Lexical Features of When in Manila Blogs: IPE Word-Formation Processes and their Acceptability to ESL Teachers

The impact of internet in the 21st century has significantly influenced the variety of English language through the innovations in electronic communication. Human communication became faster, more dynamic, and convenient in the digital world. The profound effect of this change is evident in the idiosyncratic usage of words in the sharing and exchange of information online. This study focuses on the lexical creativity of Internet Philippine English (IPE) neologism or the process of creating new words and its acceptability for English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers. A corpus of 300,000+ words was collected from “When In Manila” blogs from 2017-2019 and processed using AntConc 2 software. Findings showed twenty-three IPE lexical items formed through normal expansion, shortening, coinage, and borrowing based on Dimaculangan and Gustilo’s (2018) framework of word-formation processes in Philippine English. Five of these words were frequently occurring among the different categories of the blogs. Moreover, the words were evaluated by ESL teachers to validate their acceptability vis-a-vis academic Philippine English. Thus, it was revealed that these words are only acceptable in informal and conversational English levels. Further, the pedagogical implications entail reviewing the present curriculum and assess where new changes and developments in PE can be incorporated into academic instruction.


Introduction
The domination of the Internet in the present era has immensely shaped the nature of language. Such change is influenced by the varied use of electronic mediums in communication. Since In understanding language development, one must describe its use specific to a situation. Crystal (2001) establishes four dominant situations better to distinguish the language variation in an Internet-aided communication. This includes electronic mail (e-mail), chat groups, virtual worlds, and World Wide Web (Web). Each situation is distinct: (a) the e-mail is used to send a message to someone using a computer system; (b) chatgroups are like segmented rooms for discussion at a particular Internet site that reaches a great distance; (c) virtual worlds are virtually constructed worlds where one can connect to any text-based; and (d) the Web is a big collection of all activity linked to the Internet. The distinct linguistic features of these categories prove that there is an emerging language variety, Netspeak. The features of this language are specific to Internet use in the varying situations mentioned earlier. However, the Internet situation is not limited to these four. Other situations can be explored in which more research is needed, particularly the Web.
An analysis of Internet Philippine English lexical features, Diamante (2016) followed Bautista's (1997) study on the lexicon of PE. She focused on the word-formation/creation of travel blogs written by Filipino bloggers; age ranges from 25 to 35. The processes specific to this genre applied blending, acronyming, compounding, coinage, functional shifting, affixing nominal expansion, and echoing. Generally, the identified words are reductive in nature. This explains the rapid exchange of brief communication on online sites.
Various frameworks are used to examine the profound lexical creativity of PE. Therefore,  simplified a single modified framework on word-formation presses for the 21st-century PE lexicon. The rigorously analyzed previous researches and collected a corpus of 400,000 word published and unpublished English texts written from 2005-2015 by educated Filipino speakers from NCR, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The lexical words that undergo word-formation processes were categorized according to the modified framework. This proves the flourishing vocabulary and word-formation of PE. However, acceptance of these words should be considered to preserve this new language variety.
Further investigation of the concerned gap includes Gustilo, Tocalo, & Calingasan (2019) examining the intelligibility and acceptability of identified IPE words on Philippine's Ultimate Showbiz Hub (PUSH), the most subscribed digital showbiz site in the Philippines in 2017. They were able to identify forty-seven items considered IPE words based on Dimaculangan and Gustilo's (2017) approach. Moreover, Gustilo, Tocalo, and Calingasan (2019) argue that these words' acceptance is more significant. Therefore, following Dimaculangan's (2017) attitude test, fifty ESL teachers evaluated the words based on their understanding of the new IPE words and on their position to accept the new IPE words in formal oral discourse, academic writing, informal spoken discourse, and informal writing. Findings show that a younger group of second language teachers mostly accepts the new IPE words. This implies that studies on IPE words will greatly contribute to the expansion of PE vocabularies; generally, it is only accepted in informal communication.
To examine the variety of speech used on the Internet, the researchers focus on the linguistic styles of the Web. Crystal (2001) states, "The Web is increasingly reflecting the distribution of language presence in the real world, and there is a steadily growing set of sites which provide the evidence (p. 2018-219)." The Web, specifically blogs, is a space for online publishing of works rich in lexical creativity in writing and influences many users. Blogs are making a remarkable impact to satisfy the public's media diet (Borah, 2015). With the increasing community of bloggers and blog readers, the credibility of this medium is at the question. Credibility is not implicitly embedded in a specific medium, although it can be described based on the perceptions and characteristics of a group. Borah (2015) studies two factors that may shape reader's perception of blogs, namely: (a) the identity of the blogger and (b) the reach of the blog. These factors can be used as a set of criteria in choosing materials in studies similar to this. An example of an online blog that hits the criteria is When In Manila. This online platform is a community of over 200 writers, photographers, videographers and storytellers who simply want to share their stories of adventures and discoveries. The authors' background is provided on the site for verification of credibility. Also, it is the top online magazine in Manila and the Philippines. It has a great number of social engagements: Facebook 2.8 million Facebook followers, 72k Twitter followers, 774 social engagement, this measures public shares, likes, and comments for a website social media efforts, and 64 domain authority, this predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages, 100 is the highest score (Feedspot Blog). Its wide range of social connections on the Web may result in many potential IPE words.
Individuals can create and modify new words because of their innate linguistic competence, strengthened by their linguistic environment . However, a gathering of newly formed words should be consecutively investigated according to its acceptability. Acceptability pertains to an extent use of language where speakers of it refrain from rejecting its use as part of the common language . Gustilo, Tocalo, and Calingasan (2019) emphasize that many English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers lack knowledge about World Englishes and the existence of Philippine English variety. Thus, the American English structure and lexicon of American English remain a standard among many ESL teachers in the academe.

