The Road to Success: Assessing the Fate of Linguistic Innovations in Online Communities

Abstract

We investigate the birth and diffusion of lexical innovations in a large dataset of online social communities. We build on sociolinguistic theories and focus on the relation between the spread of a novel term and the social role of the individuals who use it, uncovering characteristics of innovators and adopters. Finally, we perform a prediction task that allows us to anticipate whether an innovation will successfully spread within a community.

13 pages, Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2018)

References in corpus (3)

• Diachronic Word Embeddings Reveal Statistical Laws of Semantic Change
• Niche as a determinant of word fate in online groups
• The Social Dynamics of Language Change in Online Networks

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Word reuse and combination support efficient communication of emerging concepts