Dynamics of Language Change: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Language in an Online Transgender Community

Abstract

Trans-affirming language can be critical for trans people in transphobic sociopolitical contexts. But what kinds of trans activism -- and whose -- has determined what language is considered trans-affirming? Collective negotiations of trans language norms have long occurred across online platforms, providing rich data to explore what language change looks like in a community where language is highly politicized. In this paper, we use a mixed-methods approach to explore patterns of language change in one popular early online transmasculine community on LiveJournal. Using bigram snapshot language models, we establish canonical patterns of community-level change in aggregate language usage. We dig into how these patterns relate to population turnover by analyzing distinct groups of users, extending existing quantitative analysis to disentangle group-level variation from community-level change and combining it with qualitative analysis that scrutinizes the interactional contexts of change. We find influence of linguistic, interactional, and identity norms that are negotiated and enforced by highly active users, thus driving language change. Our analysis demonstrates the role of power in community-internal language negotiation, with implications for trans language change more broadly.