Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 474
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-40662-5

Regular Article

Emergence of acronyms in a community of language users

¹ DIEE – Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
² DUMAS – Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, 07100 Sassari, Italy

^a e-mail: marco.javarone@diee.unica.it

Received: 10 July 2013
Received in final form: 13 September 2013
Published online: 18 November 2013

Abstract

Language is a complex system that evolves over time, due to several phenomena. In recent years, new communication media are affecting interpersonal written communication. In particular, mobile phones and internet-based communication media are leading people to use a small number of characters when writing messages. Hence, acronyms or abbreviations are used in most cases. In particular, a mobile phone message is usually composed by short phrases, the social network Twitter only allows 140 characters per message and in many online forums users have limited space for questions and answers. Although the use of acronyms dates back to ancient times, nowadays this type of linguistic sign is gaining prestige. In this work, we study the introduction of acronyms in social systems. In particular, we define a simple game for the purpose of analyzing how the use of an acronym spreads in a population, considering its ability to create a shared meaning. We performed many numerical simulations according to the proposed model, showing the creation of acronyms to be the result of collective dynamics in a population.