http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/8856 Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:34:05 GMT 2026-04-07T15:34:05Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11356 Exploring the formation and curation of the self on TikTok through TikTok voice Hernández, Marisol Content creators may seem to speak authentically on TikTok projecting relatable, friendly, and entertaining selves; however, their ways of communication are likely to have been carefully crafted. By describing how some TikTok content creators build their online selves through their communication styles, this dissertation reflects upon how identity is constructed in such a volatile and algorithm-driven platform. Thus, the main hypothesis concerns the formation and curation of TikTok content creators‘ public personae using the so-called TikTok voice: A particular form of communicating characterised by the use of certain sociophonetic phenomena—creaky voice and uptalk—paired with the technical, social, and creative affordances of TikTok. Upon studying a sub-group of users, this dissertation stems from a qualitative research project with a case study design which has analysed nine representative videos from three different TikTok accounts following Erving Goffman‘s (1959) theory of the self. The results show that the observed content creators creak frequently in phrase-final positions, use uptalk recurrently as a floor-holding strategy, and curate their online selves through their front stages, expressions given, and non-verbal cues, among other tactics. These finding become relevant to revisit how identity is performed on TikTok and to rethink how language varieties emerge or mutate. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11356 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/10735 Exploring Linguistic Impoliteness in CMC: An Analysis of the Users' Construction of Impoliteness towards Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris in YouTube Comments Taboadela, Maria Paula Impoliteness is an extremely rich phenomenon embedded in human interaction that may be realized through different channels of communication: speech, gestures, prosodic features, silence, turn-taking, among others. Nowadays, there are numerous ways of understanding impoliteness and what it entails, for it has been studied by various disciplines such as linguistics, history, pragmatics and literary studies. Following Bousfield's definition, impoliteness can be understood as the construction of "gratuitous and conflictive verbal face-threatening acts which are purposefully delivered" (2008: 72). Similar to this, Culpeper (2011) understands impoliteness as the offensive behavior whose objective is to damage a person's identity. As mentioned before, there is not a single definition of impoliteness, for it is a complex phenomenon that has been under constant investigation. It is interesting to add that, during the emergence of the first politeness theories, impoliteness was not regarded as a field of studies on its own. Instead, it was merely examined within the politeness theories, precisely as their negative counterpart. According to Mills, "[p]oliteness is the expression of the speakers' intention to mitigate face threats carried by certain face threatening acts toward the listener" (2003: 6). Interestingly, there is an imbalance between the amount of research dedicated to politeness and impoliteness. Contrary to the study of impoliteness, the politeness phenomenon has been deeply explored across time by various scholars such as Lakoff (1973 and 1989) Leech (1983 and 2014), Brown and Levinson (1987) and Spencer-Oatey (2002 and 2008), among others. It was around the mid-1990s that impoliteness began to be examined as an object of study on its own. In fact, even if the amount of research on it is still scarce in comparison to that of politeness, impoliteness has become one of the most prominent areas of research in the 21st Century according to Sinkeviciute (2015). The reason behind this shift towards the exploration of impoliteness as an area of study separately from politeness can be attributed to the fact that communication is not only based on harmonious exchanges, but also on those instances where participants present impolite behavior, both verbally or non-verbally, towards the addressee. Culpeper explains the need to explore impoliteness by stating that "impoliteness is an important aspect of social life" (2011: 15). Therefore, considering that real human communication is built through both polite and impolite exchanges, this disruption of harmony in discourse should also be brought into the picture instead of being overlooked, for it adds significant value to the study of human interaction. Impoliteness research has been developed within different contexts varying from face-to-face exchanges to digital communication. The massive growth, development and adoption of technology and digital practices around the world has brought along the emergence of a new type of discourse embedded in this digital environment known as computer mediated communication 2 (CMC). According to Chaka, "CMC is a term referring to communication that occurs between human beings through computer networks. In this sense, it is a combination of telecommunication technologies and computer networks. The latter can be local or global networks" (2010: 628). The study of impoliteness and language use in digital environments has become a rich area for linguistic research in view of CMC's essential role in today's human communication, but especially due to the differences between digital and face-to-face interaction, such as participation structure, audience types, paralinguistic cues, and presence of multimodality (e.g. language, images, music, among others). Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/10735 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/10390 Living Otherwise : A Humorous World to Revisit and Resist Sectarian Violence in Northern Ireland as Seen in Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018) Rigane, María Eugenia The present work focuses on a stylistic analysis of humour in Anna Burns’ second novel Milkman, published in 2018 and celebrated with the prestigious Booker Prize that same year. This thesis explores the narrator’s unique voice and construction of humour to shed light into the sectarian violence that reached its peak in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. For that purpose, Agnes Marszalek’s (2012) model of a “humorous world” is employed. The linguist proposes a cognitive stylistic analysis of the construction of humour through the use of a Humorous Mode, Repetition and Variation and Disruptive Schemata. This world will offer the potential to revisit the longstanding issues of sectarian violence, while at the same time present a refreshing perspective in the context of a war. Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/10390 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/1558 Towards a phonological characterisation of unacusatives in English Durán, José Manuel In the last decades, the syntax-phonology interface has attracted the attention of both generativists (Miller et al 1997, Pullum & Zwicky 1988, Selkirk 1995, 2001) and systemicists (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004, Halliday & Greaves 2008). Scholars within both frameworks have posited the existence of a correlation from syntax to phonology so that every structural syntactic property must have a reflection on a structural phonological property. Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/1558 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z