Abstract:
Computer mediated communication (CMC) has started to shape the way language
is used to communicate. It has also contributed to the creation of internet dialects. This
research focuses on the morphosyntactical features of one internet dialect known as
doggolingo, which displays certain deviations from Standard English. Doggolingo is
defined as the caption that is embedded in funny images of dogs, widely known as memes.
The present paper analyzes a selected corpus collected from a google search. The analysis
is based on three aspects: function words omission (articles and subject omission), ellipsis
(copula omission), and phoneme/grapheme correspondence known as eye dialect. The
results show that doggolingo shares similarities mainly with two stages of first language
acquisition as well as a tendency for vowel changing. Two possible types of doggolingo
are also discussed.
