Abstract:
The Covid-19 situation has caused people to adapt to media and technology increasingly; as a result, social media usage has become more popular, affecting the widespread use of slang words on social media. Currently, slang words in Thai society often originate chiefly and are popularized by LGBTQ+ people. Therefore, the researcher is interested in studying the slang communication by gender diverse people on social media. The objectives of this research were 1) to collect and group slang words which were used on LGBTQ+ Facebook fan pages during 2021 and 2) to study slang words used by gender diverse people on Facebook fan pages through the Sociological Properties of Slang theory by Elisa Mattiello (2008). This study used a qualitative research approach that applied the content analysis method. It examined the posts and comments on 3 LGBTQ+ Facebook fan pages by selecting the purposive sampling technique, which required Facebook fan pages to have a total of likes and followers of more than 100,000, and the pages must constantly be active. The results of this research were 1) there were 83 slang words used on 3 LGBTQ+ Facebook fan pages during 2021, and they could be grouped into 5 groups. And 2) slang communication by gender diverse people on Facebook fan pages reflected the Sociological Properties of Slang theory. The property which mostly appeared was desire to impress and faddishness, while the invisible property was secrecy and privacy. The discussions revealed that slang communication by gender diverse people could reflect the communication identity and social bargaining power of the group. Implication of the Thematic Paper: Most of the research related to slang emphasized studying linguistics; therefore, this research is quite a new view to the study related to slang words in a different field, which can apply and build on the study in the future.