La Sociolingüística de Redes y los Social Media

In this paper, the model of Social Networks –proposed in 1987 by J. Milroy and L. Milroy– is applied to the analysis of linguistic interactions that happen in Facebook and Twitter, two social networks with a similar purpose but they behave in a different way and they provide different types of reticulated structures. The linguistic behavior of users of social media is studied in order to determine whether the general principles defensed in the reticular studies applied to the linguistic variation are achieved in the language used in digital platforms. Our results show that there is a big contrast between the linguistic characteristics that present the people who are part of a dense and multiple network –Facebook– and the ones that take part in a relaxed and simple network –Twitter.