Statement of the Problem
Acknowledging these gaps, the study aims to determine the neologism from the Internet particularly on "When In Manila" blog and identify its acceptability among ESL teachers by answering the following questions: 1. What are the newly-formed Internet Philippine English words on When In Manila blog?
2. What are the processes involved in forming these new words based on Gustilo and Dimaculangan's (2018) framework?
3. Are the identified words acceptable based on the perception of ESL teachers?
The presented questions aim to meet the identified gaps in the previous researches. The study is supported by Dimaculangan and Gustilo's (2018 framework on word-formation processes and Gustilo's (2018) acceptability test.

Theoretical Framework
The rapid change and impact of Internet in language is significant in constantly studying developments of Internet Philippine English in the present era. Crystal (2001) indicates that "the 'electronic revolution' [is] bringing about a linguistic revolution." This affirms the increasing growth of PE words through a standard word-formation process. Therefore, this study follows  Proposed Word-Formation Processes Framework for 21st Century PE Lexicon (Table 1).  framework on Word-Formation Processes Framework for 21st Century PE Lexicon is proposed to make a standard framework in building the Philippine English. PE is growing to pass the nativization phase and move forward to endonormative stabilization (Borlongan, 2016;)phase 4 in Schneider's (2007) dynamic model of the evolution of postcolonial Englishes. Recognizing the varieties of English promotes awareness of lexical creativity and its relevance in an ESL classroom for both teachers and students. Enlightening educators about how ESL learners participate and contribute to the enrichment of PE will help inform the experts in the academe. As Schneider (2007) forwards, endonormative stabilization develops when community members positively accept the linguistic forms and gain stability as a new English variety. Thus, redefining experts' views on Philippine English will result in success.

Research Design
The study followed a mixed-method design. A mixed methods research design is a way for gathering, analyzing, and "combining" quantitative and qualitative research and methodologies in a study to better understand the problem of the study (Fischler, 2014). Qualitative research is distinguished by its goals, which are related to knowing some element of social life, and by its techniques, which (in general) yield words as data for analysis rather than statistics (Patton & Cochran, 2019). Through this design, we can discover and deeply understand the social world within its own setting. By means of this design, we will be able to collect more information that will give details of a particular phenomenon.
On the other hand, quantitative research collects measurable data and uses statistics to evaluate it (Fischler, 2014). The quantitative design is utilized to explore the new words used in blogs that can be added to the Philippine English lexicon. It employed the corpus linguistics research method in collecting the 309,370 tokens from which the Philippine English lexicon was extracted. It utilized the archival data published in the blog, When In Manila.

