2021/04/11 by Jianguo Zhu, David Jurgens, Zhu, Jian +1
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #Digital Communication and Language #Expert finding and Q&A systems #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2104.05010
openalex publication_date 2021/04/11 · openalex created_date 2022/08/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
New words are regularly introduced to communities, yet not all of these words persist in a community's lexicon. Among the many factors contributing to lexical change, we focus on the understudied effect of social networks. We conduct a large-scale analysis of over 80k neologisms in 4420 online communities across a decade. Using Poisson regression and survival analysis, our study demonstrates that the community's network structure plays a significant role in lexical change. Apart from overall size, properties including dense connections, the lack of local clusters and more external contacts promote lexical innovation and retention. Unlike offline communities, these topic-based communities do not experience strong lexical levelling despite increased contact but accommodate more niche words. Our work provides support for the sociolinguistic hypothesis that lexical change is partially shaped by the structure of the underlying network but also uncovers findings specific to online communities.