Variations of comparative forms in online discourses: Acceptability and practicality

As non-native users of English, multilinguals sometimes produce discourses that seemingly deviate from the English norm. One dispute on Facebook, for instance, tagged someone being linguistically incompetent for using double comparatives (DCs), seeing that its use (e.g. more taller) violates the English grammar. Hence this study directs its attention to DC’s emergence in online discourses to explore its acceptability and practicality. As a qualitative content inquiry informed by Chomsky’s (1961) generative grammar and theory of linguistic structure, this study found 9 DC structures, which at a glance, deviate the English norms, suggesting a variation in the application of comparative forms in English. Surprisingly, at a closer look, DCs are linguistic innovations characterizing users’ creativity and practical intent and their way to maximize the flexibility of English to serve a practical purpose. Understanding the purpose of Facebook discourses (e.g. to influence decisions) is crucial in this study to explain the use of DCs. As a result, promotional is the main purpose that justifies the use of DCs as it contains transactional and practical details to influence decisions (e.g. customers to grab discounted services). Significantly, this study introduces three types of DCs used in online discourses not yet explored in linguistics, namely: 1) intralingual (coreference) which coreferences with other lexical items composing units of linguistic references that denote meaning of an entire discourse in semantic level, 2) interlingual (intensifier) which intensifies the presentation of meaning according to how they are intended by users, and 3) extra-lingual (meaning marker) which adds related ideas not explicitly conveyed in a discourse. Although DCs appear to be acceptable in practical uses, particularly in online discourses, applying them in formal writing (where grammar accuracy is crucial) needs consensus among language experts because its usage may not be acceptable to convey technical information.