Sampling of Participants
The study underwent the process of purposely selecting the participants who will take part in the investigation. In qualitative research, purposeful sampling is commonly employed to identify and choose information-rich examples linked to the topic of interest (Palinkas, Horwitz, & Hoagwood, 2019). This study used selective sampling or also known as purposive sampling in finding the participants in the acceptability tests. This involves identifying and selecting individuals or groups of individuals that are especially knowledgeable about or experienced with a phenomenon of interest (Cresswell & Plano Clark, 2011). The researchers purposively selected five ESL teachers from Emiliano Tria Tirona Memorial National High School and five from Lyceum of the Philippines -Manila. Their ages are from 23 -32 with a modal age of 27. The majority of participants speak both Filipino and English.

Research Instrument
The AntConc Concordances Software was used in collecting blog articles from When In Manila and forming the corpus. Further, the study utilized the acceptability test from Gustilo (2019) to check the attitude or the view of the ESL teachers towards the Philippines English lexicon lifted from a popular blogging site, "When in Manila". The researchers conducted qualitative acceptability testing, which is interviewing, to know and see the participants' perception if they will accept or they will not accept these Philippine English lexicon. The interview has two parts. The first part contains the participant's profile, specifically their name or code name, age, gender, years of education in the Philippines, time spent on the internet per week, a region in the Philippines, nationality and course/profession/employment/year level in school. The last part contains different questions that the interviewer will ask and the interviewee needs to answer.

Data Source and Data Collection Procedures
"When in Manila" was chosen to be the source of the corpus that will be formed. The blog site is the most popular online publication in the Philippines. This online magazine features over 200 authors, storytellers, videographers, and photographers that wish to share their adventures and achievements. According to an audit undertaken by the world's best digital marketing organization in May 2016, WhenInManila.com receives ten million (10,000,000+) impressions each day. Every month, the website has over six million (6,000,000+) views, along with other social media channels like facebook.com/WhenInManila; it has almost two million (2,700,000+) likes on Facebook, 300,000+ followers on Instagram.com/WhenInManila, and 100,000+ followers on Twitter.com/WhenInManila. Because of these, the blog "When In Manila" has social media impressions of over 50 million per week. Articles were collected within the year of 2017 -2019 from different genres of blog like trending (trending and features), eat (eat and drink), adventure (travel and adventure), parties (nightlife and events), art (lifestyle and places), style (fashion and beauty), stuff (gadgets and shopping), interest (entertainment and celebrity news) and advocacies. A variety of news stories and a number of words were saved into Microsoft Word with associated file names (see Table 2). The data source has 720 news articles with a total of 309,370 words written by the different authors/contributors of the blog, "When in Manila". Regarding the view of the participants in the acceptability of the lexicon, five teachers from Emiliano Tria Tirona Memorial National High School and five from Lyceum of the Philippines -Manila were identified. The interview was conducted by the researchers. The researchers asked participants' consent that their answers will be documented and examined.

Data Analysis Procedure
The news articles gathered from the blog were put in text files. In determining and getting the number of times of a particular identified Philippine English lexicon, the software AntConc was utilized. As stated above, an interview was conducted by the researchers, and was used in the acceptability test of the new Philippine English lexicon to the ESL teachers of the schools mentioned above. After getting the potential new Philippine English lexicon, the ESL teachers gave their own opinion or judgment as to whether the identified new Philippine English lexicon is acceptable in all forms of communication like informal and conversational English, acceptable in both formal oral and formal written English.

