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This study investigates Nigerian and English interjections and emojis used for expressing surprise in Nigerian online communication. Interested in the factors influencing the choice between a shocked emoji and an English or Nigerian interjection, we apply automated emotion analysis and a language detection measurement we developed for an 840‐million‐word web forum corpus to test the influence of these and further variables on the choice of a surprise item. Our multinomial regression model suggests that the probability of Nigerian interjections is higher in messages containing Nigerian Pidgin, informal orthographically lengthened words, and positive emotions, while the shocked emoji occurs in negative contexts, in messages by established forum members, and alongside other emojis. The sad emoji, however, favors English‐language interjections, as do high arousal and emotionally laden words. Moreover, we argue that interjections are not only a spoken phenomenon but occur in any type of communication characterized by interactivity and emotional involvement.

Orthography is not a neutral tool for representing language in writing. Spelling is a linguistic variable capable of carrying social meaning, and orthographies are technologies embedded in larger societal structures. Spelling plays a role in the construction of national and other social identities, the delimitation of languages, the authentication and stigmatization of speaker groups, standardization, and the written representation of paralinguistic features. In these and further ways, orthography is a topic of high sociolinguistic relevance. After written language had long received less sociolinguistic attention than speech, there is now a growing body of sociolinguistic research into spelling variation and orthography as a socioculturally situated practice. Sociolinguists investigate the social role of orthographies and spelling choices. When orthographies are developed for previously unwritten languages, decisions have to be made not only regarding phonemic representation but also between creating distance from and closeness to related languages. Orthography becomes a highly debated topic also when spelling reforms are proposed; different ideological, aesthetic, financial, educational, and sociopolitical arguments are typically brought forth. Standardized spellings are seen by language users as granting languages and speakers authority. When non-standardized spellings are used in transcripts of speech, they have been shown to assign sociolinguistic stigma to the speakers represented. Non-standardized spellings are used in different less than fully regulated orthographic spaces, such as digital writing, company and personal names, literary texts, subcultural publications, advertising, and private writing. Sociolinguistic studies on spelling often rely on data from digital communication such as text messaging or social media interactions. Such studies not only describe and classify different kinds of non-standardized spellings but also increasingly establish quantitative tendencies, explore correlations with macro-level sociodemographic factors, and show the potential for respelling to construct identities, personae, and meaning at the micro level of the utterance. Spelling can index identities and stances, act as a contextualization cue, and represent prosodic and dialectal features.

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