Abstract:
Today, anyone with basic reading and writing skills can communicate online. With this development, the internet has become both the subject of and an arena for heated debate concerning the use of language, especially writing enabled by digital technologies. While many researchers look at issues surrounding the internet and literacy in terms of pedagogy, this study demonstrates that views of grammar are interesting not only in a teaching-learning setting, but even more so in the context of communication in an immersive online environment. It concludes that all people, and internet users in particular, would benefit from a rhetorical understanding of grammar, which emphasizes audience, purpose, and clarity for effective communication.This study, based on research on rhetorical grammar, multiple literacies, and digital technologies, aims to describe internet users' contributions to the dialogue about grammar, as demonstrated by user-generated content on Twitter and selected blogs. Findings show that some social media users are indeed interested in using the internet as a platform to advocate specific approaches and attitudes towards language issues such as standard grammar and forms, teaching writing, and clear communication. Data from Twitter was analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach, with categories inductively derived from emergent coding, to determine users' purposes in creating grammar-related content. The most common reason for sending grammar-related messages on Twitter was found to be sharing grammar resources, followed by the correction of others' grammar, discussion of grammar topics, and statement of a grammar rule. Correcting one's own grammar and asking for grammar help were notably infrequent in this set of data. Blogs about grammar were found to be more likely than Twitter users to present ideas about rhetorical grammar.
