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Article published In: Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 8:1 (2025) ► pp.86–112

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The pragmatics of hashtags in French tweets

 | University of Central Florida
Published online: 9 January 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00117.had
Abstract
Even though France is not a bilingual country, French Twitter users are using various hashtags in English. The hashtag, which was originally created on Twitter, is a popular symbol widely used in the virtual world as well as in the real world. The goal of the hashtag was to organize topics of discussion relative to common themes. Even though this remains its primary usage, other functions for hashtags have emerged since its creation. In a Tag and Commentary hashtag analysis, this study investigates the pragmatic functions and positions of 755 English hashtags on Twitter from all users geo-tagged in France. The data was collected in all the regions of France through Twitter’s API (Application program interface) using the software RStudio. The results show that English hashtags are predominantly used for advertising purposes at the end of a tweet. However, instances of Commentary hashtags are also being used to add an evaluative role regarding the main body of tweets. Through this analysis, the study contributes to a deeper comprehension of online linguistic practices among French users, shedding light on the complex dynamics between language, technology, and communication in today’s digital era.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background and related work
  • 3.Data collection
  • 4.Analytical framework
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Tag, commentary and combination of both hashtags
      • 5.1.1Tag hashtags
      • 5.1.2Commentary hashtags
      • 5.1.3Combination of both hashtags
    • 5.2Functions of tag hashtags
      • 5.2.1Advertising
      • 5.2.2Information-sharing on news and political topics
      • 5.2.3Named entities
      • 5.2.4Community
      • 5.2.5Application
      • 5.2.6Information-sharing about technology and innovation
      • 5.2.7Platform
    • 5.3Position of the hashtag
      • 5.3.1Beginning of the tweet
      • 5.3.2Middle of the tweet
      • 5.3.3End of the tweet
      • 5.3.4Hashtags only
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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