Results and Discussion
Out of the 309, 370 words from the corpus of When in Manila blogs from years 2017-2019, twenty-nine were identified and considered IPE lexical items based on  framework of word-formation processes in Philippine English. Five of these words were frequently occurring among the different categories of the blogs. As shown in the table, it is interesting to note that x, although not a word but more of a symbol, has appeared thirty-five times in all three years from different categories of the blogs. This symbol functions like "and" and, thus, implies collaboration often used in citing brands. It should be noted, however, as observed, that this is used in written form rather than oral.
Referring to the feature of the lexical item and based on Dimaculangan and Gustilo's framework, this symbol may have undergone the process of shortening, specifically initialism. This word-formation process is prevalent on the internet, so this new form does not come as a surprise. It should be further noted that this symbol emerged in blogs, which is predominantly internet communication. Eisenstein (2013) indicated that computer-mediated communication "defies our expectations about vocabulary, spelling, and syntax". The present study reveals how new forms emerge through the internet, but there may be a long process before these new forms become accepted in standard communication, that is, in formal oral and written English.
The word adobo, a Filipino borrowed word from Spanish adobar, which means to marinate in soy sauce and vinegar, emerged twenty-seven times in the corpus. This is a very popular dish in the Philippines and is now reaching overseas household kitchens. Additionally, it should be mentioned that the word adobo has also been used in Spanish and Portuguese languages and borrowed in an English context. Bautista (2000) identified borrowing as one of the most common word formation processes in Philippine English lexicon. The other common words that also utilized borrowing as formation process are the words hugot, which appeared nineteen times, pertains to any literal statement that implies a deep emotional reference; balikbayan, that appeared eighteen times refers to an overseas Filipino worker who came home to the Philippines; and bongga, which appeared sixteen times, means extravagant or flamboyant. These three lexical items got the third, fourth and fifth most frequent occurrence respectively. Furthermore, borrowing emerged to be the most common word-formation process of the identified words from the corpus; thirteen borrowed Filipino words out of the twenty-nine lexical items.
Lee (2011) stated that digital discourse drives people to develop creative genres to form new lexical items in a language. Blogging is one of the most popular modes of digital discourse, in that, as Mortensen and Walker (2002) stated, it is perceived as "a tool for focusing, exchanging information, and being a part of a discussion, which potentially extends beyond the academic community". This implies that the writer is not the only contributor of new words to the language, but basically the ordinary people who utilize the language in a more natural, day-today setting. This makes blogs an exciting avenue to conduct corpus research to explore the lexical items that can be included in the PE lexicon to standardize this variety of English (Kachru, 2012). Hence, it is essential to remember that the identified lexical items cannot be automatically considered acceptable PE words.  , pasalubong, sulit, sabaw, kakanins, OOTD, ukay-ukay, tipid, DM, MUA, memeable, twinning, tbh, yorme, uber-modern, chill, friendsgiving, falsies, carinderia, represent, ziplining, man-pering, and jollijeep. The word pulutan is a loan word from Filipino, thus formed through borrowing means a dish or chips served with alcoholic beverages. Other IPE words that were formed through borrowing are: pasalubong which means something brought home from work or travel; sulit that is characterized by having a good value, especially for money spent; sabaw referring to having low brain functioning due to lack of sleep, when a person just awaken, or experiencing depression; kakanins pertaining to local delicacies from a specific place in the country; ukay-ukay which refers to either a store that sells secondhand apparels or the apparels itself; tipid or translated as "thrifty" or "frugal" in English; carinderia which is a food stall typically found in a market or at a roadside selling cheaper-priced meals; and jollijeep that refers to a mobile carinderia in reference to Jollibeea popular fastfood chain in the Philippines. The word Jollijeep also underwent compounding by combing the words jolly (from Jollibee) and jeep.
Other words that used shortening, specifically initialism is OOTD meaning Outfit Of The Day, a fashionable attire a person is wearing. The word is typically used in the context of blogging, photoshoot for social media, or can be used in daily conversations to refer to the best dress in the room. DM which means direct message typically used in social networking sites particularly Twitter or Instagram, MUA or Make Up Artist; TBH or To Be Honest also used initialism. Moreover, the falsies are a back-clipped word for false eyelashes.
There are also visible coinages in the list of words. The word memeable is coined through affixation (meme + able) and pertains to something that can made into a meme, which is an image, text, or video that invokes humor by using variations and comments relating to a different context. Yorme is also a coined Englog (transposed from mayor) blending from Filipino urban slang in the 70s which is popularized again and largely attributed to Isko Moreno of the city of Manila. Uber-modern is also a coined word formed by compounding the words uber (calqued from German word Urban) which means above average + modern which pertains to the present time. Another compounded word is friendsgiving referring to an event where Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) donate to Philippine charities. Further, man-pering is an example of a coined word through the process of blending (man + pampering) and pertains to a pampering session for a man.
The process of normal expansion was also used for the words twinning which means two people having the same or resembling outfit; chill which shifted from an adjective to verb meaning to hangout; represent is characterized by coming from a certain place as in syntactically placed after a noun; and ziplining which means to go down through a zipline.

