies, Manchester.
Moreau, E. (February 5, 2021). What is Instagram and why should you be using it? Likewire. https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-instagram-3486316
Nordquist, R. (February 5, 2020). What is grammatical error? ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/grammatical-error-usage-1690911
Nurhayati-Wolff, H. (March 11, 2021). Indonesia: Social network penetration q3 2020. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/284437/indonesia-social-network-penetration/
Park, G., Schwartz, H. A., Eichstaedt, J. C., Kern, M. L., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D. J., & Seligman, M. E. (2015). Automatic personality assessment through social media language. Journal of personality and social psychology, 108(6), 934.
Promsupa, P., Varasarin, P., & Brudhiprabha, P. (2017). An analysis of grammatical errors in English writing of Thai university students. Hrd Journal, 8(1), 93-104.
Schwartz, H. A., Eichstaedt, J. C., Kern, M. L., Dziurzynski, L., Ramones, S. M., Agrawal, M., & Ungar, L. H. (2013). Personality, gender, and age in the language of social media: The open-vocabulary approach. PloS one, 8(9), e73791.
Sermsook, K., Liamnimit, J., & Pochakorn, R. (2017). An Analysis of Errors in Written English Sentences: A Case Study of Thai EFL Students. English Language Teaching, 10(3), 101-110.
Setiawan, D. (2016). English code-switching in the Indonesian language. Universal journal of educational research, 4(7), 1545-1552. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.040707
Yunita, E. (2018). Error analysis of grammar found in social media captions of Eigerindo’s products [Unpublished diploma 3’s final project report]. Bandung, Politeknik Negeri Bandung, Indonesia.
Ulla, M. B. (2014). Analysis of the language errors in writing among BSEE and AB English students. European Journal of Academic Essays, 1(3), 39-47.
