The Road to Success: Assessing the Fate of Linguistic Innovations in Online Communities
This research addresses the problem of understanding linguistic evolution for sociolinguists and online community analysts, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing theories.
The study tackled the problem of predicting the spread of lexical innovations in online communities by analyzing the social roles of users, achieving a prediction task to anticipate successful diffusion.
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.