Acceptability of the Internet Philippine English (IPE) Lexical Items from Blogs
Using a qualitative approach in identifying the acceptability of new IPE words to some ESL teachers, it is revealed that most lexical items were only acceptable in informal and conversational English. It is revealed that ESL teachers deemed the words acceptable in that they are already being used in conversational English; some of them even admitted using such words.
Considering the modal age (27) of the participants, it can be inferred that the young generation of educators is becoming more open to the expansion of vocabulary in PhilE from the internet. They also added that they recognize the role that the internet plays in the formation of new words. They intend to incorporate them in instruction; some are even using them already, however, only in informal and conversational communicative situations. This is supported by Gustilo, Calisangan, and Tocalo (2019) stated that younger ESL teachers are more open to Internet Philippine English variety as they perceive these words to be acceptable in formal and informal contexts.
Among the accepted words for ESL teachers in informal and conversational English are twinning, go-to, uber-modern, falsies, DM, OOTD, hugot, bongga, pulutan, pasalubong, carinderia, and (2000) explained that Philippine English is nativized and has features that distinguish it from Standard American English because of the influence of the first language, the embedded culture shown in lexicon, and discourse conventions even the restructuring of grammar rules. Following the observations of researchers, Philippine English is expanding and growing its features based on its nativization, so while it is safe to say that there should be equivalent forms of Filipino words, they can still be expressed through the process of borrowing, and the internet makes this possible, particularly blogs.
Additionally, other ESL teachers stated that their students who use borrowed Filipino words, for instance in an English context, think that they are still code-switching, one characteristic of conyo. This may be interesting as a research opportunity such that researchers may explore whether Filipino speakers are aware that they are using these terms in English context or they are simply code-switching and/or code-mixing. Dimaculangan (2017) claimed that Tagalog items were perceived by ESL teachers as informal and should not be accepted for both formal oral and formal written formal discourses in Philippine English.

Conclusion
The present study confirms the word-processes framework of Dimaculangan and Gustilo (2017), that indeed lexical items in blogs are formed through normal expansion, shortening, coinage, and borrowing. The present analysis has established blogs to be a rich source of localized forms that can be added to the Philippine English lexicon and contribute to the standardization of this variety of English. The words that emerged to be most frequently used in When in Manila blogs are x (a shortened symbol that functions like and), adobo, hugot, balikbayan, and bongga. These words are borrowed from the Filipino language which may imply that PE is showing, thus affirming previous arguments that it is approaching the beginning stage of the endonormative stabilization from Schneider's Dynamic Model. The claims are further validated through the acceptability of these new lexical items in informal and conversational English from ESL teachers, who are the primary drivers of spreading these developments through instruction. As Dimaculangan (2017) argued, there are hesitations in accepting new PE vocabularies due to their informality as far as scholarly communication is concerned. However, the present study supports the claim of Gustilo, Calisangan, and Tocalo (2019) that younger generation ESL teachers are becoming more open to accepting these new lexical items, although only in informal communication.

Pedagogical Implications
The present study supports the recommendation of Gustilo, Calisangan, and Tocalo (2019) to establish a local or pluricentric model of language teaching (Borlongan, 2019). This entails reviewing the current curriculum and assessing where new changes and developments in PE can be incorporated into academic instruction. Additionally, since the Philippines has complex sociolinguistic traditions, it is suggested to incorporate an Asset-based approach (Scanlan, 2007) in teaching English, which essentially focuses on the students' linguistic backgrounds and strengths. This is in consideration that although most learners use the internet for communication, some of them may not be familiar yet with new lexical items used in PE contexts. Although deemed to be used only in informal contexts, the words may be used in instruction to encourage learners that these are already existing Philippine English words from the internet. However, teachers should be well aware that these words should be established as "informal". Nonetheless, with this effort, informal words may arbitrarily and slowly move to be used in more formal communicative situations as members of the community continually use them to move to endonormative stabilization (Scheider, 2007).

Recommendations
Since the focus of this study is only to explore words used in English context from blogs that may have the potential to be included in the PE lexicon, it is recommended to conduct further investigations in several other domains, particularly those that may be likely used in an academic setting. Moreover, it is also suggested to consider studying the attitudes and preferences of ESL teachers on the use of these new lexical items from the internet in their instruction. Intelligibility and acceptability should not only be limited to educators; thus, further researchers should be explored on this aspect.